Pros
Individual teams can work well together. Company is working across the board to standardize. They do try to listen to employee concerns and feedback. A company who talks big about work-life balance and the importance of their employees but may not always deliver. Offers decent perks and incentives and overall the culture tries to be cohesive, employee focused, and positive. The company is making efforts to grow and increase margin and profits. Employee earning incentives have been somewhat defined but still remain subjective to management opinions and vague.
Cons
I have worked at a few large and successful companies and McKinstry is run like it grew too fast. Engineers occupy middle management positions but haven’t learned management and interpersonal skills, resulting in condescending inefficient management and unhappy, stressed employees. Upper management is well intentioned and tries hard but is somewhat disconnected. Some management is a good-old-boys club and plays favorites with the lower level staff, leaving the hard working employees unnoticed and unhappy and wondering why so-and-so got promoted. “Talking big and showing your face a lot goes a long way here.” McKinstry’s turnover speaks for itself. Those who have stuck around have either bought into the management culture or just learned to put up with it. There are a lot more young and old staff and not as many mid-career professionals. McKinstry is big on internal job descriptions, and less on actual outside experience. Have seen them tell employees transitioning from other industries that their previous experience is irrelevant(see middle management issue above). Seattle office seems decent, with pockets of dysfunction, but they are trying hard. Portland office is a joke and all the good people left or were laid off. Spokane office does well and somewhat ignores the drama with the rest of the company. The few other satellite offices run mostly independently while sharing resources. Overall it can be a good place to build experience, given the right manager and team and a breadth of client work to get experience with, but the idea of building a long-term career there seems somewhat unsure. If you can put your head down and work hard, great, but you won’t move up unless you make yourself more visible to the iffy middle-managers, which can add stress to the day-to-day. Poorly scheduled or undersold projects add stress to the employees doing the actual work under the strain of a tight schedule and budget