HNTB Companies Reviews

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Working at HNTB can be a great learning experience for a young engineer. There are engineers with great experience to learn from. A well established leader in civil projects with an impressive portfolio of projects.

Cons – The company seems to have structural problems. It appears to have become a collection of independent companies broken down by geographic and individual office locations. Each competing with each other over projects, resources and profits.

Advice to Senior Management – Flatten the organization to put the right resources on the project no matter where their location is rather than reinvent for each project in each office. Mentorship used to be a way of building technical expertise at HNTB. There's no time for that now given their burdensome Time-On-Job goals which rule the organization.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – The salaries and benefits HNTB offers to employees are hard to find in this industry. If you're looking to simply support your family, put food on the table and provide them healthcare...HNTB might be a good fit.

Cons – Leadership and organization of the company as a whole is terrible. It's like working for the Government...lots of departments with overlapping responsibilities, each with their own political walls in place, and no clear direction or desire to work together on common goals. Leadership is totally disconnected from the reality of those actually providing services to their clients, which makes "change for the better" extremely slow and hard to accomplish in this company. If you're looking to change the engineering industry for the better, it's best to find a job elsewhere as you will be deeply disappointed with your experience at HNTB

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the people producing the services you're profiting from. A "bottom up" sharing of suggestions holds far greater value than your "top down" corporate message sharing when it comes to how a company can improve efficiencies, profits, and added services. There's more to running a company than what you see in your spreadsheets today. When you look past the numbers, there are great people with great talent, willing to do great things for great leaders. Take a moment to recall how you elevated yourselves to the positions you're in today, and reach down from the heavens to pull others up in the company that deserve it. Good leaders should mentor and grow new leaders.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – People you work with, benefits

Cons – Upper management is clueless, too many engineer running the company and not enough business people, no accountability for middle to upper managers, my manager was never around didn't no what I did, it's like working for a comany from the 1950's.

Advice to Senior Management – Implement a mandatory retirement age for executives. Change is good especially with the CEO currently in place.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies

Pros – Great employees who are devoted and very competent. Trying to implement innovative technology in design.

Cons – Cold, detached management (executive level). Lack of concern for employee development. High dollar salaries paid to executives while rank and file positions are cut. Lavish executive retreats to extravagant destinations while the employees were expected to cut back. Cold, uncaring H.R. leadership team.

Advice to Senior Management – Get a new captain for the ship and clean house in the excutive leader line up. Start fresh. Stop holding lower level managers at fault for the bad business decisions made by the excutives.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – been around for about 100 years

Cons – Most middle-managers have no clue and very little if any people skills. Many employees overworked and very underappreciated.

Advice to Senior Management – very sad you sent so many jobs to India because of your greediness

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – The company has many benefits even though salaries are not that great.

Cons – No space to grow, at least for a mechanical engineer, no loyalty to employee but expected otherwise. Bad place to work.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat your employees fair. Don't be a smart a.. with them because everything is known under the son.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Compensation and office space is better than most competitors. Legacy relationships with clients and senior staff that are holding on keeps the company afloat. Still a strong civil firm if you are a civil engineer. Brand is still strong.

Cons – Execs have made several poor strategic decisions over the past 5+ years. Jumped into the Federal market years after competitors made their play - and now that business unit is already gone. Current design / build initiative has no solid leadership. Legacy clients and business are often ignored due to the current 'next big thing' investment mindset. Company micro manages time on job to a level that distracts staff from focusing on projects / clients. HR leadership manages the staff like a minimum wage workforce.

Advice to Senior Management – Position the company for a better future on your way out. Look outside your closed ranks for new ideas. Ask the younger leadership and staff for their opinion - and assign value to it. HNTB was built on big dreams - from time to time, really listen to the dreamers in the employee ranks.

Target new verticals and new opinions, but don't forget what made HNTB - long term client and employee loyalty. Appoint someone to the executive ranks that looks/talks/thinks different than you. Stop laying off the young staff - invest in building a future pipeline.

Most of the troops would settle for <10% annual returns in exchange for a better quality of life and an opportunity to deliver a project the right way. Salary doesn't guarantee loyalty. Stock returns don't guarantee happiness. Taking pride in one's work and having a reason to go to work everyday does.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies full-time

Pros – Very talented employees, good organization, good salary, and interesting work.

Cons – All decision-making came from the top, top management made some very poor, short-term decisions, alot of politics. Very insecure environment.

Advice to Senior Management – Plan better, come up with a strategy and then let your people help you achieve your goals.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at HNTB Companies

Pros – HNTB is fairly close to my home. Parking is pretty good for a company located near downtown KC.
Oh and the receptionist is very nice.

Cons – HNTB is the least diverse employer I have ever had the honor of working for. From Harvey to three levels below him... all employees are elderly white guys. This is not an exaggeration, this is not hyperbole... There is a cast iron ceiling at this company.

Advice to Senior Management – Either evolve to reflect the American population or PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF HNTB'S FUTURE... RETIRE! There is great talent that you look down upon, explore elevating some of this talent to look across from you... or go the way of the dinosaurs.

Former Employee – worked at HNTB Companies

Pros – Established brand within engineering industry
Nice offices
Acceptable benefits
Diverse hiring
Corporate legal, insurance and contracting support
Nice region-specif annual party

Cons – Segregation between engineers and admins (finance/marketing/etc.) profound. Team? Yeah--right.
Proprietary financial software (Data Query, Budget Manager) is ancient, cumbersome to use.
Information systems (financial, AP, HR, project) are disparate and, therefore, useful reporting requires significant manual processes prone to human error.

Advice to Senior Management – Replace old finance staff clinging to ancient, broken systems with senior staff with industry-specific experience.
Invest in Deltek product(s) or other non-proprietary software to minimize cost and length of training. Replace junior staff who have no experience anywhere but HNTB because they have no basis for comparison when analyzing extremely poor quality of processes and software they have been given a fantastic amount of authority for running.