Pros
- Terrain offers very competitive benefits that I feel are greater than most firms in the area. Terrain offers a strong salary, bi-yearly bonuses, 401k with 3% match, profit sharing (didn't occur in my time there), 100% health care coverage (50% for dependents), wellness and education stipends, every other Friday off as well as a solid time off policies. - The principals at Terrain are incredibly knowledgeable and have vast project experience to draw from. After practicing for 40 years the amount of knowledge they hold is pretty incredible and it was great to be able to learn pieces of information from them. - Office location was convenient and in a nice building. (as of 2021, they plan to move) - Management was understanding with work from home during COVID. They didn't love the idea of people working from home as they couldn't see that they were actually working, which wasn't great, but they did delay the return to the office several times to protect employee safety. - The scale of the projects Terrain works on in China is pretty incredible - huge projects with interesting features that would be rare in the US happen commonly on these projects. If that is interesting to you, that may be a benefit. (Note that does come with its own set of difficulties and challenges listed in the cons section.)
Cons
- Terrain's culture of long hours, immense pressure and abuse from leadership is exactly the type of outdated work style that gives the landscape architecture and architecture industry a bad name. - Work expectations are intense, commonly expecting employees to work 60 hour weeks, join meetings well after work hours and work consistent long days for constant deadlines. Management expects employees to be available to work after hours at all times. I was implicitly told that I needed to be available nights and weekends. While long hours during the time around deadlines is to be expected in this industry, the amount and consistency of deadlines at Terrain made these long hours happen way too frequently creating a terrible work-life balance and becoming very damaging to my mental health. - Management is very stuck in their own way of doing things and does not take employee feedback into account. They say they are open to employee feedback and often ask for it, but any feedback is met with resistance. Employees are afraid (not an exaggeration) to provide any real feedback to management. - Employees are treated differently based on whether they are US Citizens or Visa holders. -Design is held in the hands of leadership and younger designers do not get a chance to design much. If leadership doesn't like your design style your ideas and designs will rarely be accepted or be completely redesigned by principals. - There is a lot of passive and abusive language that occurs at Terrain. You constantly receive comments that your work is not up to standards, back-handed insults towards your work quality or style, gaslighting, and you are often compared to other employees. This makes working here very damaging to your mental health. Be very, very aware of what you are getting into if you work here. There are some benefits, but in my opinion, they are far outweighed by the cons.