employer cover photo
employer logo

Poor Management and Woeful IT - Sinking fast in Water Ops! - Engineer Atkins Employee Review

1.0
17 July 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Friendly office, convenient for the Town Centre and rail commute.

Cons

Not really a design office. Competence of qualified Engineers questionable. Small projects and uninspiring work which is very repetitive. Can be left stuck doing the same thing with very little variety. Corporate in the extreme. No real focus from management on what the company is supposed to be doing engineering wise. More concerned about coming up with new strategies and hitting targets and billing clients, rather than providing engineering services that clients actually need. Hire and fire mentality. IT systems are slow and archaic. Lots of unproductive time gets billed to the client. Middle management ineffective and live in a bubble and are not very aware. Higher management much the same but worse. In fact, they are not even visible but hide away and only appear when they announce another new strategy, as the last one didn't work, so they need to feel like they are doing something, usually a last minute reactionary effort at the expense of staff...ie: increasing working hours to reduce the selling price to clients in the hope it will win work and profit margins can increase. Too late you won't win work because nobody wants to give it to you.

Explore other reviews about Atkins

5.0
13 Oct 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

A lot of work to be done Many opportunities to try different things

Cons

Advancement can be hard Working alongside underperformers

3.0
8 Oct 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Plenty of friendly coworkers; Can gain a decent amount of experience Decent benefits, especially medical, dental, and vision insurance.

Cons

Working from home can be slow and finicky due to servers being scrambled across the country which is discouraging for hybrid and fully remote workers. Not a lot of communication between employees, especially since there is not a lot of work so you would have to keep pressing coworkers for more work and direction. Work/Life Balance is hard to maintain since PTO, Sick leave and vacation are merged and I have to come in early. If given work, you can probably have enough to do in order to fill in timesheets, but there are plenty of times when you might not have enough work and you would have to grasp at straws just to make it to 8 hours of work each day. My role feels more like I'm working as a GIS Technician instead of an Analyst given the lack of clarity in the job description. There is no true technical training program. You would just have to search online for anything you don't know how to do.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All