Exponent reviews

The previous review posted on Aug 18, 2023 said it all already, I highly recommend people to go read it (title "Your worthiness is ultimately determined by how much money you can bring into the company"). I will add to the parts that were not being discussed in details. Hostile working environment: people are super competitive against each others and tend to not share work across different practices because they want to keep the revenue to themselves. It is very ironic, as Exponent likes to claim that it has interdisciplinary teams. Some offices do have nicer coworkers in general, but still not the best. Right now, everyone wants to hoard all the billable hours to not get fired. Different practices don't communicate with each others: Exponent likes to claim that it has interdisciplinary teams, but they don't actually work together that much. For example, the recent mass layoffs let go of people with backgrounds and skill sets that other practices are still hiring for to this date. The company did not even consider doing internal transfer. Lack of good managers: being a manager in Exponent means your main job is to bring clients and projects into the company. Managers have to make sure both themselves and the associates/senior associates working under them have enough work to do. Sad news is, Exponent has a lot of managers who like to do solo work and not share projects. Since managers do need to hire people for the company to get themselves promoted, they often just get new-hire in and leave them be. They expect new-hire to ask for work from somewhere else without offering guidance. If you are hired by one of those managers, you are basically on your own. Useless HR: the group of most non-genuine and inefficient people you would ever meet. At Exponent, the HR works 100% for the company, not the employees. They get back to emails super slow and often times speak to employees in a very poor way. After the recent mass layoffs, the Chief HR Officer was touring different office locations and trying to claim people down. However, during Q&A sessions, they basically dodged and/or toned down every question related to layoffs. They offered zero insights and only stated the layoff was a one-time rare occasion without explaining why they made the decisions. Poor planning from the company: if you look at the job board now, you can see that Exponent started to post a lot of job openings after just two weeks from the mass layoffs. This clearly shows poor-planning and lacks of insightfulness.

I do not wish to seem bitter. These are genuine self reflections on the company and my experience. Where to begin here? -Maintenance This company is penny wise and pound foolish. Critical facilities are no maintained because it "costs too much," yet we have clients ready to dump millions to use that facility, but we cannot do $300K fix said facility? -Hiring You will likely be lied to about your job role. I was allegedly hired to do simulations. I was trained in all of my multiple engineering degree to do complex numerical simulation. However, since on boarding, I am essentially the engineering version of a paralegal. This seems very patronizing and does not fill me with self worth that I am actually contributing to the company and more that I am a "warm body" to fill an office desk. -Your Manager At most companies, you will be hired because you have a unique skill or experience that is a value add to the company. That is not the case here. This company has a "continuous growth" hiring model to impress share holder. What that means is that you "manager" needs to hire someone to make "senior manager" when they are up for promotion. Because of this you "manager" doesn't need you (beyond a salary increase) and doesn't care if you work for him/her/them/etc. -Safety This company could care less if you are killed on the job or not. I have worked in many extremely dangerous places in my life. Machine shops, rail yards, steel mills, lumber yards and logging camps. These places are inherently dangerous, but most of this is very well mitigated by equipment, practices and PPE. I have seem people at this company working with cancer causing chemicals and substances with zero protection (Most companies would require hazmat suits). Every case of heat stroke (because this is Phoenix) has been effectively swept under the rug. "Just get it done" is a phrase that you may hear a lot. -Career Opportunities They don't really exist here. The goal is to wait for you manager to retire, leave for a better job, or die. At which point you are going to inherit their clients. But that is not the case! You will likely see that said clients will be stolen from you by other similarly qualified senior management, rather than have you advance to replace the person that you worked with you entire career. -Work/Life Balance I generally do not believe in this. However, I have seen this company destroy several marriages just do to the work load. Your spouse will cheat on you because you are working 60-80 hour a week on a "super special secret project" (or so you have been told). Or the alternative is that you will find that one week is 120 hours and the next three weeks are 10 hours. At least General Dynamics will pay the same, and only make you work 40 every week. -Your Skill Level You are a PhD graduate. You can work for NASA or a Formula 1 team or be the captain of a nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine. So, why would you waste you time being a gofer? Maybe this job makes sense if you have already done one (or all) of these things. If you are a new grad, you are better than this company! Go do something that will change the world, and come back to the lawfare industry later. -Lawfare I had to touch on this. Exponent would not have clients, if their clients didn't kill their clients. Your job is to now prove that the engineering that just got a guy killed is aye okay!! Grain of salt: you will also see lots of Darwin Award winners. But it doesn't feel great to lord over someones death either way. For me, I have always be very much a big fan of working with the auto industry. But honestly, if you want that, just go to an OEM. And, true, maybe you will just be the "brake guy," but you will feel so much more rewarded when you see that Camaro roll down the street, thinking to yourself "yeah, I designed that !" They pay better anyways.