Gensler Reviews

Pros

There is a strong culture at Gensler that you really come to appreciate - in the various offices all over the world. There is something that connects everyone - a culture and commitment to creating great projects but also growing our people to lead in their own way. Something they call the "one-firm-firm" mentality - that we all work across offices to support out our teams and our clients - vs. competing against each region like some firms do. I had a great opportunity to travel to many offices over 20 years and work on some of the most amazing projects of every scale - when you walk into one of our offices at senior level - you feel at home immediately. When I first arrived many years ago - I really knew nothing about Gensler - but over the years I have seen every kind of project and every kind of client come through our doors. As the reputation has grown - the work is getting better and better and more diverse than simply architecture and interiors. I had the opportunity to work with numerous talented consultants and collaborators - but was always happy to have the core Gensler group that I worked with understand the culture and what connects us all. I think people would be shocked at how simple the formula developed by Art Gensler is - "hiring great people and getting out of their way". It works when it's done right and there are a lot of leaders, designers and doers who practice this ideas whether they think about it or not.

Cons

The people who really thrive at Gensler understand that this is not a place to just "have a job" - but to grow in your career and push beyond your comfort zone. While the firm has changed significantly and matured over my 22 years - it is changing faster than ever in recent times - to keep pace with how fast the design industry is changing, our society, our cities and the impact of interior design and architecture. This means there are great opportunities for those with an entrepreneurial drive and a dynamic design approach. If you want to do one thing, to just work on projects - this might not be the place for you.

Pros

Top tier company; excellent management; benefits of being a small office with large, global support network; great community culture and amazing colleagues to work with; recognition of talent and hard work with great opportunities for advancement.

Cons

There are no major cons.

Pros

Resources and tools to grow, learn and continue developing as a designer were incredible. Support on everything from IT to learning a program, to improving skills were amazing. Being surrounded by the best talent is inspiring and pushes you to grow faster. Try to find a mentor and make friends, and you can go very far. Overtime pay was great, and made the 65+ hour weeks at least bearable.

Cons

Depending on the studio you are in it can be either an incredible work environment, or very toxic. It's a HUGE firm, so you have to be able to speak up and make yourself noticed, otherwise you may go unnoticed and it will be difficult to grow. Not a place for introverts to grow easily. Depending on the studio, work-life balance can be little to none.

Pros

Actively restocked and organized library, as much as an effort as they can make to compete with tech companies' salaries.

Cons

Many - this office culture is very strange. Everything revolves around the opinions of one person. You are either in that camp or you aren't. If you aren't, you keep your head down and stay out of the way. If you have to work with this person, just agree with whatever they say. I received this advice from a senior employee, and it was very valuable (and effective). There are more egos and dog & pony shows than you would expect - all of the politics can be exhausting. There is a lot of resistance from junior designers to working on projects that aren't pretty or high profile. The designs in many cases are very trendy - sometimes they feel dated before the projects are finished. If you love trendy, this is the place for you. There is a lot of office gossip - more so than your average professional environment. The staffing is not done well - it leaves key people off project teams and throws junior designers in the deep end without adequate checks for their work. The junior designers have little to no foundation in basics, with no obvious comprehensive opportunity to learn those things. There is a lot of redundancy in work that could be eliminated. Gensler SF is very good at making things look pretty, and somehow they get built. Would not recommend unless you're a professional brown noser and gossiper and find that enjoyable.

Pros

The people who work at Gensler are amazing people. They truly care about diversity and inclusion and it shows if you spend any amount of time there. The NY office is very clean and it's fun to roam around the different levels. New things are constantly happening every day and there are plenty of groups/events to jump in every week.

Cons

The morale of the employees has been dwindling in recent years. Prior to COVID-19, Gensler had a very strict no working from home policy. This has deterred many young people in the industry from accepting offers, or accepting an offer and leaving after a short amount of time being there. Gensler's turnaround of employees has increased in recent years (specifically at the NYC office) due to too many responsibilities being put on each individual. I saw many people come into their roles glowing with excitement and would become burnt out very quickly due to work load and consistently working overtime. The issue seems to be that Gensler has mounds of work in NY, but they refuse to hire enough people to handle the work. They also will expect you to do more work without a raise.