Pros
Decent projects, reasonably flexible and day-to-day work processes are pretty streamlined and efficient. Talented Engineers and Senior Engineers.
Cons
Pay and benefits simply do not match up with the role and responsibilities. Poets which is a nice idea rarely materialised due to work commitments. I have worked extensively in the Engineering Consultancy sector and I had not witnessed the Partner system previously. It's equivalent to a monarchy. Great for the Partners, not good for the company and everyone else. Becoming a Partner seemed to entitle you to abdicate all responsibility, their role was very unclear in my department. There are many "lifers" in Senior Management who appear to lack depth in their experience. Management spoke a lot about diversity, inclusion and mental health whilst ignoring the basic elements which would greatly improve workers experience. These basic elements being continuous development (investment in training), better pay and better work/life balance. Management seemed to be happy to hold their position whilst paying little heed to staff feedback. Project scopes tended to be poorly defined with lower level staff left picking up the pieces. Micro-management was creeping into the team, one Associate Director sent back a £10 mileage expense as he wanted to see a route map even though locations and distances had been provided (becomes frustrating with a backdrop of poor pay and lots of unpaid overtime on the same project). The same Associate Director called every morning mostly before 9am to get an update on the project which I was working on. Design and Senior Engineers seemed to take the majority of the burden of running the department. Poor standards at management and Graduate level seemed to be tolerated. The appointment of a CEO from a non-engineering background was disappointing. For an engineering company to be led by a non-engineer sends the wrong message to the engineers who win and deliver the projects on a daily basis whilst working lots of extra hours.
