Gensler Reviews

Gensler is anything but a meritocracy. It’s a political shark tank, with principals swarming one another for power. Cozy up to the wrong person or fail to cozy up to the right one and your career goes down the drain. A belief that doing good work is a path to success will get you nowhere at Gensler. Instead you must avoid work and spend all of your time and energy self promoting and building relationships which you can later use to your advantage. Don’t see these as true relationships however. They are political capital in human form, to be used to your own personal advantage as and when you see fit. Spend your political capital wisely thought because everyone else is doing the same thing. Spend your human chips before they spend you! Can you say “Toxic?!” Gensler’s compensation scheme is a shell game, designed to withhold 20% or more of your earnings on a revolving annual basis, all in order to benefit the company’s bottom line and top management’s wallets. Roughly one third of all staff are pure overhead, and an even greater percentage of the overall payroll goes to non-billable activity and management. The upshot is that if you’re a true doer, someone who is good at your craft, you’re not likely to be advanced or compensated well because that’s not what the company values. Of course the company pretends to value collaboration and teamwork but the fact is, they value hunger and power much more. At some level, everyone is afraid and as such there’s constant backstabbing and misbehavior I all directions and at all levels. Dianne and Andy, the co-CEOs are like bad TV evangelists, and totally unconvincing. I once watched Andy spray a can of silly string on the aging Art Gensler’s bald head (as he was recovering from serious hip surgery) in front of over a thousand people. Staged as good fun, it felt way more like a power play as Dianne and Andy pushed the overly generous Art Gensler out of the company he created and mistakenly gave to them to run. Gross!

Company is moving to a 5-day in-office work week (in-effect in April). This is after promoting Hybrid schedules for years and designing the office for a Hybrid work environment. Work-life balance is terrible and about to get significantly worse. Most people here are overworked, project deadlines are unreasonable, and regional/firmwide management does not care about you. Even after proving we can still complete our crazy workloads on time whether at home or at the office, the firm decides to take away the little bit of flexibility we have left. Just insane decision-making from a firm that prides itself on research and innovation. It’s all a facade to try to get you in the door, but once you are in they will work you til you burnout or til they decide they don’t need you anymore.