What is the hiring process like at HDR?

- office is generally young and outgoing with many happy hours during the summer - great employee stock benefits

- lack of leadership structure and senior engineer experience - Poor on boarding and no proper training - Management does not connect with staff engineers - Staff engineers are over worked due to shortage in designers and management's slow reaction during interview process - work share office and no local projects - work life balance only exists if you are a manager

Hybrid working is flexible and works quite well. There are some very good engineers and technicians working here.

Senior design leads are entirley absent during project lifespan, Will step in at the eleventh hour to assess damage. Workload is spotty at best and management will bizarrley rebuke the lowest level employees for this. Senior 'management' spend more time reconfiguring team organisation charts and creating new job titles than actually guiding staff or managing projects. Making staff redundant with zero prior indication of performance issues or any feedback whatsoever, An HR department who appear to revel in this process. Cliquey work atmosphere. If you don't fit in then you're going to have a difficult time of it imo.

Good people, lots of interesting projects, community involvement, employee ownership

HR and hiring process could be improved

-Supportive team with excellent mentorship - Strong expertise in healthcare design - Exposure to various aspects of project development - Engaging outside-of-office events for team bonding - Collaborative with other offices in HDR - Easy interview process

I had a great experience working out of Ottawa office.

Company is in an interesting and evolving industry. The benefits are great and the work can be rewarding.

Everything is a fire drill for the team I was on. Management does not listen to employees when discussing workload balance. I had several instances in which I communicated to my direct supervisor that I did not have work capacity to take on a new project, but she told me to get it done anyway. Everything is political when it comes to upper level management, there are obvious cliques and groups that like each other and groups that don't. It's impossible as a new hire to get "in" with anyone as a mentor. It's no wonder why the support services departments have such high turnover.

An ESOP company offering you the ability to buy shares. Decent healthcare benefits and 2 week paid maternity/paternity leave.

They do not spend the time and resources to mentor and grow employees; instead, they poach experienced people from local firms. New section managers will most likely be an outside hire, so they avoid backfilling the grunt roles. Their officer program is a good ole boy system where you can only be nominated when kissing the ring of a current officer. There are some younger people in the company that have an officer title when their direct supervisor does not have one or is of lesser title. If you want to play the game, you might be able to get ahead. If you are looking to work here, be sure to ask about their employee retention rate (in a nice way of course because it is not good.).

Everyone is easy to get along with

Hard to prove yourself to others

steady paycheck, health coverage, retirement plan

NO leadership in San Francisco architecture office. Embarrassingly hideous physical office (this is a design firm?) horrid office manager on a power trip who actively seeks to make things difficult so you won't bother her, complete chaos in office and project organization, no team spirit - everyone is out for themselves. Nonexistent onboarding, weak IT support. Uninspiring, uninspired work. Definitely a place for the C and D students.

None. This is a hostile, isolating place that will drain everything from you.

If you are a person with a disability, or if you value basic dignity in the workplace, stay far away from this company. My experience here showed me how little leadership understands about legal and ethical obligations toward employees who require accommodations. Rather than engage in the required interactive process, they delayed, deflected, and outright denied the support I was entitled to. Instead of receiving meaningful accommodations, I was subjected to constant procedural harassment: endless documentation demands, shifting expectations, and a punitive performance plan built on factual inaccuracies. The scrutiny was relentless — managers tracked my time down to 15-minute intervals, withheld paychecks over manufactured “timecard issues,” and used my disability as leverage to justify harsher treatment. The culture is deeply toxic. Engineers who struggle to communicate effectively are promoted into management roles where they weaponize procedures against employees rather than supporting them. Yelling, obscenities, and targeted hostility are normalized. Leadership’s focus is on protecting themselves and looking productive, not actually producing results. What’s worse is HR’s role. They were fully aware of the harassment and did nothing. They ignored emails, failed to intervene, and consistently sided with management. Their silence condoned the abuse and created an environment where discrimination is allowed to thrive unchecked. For people with disabilities, this workplace is not only unsupportive — it is actively harmful. The constant stress, retaliation, and gaslighting take a psychological toll. Requests for flexibility or fairness are met with hostility and punishment. This is not a safe environment for anyone, but it is especially dangerous for those of us who rely on accommodations to succeed. In short: avoid this company at all costs. If you value your health, your livelihood, or your legal rights, do not put yourself through what I endured.

National/International company Employee -owned Over 10+ diverse business groups Engineering and architecture service opportunities Collaborative and flexible work environment Companywide and community events

No parking for the building. Required to pay for parking in downtown. Recruitment company doesn't allow more than 5 PTO days a year. No sick or vacation days. There is a few days a month there isn't a lot of work to do.