- No room for growth or promotion, especially if you're a junior employee
- Significantly underpaid and overworked
- No acknowledgement from your superiors for work excellence
- Extremely poor project team communication, very difficult to complete work efficiently
- Management is woefully unaware of the issues facing junior and intermediate staff, and seems uninteresting in making conditions better
- Management does not listen to staff or their needs
- Staff who raise issues and ways to improve are seen as a nuisance, not an asset
- New HR personnel are ill-equipped to deal with the increasing number of staff complaints about working conditions, do not stick up for staff and only act as an agent of the CEO
- International projects are uninspired, often with concepts re-used many times
- Company claims to care about sustainability initiatives but has neglected to implement readily available sustainability measures for the past 2 years and only includes minimal sustainable design principles on projects where clients ask or it is legally mandated
- Very limited opportunities for construction administration experience (if you are not licensed, it will be extremely difficult to complete the process at this firm)
- Majority of employees will only ever be used for production; limited opportunities to engage in the early concept and design phases (only company sweethearts are given this opportunity)
- Absolutely no real action on diversity, equity, or inclusion efforts; CEO refuses to make public anti-racism statement, only complies with legal mandates
- Over the last few years under the direction of the current CEO the company organization has become increasingly top-heavy and ineffective
- Very high staff turn-over
- Very little work flexibility; CEO is adamant on full-time return to office once allowed by the government; no willingness to entertain flexible working arrangements despite most staff asking for it