Think it over - Designer NBBJ Employee Review

1. Questionable office management There are 4-5 people on the "core team" in the office and they try to seem approachable, but most of the time your opinions/concerns barely matters because they're too busy to care. Favoritism runs through the office; you hardly wouldn't get a chance to advance your career unless you're one of the core team member's favorites. Employees acknowledge this, but no one speaks up because why bother. 2. Questionable project management & staffing The distribution of workload is skewed. Some people get always swamped while other people don't have enough work to keep themselves busy and this has been a problem even before pandemic. Project managers don’t seem to know each staff’s capability to successfully assign them to suitable projects. 3. No official performance review You won’t be able to get any feedback on your work/performance. The firm launched the “advocates” system in 2019 which is basically a mentor/mentee program, but the “advocate” is not necessarily your supervisor or team member hence they might not know how you’re doing on the job. There seems to be a word of mouth, which is a very unorganized/unreliable method to evaluate an employee for being such a big firm. Without the review, it’s harder to ask for a raise or promotion since there’s literally no proof. 4. Little room to grow The job assignment tends to be siloed and the office management is not willing to take risks, resulting seeing same faces over and over again on the proposals/qualifications/interviews. Very little desire to look for a new talent within the office. On a similar note, little diversity & inclusion; nbbj launched a committee for it after George Floyd. We'll see how it roles out. 5. The CEO quoted Jeff Bezos at the all staff meeting. Go figure.