Olson Kundig reviews

Large firm with small firm standards. Difficult to transition within the company.

The firm has rushed into unchecked growth within the Seattle location as well as expanded to two other major cities in the past few years. It hasn't been able to break down the scale, or really track individuals within, so people with the same titles have very different experiences. If you're lucky you'll come into a team that you can grow, learn and develop your skills with. Maybe be staffed on two projects that you can balance your time between realistically. If you're unlucky you'll be staffed on 4-5 projects and more or less be on your own in terms of finding the best path forward for each. Sort of feels like navigating blindfolded. Most leaders are too busy with meetings to provide much insight or to learn from. In my opinion the design leads have convinced themselves that that they are able to maintain their workload just fine. In reality there is a massive inefficiency that they don't seem to be aware of, and most often than not they are a decision bottleneck. You can't be an effective leader if you are unable to read emails, limit your involvement to a project to a brief weekly touch-base, and have to schedule times to go to the bathroom. This is what I mean by the title of "top down chaos". I imagine at one point it was a very collaborative firm that fostered growth/invested in the staff. Currently feels impersonal and inefficient which just adds a lot of unnecessary stress to an already stressful profession. Again maybe you'll have a better experience, but if you aren't one of the few chosen "favorites" you're really going to be on your own.