Interesting projects, poor management and hardly any structure
Pros
The work itself is genuinely interesting - municipal infrastructure, roadway design, drainage improvements - the kind of projects that make a difference in the community. So many of the people here are talented and easy to work with, however....
Cons
The things holding this company back aren't a mystery, and instead of addressing any of it you're met with empty platitudes. There are no formal onboarding processes, no org charts, no defined career paths, no QA processes worth mentioning, no structured bonus or raise system, and very few documented SOPs for workflows that have been repeated hundreds of times. Other firms figured out these key elements to business operations decades ago, but upper management seems to be content with reaping the benefits of burning out their best people. What's frustrating isn't the absence of these things - it's that initiative to address them is met with indifference. My own performance review was probably the least professional encounter I had with upper management. When I conducted evaluations for my staff, I used a structured scoring system across multiple categories, but my review consisted entirely of verbal criticisms - many related to decisions made above my level, before my time, or by other department heads - with no scoring, no structure, no discussion about raises, and not so much as a handshake at the end. When I was promoted to manager I was given visibility into how raises and bonuses were distributed across the CAD department, and there was no discernible methodology - no performance metrics, no documented criteria, just handing out the biggest raises and bonuses to whoever stuck around longest or had the most overtime. The broader culture discourages questioning operations, even when the goal is accuracy and efficiency. I was even told not to question other engineers when their plans or designs had clear conflicts. Any "feel good" culture here is performative at best - think pickleball court at the main office that nobody asked for.