Norris Design Reviews

3.1

53% would recommend to a friend

(34 total reviews)

Theresa Norris

45% approve of CEO

50% positive business outlook

Norris Design has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 34 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Norris Design employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Construction, repair and maintenance industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

34 reviews
1.0
20 Apr 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are no pros to working at this company

Cons

This company is completely geared toward filling vacant seats for cheap and nothing else. The result is a very high turnover and it has been observed that during the course of a 5 month period in a given office, 5 individuals have either quit or been fired in a row. Other employees have been heard to quip "another one bites the dust" when a new work space appears empty on a Monday morning. There are various factors for this negative work environment including high-strung senior staff who have zero experience in communicating with or managing others leading to an impatient 'you should have known this' type of work environment. It is common for senior staff to micro-manage and watch your actions constantly. You get the odd feeling that you are being treated as if you were a high schooler or a commodity. This is compounded by hiring and office managers who's sole purpose is to pump people through the door to constantly fill vacant seats. It seems that this company purposely hires people with no experience in order to lower their costs of operation and thus find you as a willing and moldable employee. Be aware that you might be offered a mentorship which is quickly forgotten about once you get hired. You will find that your design talents are not needed and that there is no real studio environment. Everything is standardized and the main focus of your role will be as a CAD drafter. This company has an odd 'universe/center of the universe' work model. Everyone is encouraged to work to the 'middle of the universe' while developing their own talent areas internally. You will quickly find out that this odd gimmick is far off base and everybody likes to talk about it but no one can really define how it really works. Senior staff will not be supportive if you really try to apply this model in your work day. Daily work tasks are delivered to select junior staff at staff meetings closed to all others. Tasks are then filtered through several individuals and senior staff becomes completely hands off. This leads to a clique like office environment where individuals are constantly appealing to junior staff to get handed a work task. It is very common for these junior staff to play favorites based on who they like the most in the office. This company has the absolute worst performance review. There is nothing in it about actual work performance data but writing and explaining about your experiences and likeability factors about others. With these reviews, anybody can write any hearsay about you and that information is never disclosed to you by senior staff. Politics and special interests are big in this company. Expect to agree with any social justice, environmental, etc., idea that is e-mailed or communicated to you by others.

1.0
20 Jun 2021

Failing Office

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The Austin office has no redeemable features.

Cons

The only thing consistent at the Austin office is the incompetent management. They have a pattern of alternately throwing away talented designers or gaslighting them into resignation like clockwork. The motive for this management style is unclear, and I’m baffled by how badly the place continues to function with little to no consequence from the Denver administration. Senior staff abuses their influence over entry level kids, largely by manipulating them into working over hours. They do not care about maintaining healthy boundaries and frankly would prefer you had none at all. The strangest part is that no one in management acknowledges the toxic energy in the office. There is a great deal of indifference and callousness at the top. I really would not recommend walking into this place if you’re looking for a job in Austin. There is no shortage of inspired, functional offices in town - and Norris is not one of them.

3.0
21 Apr 2022

Lack of adaptation = mass exodus

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very well-organized, which makes it easy to onboard/join a project At one point, provided great mentorship/leadership - easy to learn from people with lots of experience. They provided excellent training and mentorship, and it was always encouraged to ask for assistance and learn from others. At one point, many employees available to help one another out, making deadlines smooth/easy to divide up work At some points, decent work/life balance. Flexible and accommodating during COVID to WFH, and allowed people to choose what works best for them, but not sure how it is now. Fun and friendly coworkers who enjoy spending time with one another. Since there's lots of people, you're bound to find people with similar interests. Lots of social events create a welcoming environment to meet everyone. Pretty good pay and benefits compared to other firms in the area.

Cons

Business is valued over design in all aspects of firm culture/design process. There's a lot of corporate jargon thrown around on the daily. A cringe "compliment" they like to use at Norris Design (ND) for the company-man type, is that they are "drinking the ND Kool-Aid" Efficiency is valued above all else when it comes to projects, not enough time is invested into the design process. Its a common consensus that employees eventually lose their passion for design after working here for a while. With the burgeoning environmental crisis, it should be every firms responsibility to push for sustainable design practices. Most of their efforts to make changes has been performative. Good design takes time and care. The main reasons people had to work a bunch of overtime, was because they kept saying yes to every project/they stopped being selective. None of us had been busier than ever before, yet they said they were saying yes to every project, without knowing if they even had the staff to run the project. Norris is saturated at the top, and quick to give promotions (without substantial monetary compensation), leaving little to no project team members in the production sector anymore, which leaves some people to get dumped with all the grunt work, with no help from higher management. The different positions within the company are all arbitrarily defined, there's not a lot of clear responsibilities outlined between the different titles. Higher-ups value meeting unrealistic deadlines over valuing project staff's realistic suggestions, making for poor work/life balance and rushed work. They only started listening to some feedback and attempting to dial back peoples' hours when a bunch of valuable middle-management left the company in a short time-frame. Reviews are based on arbitrary opinions, and don't provide actual metrics/benchmarks for how to grow in the company.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 34 Reviews

Glassdoor has 36 Norris Design reviews submitted anonymously by Norris Design employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Norris Design is right for you.