Toxic, Demeaning, and Unethical Senior Management
Pros
The technical reporting, field work, and projects are excellent experience. The diverse set of projects exposes all staff and project managers to an array of different environmental challenges and different types of clients. With little to no experience, you will quickly find yourself managing projects if you're new to the field. The staff level team in particular is eager, fun, and supportive. Since there isn't any training (see below) you'll find that banding together when someone is in need is common place. The benefits are also pretty good for a small company, and there is a bonus program to take advantage of when you've been working there for a year.
Cons
The biggest problem that holds this company back, above all, is the senior management. They are relentlessly selfish and uncaring about their employees. The belief here is the client comes first and that clients are the reason the company is in business. What that means in practice here - you are expected to get the job done no matter what. That means you are silently expected to cancel your weekend plans or even work OVERNIGHT, as in no sleep, to finish the project you were given the day before that was late to the client by the time it got in front of you. HR is no help. Senior management has their hands in all departments. Power creep is at an all time high. Most of the time, middle management is severely overworked and stressed. That leads to no time to train staff on simple reporting techniques, resource management, and field sampling practices. Senior management expects their staff level employees to hold their managers accountable. If they don't, it's the staff level employees fault. There is no sense or culture of rising and falling as a team. Instead, it's always the lowest person on the totem pole to get blamed. It's a big hit to the morale of the younger and new employees. You're encouraged to read different guidance documents and sampling procedure manuals, which by itself is good practice, but there isn't any opportunity for the staff level employees to see examples or discuss questions in greater length than 5 minutes with their managers. Senior management always notes during impromptu, often ludicrously disorganized, training sessions that "we don't have time for this". If you decide to enter as a staff level or project manager to get your foot in the door, prepare an exit plan. Turn over is historically very high here, with employees staying between 1-2 years average. Keep your head up, work hard, play the game you need to play with senior management, and take your experience to another company that understands their employees are the reason they are still in business. It was the best decision I made to not stick it out any longer.