Pros
When the economy is decent, this firm gets a nice share of large interesting projects. Friday afternoons off (if no meetings or deadlines) The staff is friendly and knowledgeable. This is a full service design firm from planning and logistics consulting to Architecture, Civil, Structural, & MEP Engineering, Interior Design, and Graphics/Way Finding. All disciplines are in one location and many projects are a complete A/E team effort.
Cons
Pay is almost fair, but benefits (healthcare plans and 401k contributions) are horrible! Instead of matching contributions, staff is given shares of the ESOP. ESOP! Yeah that's been a good substitute for your retirement savings. If only the company's stock (and most other design firm's stock) hadn't sunk so drastically. Because of their poor balance between public-private clients and the large one-of-a-kind projects and having several "bread & butter" projects, they tend to "ramp up" staffing to complete the work and then cut positions when projects are complete. Project staffing motto is "lean to the bone, do more with less," unless the client complains. Poor staff resource management and development of less experienced staff (i.e.: no structured mentoring) Poor unity between the 3 managing directors and their company leadership for the various disciplines. Disastrous attempt at being a General Contractor due to lack of strong leadership to get CMs and A/Es to work as one team (partly because each discipline is responsible for its own profitability). Directors travel to Mexican resort to discuss internal company policy and then return to begin layoffs later in the year.