Great coworkers, mid management - Job Captain Kenneth Park Architects Employee Review

KPA is ultimately for people who are passionate about retail industry or at least interested in learning about retail architecture. Whoever dedicates at KPA for few years, comes out as a retail expert and success in future career. Ken Park, CEO is open minded and friendly but very busy most of the time as he's not a type of CEO who just attends meetings and sips wine. He still does a lot of work himself. If you're interested in learning about the world of retail, Ken Park will be the walking encyclopedia. He is also gifted master planner who knows how to simplifies the problems. I've spent 10 years with KPA out of total 18 years of my career and honestly haven't met anyone who knows more about retail development as much as Ken Park. You should always be eager to learn and ask things you don't know rather then learn through mistakes. Unfortunately I've seen many people who came to KPA for some life balance by doing minimum requirement, ended up leaving the firm full of complaints without learning what the firm can offer. If you put hard work to deliver the quality of work per firm's standard and meet the schedule, it can get you fast promotion beyond your year of experience. If you feel like CEO is not connecting with you, it's probably because you never gave all in to the work. Managements are always open to positive suggestions but just need to remember they get burn out by complainers too.

It's easy to be in solitude of your daily task but you need to initiate to do more than what's given, try to connect with co-workers and contribute to a positive culture. CEO is very black and white. He's not going to hide his disappointment on poor work and some people who are not used to it may find it difficult. In such experience, you just have to remember he's being at least transparent and he's not going to show you any duplicity.

There are great opportunities for work and growth within the office. You will end up doing all aspects of the job. If you work hard and show that you’re eager you can get bigger opportunities very fast here. Good group of people to work with.

KPA mostly acts as architect of record so there isn’t much opportunity for designing. The firm is constantly taking on work so there’s never any quiet time. We don’t do as many office events as we used to.