Pros
Jacobs Engineering offers a high rate of pay compared to other companies, especially for senior staff. The company is global and enormous by headcount, offering plenty of exciting work opportunities around the country and around the globe. The company's overhead is very low, giving it a big edge in winning work from competitors. Management genuinely cares about employee safety and job security and works hard to keep employees in good health in some dangerous work places like refineries, construction sites, chemical plants, industrial facilities, and pharmaceutical factories; and to keep employees busy earning money hand over fist for themselves and the company. The vacation/PTO policy was recently made very generous, with 3 weeks to start, 4 weeks after five years, and 5 weeks after 15 years. Jacobs also offers standard hours of four nine hour days and a four hour Friday, allowing employees to take long weekends by using just 4 hours of PTO, or working an extra 4 hours in the previous pay period. This is really nice around the summer holidays and the Thanksgiving/Christmas season. If an employee is in the 4 weeks PTO range, the employee can take off three Fridays per month indefinitely without exhausting the PTO allowance for the year.
Cons
Jacobs Engineering makes frequent job assignments of some employees far from home. These assignments come with expectations for two week stays at the job site and very long distance travel, as far as across the country. There is little sympathy for the needs of family and homelife, and it is my impression that many of the people in these assignments are single, divorced, or in unhappy marriages where happiness is found by mostly being apart from their spouse. There is some quarrelling between offices over employee travel expenses which can lead to some difficulties with these assignments due to how revenue is recognized by the different regions and divisions - which really makes no sense in the big picture because it all ends up in the same bottom line for the stockholders no matter which region gets the profit or expenses of the employee's efforts. Jacobs benefits are very expensive to the employee - $300 every two weeks for health, dental, and vision, plus 1% of salary for disability insurance, and the company only offers 6 holidays per year. The health and holidays benefits package is one of the most negative things about working at Jacobs.
