Overall Great Company to Work For, but with Underlying Issues - Interior Designer SmithGroup Employee Review

3.0
Nov 19, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great collaboration in between teams and disciplines, leadership cares, office design leaders are passionate and knowledgeable, design is at the forefront, definite leaders in the industry, PTO and time off is decent, offices are well organized and beautiful places to work, provided fruit, forward thinking, generally everyone is very nice, there are very good people to learn from, very transparent about company growth and earnings.

Cons

Little to no real one-on-one mentorship as a new employee, workload is unmanageable especially around the felt like overtime shouldn't be charged, do not pay for time spent learning or growing while at work (lunch and learns, learning from representatives, etc), no pay for learning related work trips, expected to use time off for work related trips or group activities, no real guidance for growth opportunities besides strictly moving up to the next level (1, 2, 3), the coaching system in place was very poor and did not help growth at all, wish there had been more cultural diversity.

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SmithGroup Response
5y
We are disappointed to hear that this employee did not have a positive experience with our Coaching program. In this program, every staff member is aligned with a coach to help identify opportunities to enhance their career. We generally hear very positive feedback for this approach. Every employee also has access to InKNOWvations, our firmwide learning platform that is full of different tools to build knowledge and provide resources to aid your personal growth. We appreciate and agree with the sentiment to embrace diversity. We are deeply committed to creating a culture that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion. In 2020, we enhanced this commitment by establishing a board-level Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee that is made up of staff members from across the firm and represents a wide range of personal and professional experiences. This team serves as advisors to our senior leadership team and is committed to ending systemic racism and injustice. We don’t have all of the answers, but we have made a commitment to finding them.

Explore other reviews about SmithGroup

5.0
May 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very welcoming environment with talented engineers and architects. They’re passionate about sustainability and performance-driven design. IMPACT is great as well.

Cons

Tasks could get boring after a while, which is true for repetitive work in any field, not just this company. But for a short-term internship, everything felt enjoyable and educational.

3.0
Jul 21, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Occasional Friday-offs (normal workday is 8.5 hours)

Cons

Low salary Top-heavy organization structure Tendency to silo

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