Pros
Decent location. Free coffee, Free parking, Secure building, Wine Bar, Driving Range, Full gym, ok computer systems, Walking distance to good food.
Cons
A flawed "Grow your own." Philosophy... On one end of the spectrum, there is a popular opinion going on around the company. The "grow your own" philosophy. This seems like a great idea to bring in new, young staff and bring them up in the industry the "McKinstry Way". However in this case it has gone to far. the majority of new staff are fresh out of college and have no real word skills or experience. This is not a fun environment to work in every day under the pressure of unattainable project schedules. The company needs seasoned experts in order to move forward, thrive and become a serious professional competitor on the Seattle Engineering stage. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who have been there for 20+ years who, for lack of a better term, are invincible or untouchable. A better description would be, incapable and slow. I have seen these people cause all kinds of problems in the work place and not receive the proper professional repremanding. These indevidules also tend to lean on the more knowledgable staff to complete even the most basic tasks. McKinstry claims that they "put people first.". Not the case. Also, I would not recommend this company to anyone trying to advance there career and make a little money. In my 3 years at McKinstry I have not received a raise or bonus due to "the department not hitting our financial goals.". Not sure how this company plans on keeping quality employees without offering some kind of incentive to continue to work hard and produce a quality product. Lastly, this company lacks any sort of structure or standards. There is a web based company web site for documents and processes but it is managed by the same type of people listed above. So naturally it does not work. It seems like for every new project we have to reinvent the wheel and wast time tracking down the materials and information we need in order to successfully complete any project. As a result the employee turnover is extreamly high. It seems like there are people leaving every week. This company has a lot of growing to do in order to become a pleasant place to work.