Seems great from the outside looking in
Pros
- Fully remote environment - Nice office building near metro for DC Area workers who want to work a hybrid model
Cons
Project management at ICF feels stuck in the past—they’re operating with systems and practices that haven’t evolved since the mid-90s, and there’s a clear resistance to change. Regardless of your title, you’ll find yourself constantly managing up just to keep projects on track. While the company provides plenty of onboarding materials for getting settled into ICF itself, onboarding onto actual client work is disorganized and inconsistent. Communication is another major pain point; expect to over-communicate constantly just to stay afloat, and prepare yourself for an email culture that’s wildly inefficient and outdated. Office politics also play a heavy role—being good at your job isn’t enough. Favoritism is real, and advancing often depends more on personality politics and who you manage to impress than on the quality of your work. Even before recent government-related layoffs, the company was already losing business to smaller agencies offering better work and more efficient delivery.
