Small Company Woes - Project Manager Canin Associates Employee Review

Aspects of the work environment are relaxed. You will rarely have to work overtime, unless you are in the architecture studio, and dress code is pretty informal. It is a small firm, so you are not just a number, but an integral part of a team. Most employees are relatively pleasant, and projects are generally interesting. You will learn from your supervisors, who have been in the field for a very long time. Salaries are competitive for the industry, but benefits are expensive.

The firm is very top-heavy, and skews older with about 7 principals about 14 staff. There are a lot of differing opinions and miscommunications among the principals that ends up creating a lot of unnecessary work for everyone. High turnover in the architecture studio. The owner of the company likes to micromanage, is generally not open to new ideas or opinions, and will very rarely admit fault. There is a profound lack of trust between the principals and staff. Because of this, the company cannot grow as it should, and the product it produces is not as good as what the firm's competitors can produce, or what the talent in the firm is actually capable of producing. The firm has basically not been able to make the transition to a true 21st century workplace where creative energies, talent, and fresh ideas are utilized to create new and better designs.

The company is good when the economy is good. The opportunities at this company is also great depending on who you're working for/with. When the economy wasn't doing well, everyone took a 20% pay cut and took off a day a week so we all can have a job.

Even when the economy was doing well, a raise was minimal. Everyone principal I worked with has left the company within three years after I did. I don't know what that said about a company with a high turnover rate for upper management. The people that keeps their head down with almost no creativity are still there managing projects. I think you'll do really well if you're one of those that don't have much creativity. The issue is the creative ones always get pushed to do all front end of the projects doing conceptual design work since they have no one else that has the ability to. Once they get tired of doing that with no opportunity to move up into a project management because they don't have enough hands on experience in that, they leave the company.