Kleinfelder reviews

3.1

45% would recommend to a friend

(526 total reviews)
avatar

Louis Armstrong

52% approve of CEO

40% positive business outlook

Kleinfelder has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 526 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Kleinfelder employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

526 reviews
1.0
Mar 11, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good experience for recent grads. Work from home available. Variety of projects available.

Cons

The workforce seems to be a mirage. Seems like mostly hollow at the bottom and middle, then stacked with a FEW good seniors at the top who seem to carry all the burden and responsibility, and do the majority of the work. Most of the really good engineers left years ago after the original sale of Hood Engineering. The rest left more recently around 3 to 4 years ago. US owners seem to only care about employee's performance metrics, and returning maximum payback to shareholders. US owners seem to take, take, and take everything from an employee then seem to spit them out when they're no longer useful OR if the employee seems to question upper management's authority or decision making. It seems to be very much modelled on the US Military's structure. There seems to be only one answer given to US owners: "YES" It seems that upper management is only concerned about saying "yes" to US owners, without any consideration to; current job market, employee satisfaction, employee retention, performance and capability of employees, etc, etc. It seems that people who say "yes" are promoted up regardless of actual job performance. It seems that good performers are "forced out" It seems that the company employs what I call "bait and switch" sales pitches to new clients. It seems to sell the client on a high performing senior, then seems to switch out the project work to very green juniors. It seems that most of the time these juniors burn through lots of budget, because they have no idea what they're doing, and the seniors are running around putting out fires everywhere. It seems that the PM asks the client for more money via a change order. I think this drives the clients ballistic, and they don't give any more work. Wash, rinse, repeat. For me, this is truly a horrible, soul crushing place to work. I think, only those who are true self-hating masochists misanthropists can survive long term here. It's by a couple orders of magnitude the absolute worst experience I've had in my almost 35 year working career--Including ALL part time jobs I had as a teenager. Not much investment in employee professional development. Bad benefits package. Not much recognition.

1.0
Aug 17, 2012

Consistently undervalue their employees and view them as easily replaceable

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Flexible daily work hours Encourage community involvement

Cons

Poor compensation Reluctance to explore new clients - Ingrained thought that certain clients will always be there, even when evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Extremely low value of current employees - Management seems to view people as easily replaceable parts, and almost never use the word "employee" or "person," even in in-person meetings. Poor support of career growth if it doesn't help the company out at that moment. This leads to issues when they pass on potential clients because they don't have people who can support the client, though there were people who wanted to learn those skills previously.

Viewing 478 - 480 of 526 Reviews

Glassdoor has 557 Kleinfelder reviews submitted anonymously by Kleinfelder employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Kleinfelder is right for you.