The company has loads of offices and directions you could move around in. If you are allowed to. Each department is run differently, some say flex time and work from home is encouraged, I was told I had to ski to work during a snow storm when the train was down.
In the particular group I was in, you couldn't touch calculations the first couple of years. then you review other's work and everyone had their "thing". The anchorage person, the steel guy, the concrete guy etc. This sounds great, until you've been there long enough that you realize in the last 10 - 15 years, you've only checked anchor bolt calculations and are essentially stuck at CDM now with 10 yrs under your belt and no experience. This is quite literally the only reason some groups don't have turnover, it became a way for management to provide job security for themselves (as they are the only person to know how to do something, or the only one with a stamp there etc) and a way to keep the employee down.
In the 6 years I worked there, I believe I had something like 6.5% increase in my pay in total. Promotions were a joke. There's criteria you must meet to advance, but even if you checked all those boxes (if you were lucky enough to receive the work that would allow you to) you'd still be told you needed to meet the criteria of the next level to qualify for it. (ie ENG I would have to perform at ENG III levels to get ENG II) but ENG I won't be assigned ENG III work, so good luck to you. I believe the last time someone was promoted to a managerial role (principal, VP, SVP, etc) within my group was maybe 12-15 years ago. Other groups had promotions yearly.
I had some serious complaints (fire-able complaints in my opinion) I brought up to management, which went no where. I brought it up to their manager, they gave a talking to my manager, but it went no where from there and it continued. I was told HR was informed about it. they were not. I only know this because upon my exit interview, I casually mentioned it to my HR rep, who was totally taken aback. Which opened up a huge can of worms.
Over the course of my time there, some of the things I was told that stand out are:
~When I wasn't assigned work, I was asked to make round every 15 minutes until someone gave me work. Which 99.99% of the time was busy work, like scanning papers or binding calcs.
~I'm not allowed to go outside of my group for work
~I'm not allowed to email my bosses about tasks I was given (sometimes if it was unclear, seemed incorrect or wasting time,) they didn't want a record of it. I was told this many times and many times caught myself before the bus they sent my way hit me, my saving grace were these emails.
~When I bought a house and started a family I was told by my manager that he married the company and my priorities are wrong if I want to grow in the company.
~If I'm not in my seat and he can't see my face, I'm not working.
~He told my female coworker that she should be a good mother and stay at home with her kids.
~He told my other female coworker that she isn't a good wife, because her husband doesn't come home to her in the kitchen with dinner.
~I was told to stop charging "no-work" when not working on a project and I should keep charging clients.
~I stopped counting the amount of times I should "do him a favor and quit already".
I'll leave it with that. Thanks for reading this condensed book.
If you are a new employee, at the beginning of your career or lucky enough to be in a 'good' group. this is a great company to work for. But use it as a stepping stone before you get stuck there too long and find yourself in an uphill battle to move along.
