Pros
- Variety of Projects you will experience. - Certain people are good to work with and micromanagers. - Coworkers outside of the work office are very good to talk and stay in connection with. Still have Very good friends I keep in touch with from work. - Very responsive HR Team, IT Service and very safety conscious responsive. - Some people take more time to explain Overhead task (timesheets, printer, etc). - Some managers are better at explaining what is needed, but will have to get experience in asking what’s managers goals are b/c they vary as much as the projects. - Routine company updates - Given an opportunity to work from home and in the office (Some offices may push for more return to office work based off of the generational age group / preferences of the upper management running that office)
Cons
The cons I am listing you may experience in your 1st year but more likely will notice over time (if bothered by them): -Can get burned out working too long (gotta learn when to call it quits for the day) - You’re busy one week and then you’re not. So will probably get the burden of people asking you “What are you charging your time too” (I think as junior or mid senior staff that does is not your responsibility. Upper management should be prepared) - Certain Upper management are not very human, can get easily stressed, and only focused on billable hours and project budget. When you care about the people, then they’ll care about what they do for you, but it doesn’t always come across that way, and can turn into micromanaging. - Don’t get paid well for all the work and effort you eventually will be doing. On top of that people will still complain that you are charging to much time to their job. - Upper management can easily can forget all that you do after one mistake or oversight. We are professionals of course but still human including the managers! - Need a better system to pay employees more money based off of the skills and accreditations that they bring to the team or earn. Also need to improve company policy about education course paid for. I took a course related to my work and which would improve my knowledge of structural engineering, but did not get it approved b/c one persons opinion and preference felt it wqsnt necessary when yet part of job is to literally inspect and design what was being taught in the classes I took. -End of the years reviews can almost become like a battle to defend yourself, especially if the manager you have is someone who micromanages, only focuses on if you meet the billable hours and project budget, but forget all the effort you put in to things over the year wether it’s related to work or even any company activities that you organize. - Each office is a particular business centers (e.g. transportation, buildings). I think to be a good engineer Stantec should offer options for employees to gain experience in different business centers. Based off of their current interest over their career.