You can take the firm out of Seattle but you can’t take the Seattle Freeze out of the firm
Pros
3 weeks vacation, some cool projects if you get lucky. Great sustainability values and some great people.
Cons
Enough newer people at this firm are impressed enough with themselves for landing a job here that the culture has turned stiff and uninviting. Leadership cannot bring themselves to tell staff the truth when its hard. People and leadership who started here in a prior era are so used to talking about how great the firm is that they forgot how to keep a firm great. There is a lot of gaslighting at this company about how wonderful the company is, and how great the people are, which can be disorienting for people who have experience at other places and have some perspective about what makes a culture and coworkers wonderful. After making a big stink about gender parity so that they could win themselves a Just label (another thing about this firm - they are obsessed with awards and certificates), when it came time to lay off 10% of the staff last year because of COVID-19 impacts, 9 of the 11 people axed were women. Go figure - talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, classic MHP. This firm plays favorites, and if you weren’t hand-picked out of one of Dave Miller’s studios 5-10 years ago it won’t be you. Seattle architecture is a small world, and MHP is a big part of it, so its hard to write negative reviews about this place. Keep this in mind when you see a place that has only positive reviews.