Pros
- No limit to the technical expertise you can gain. - Very, very interesting and diverse projects. - Good work/life balance. The office is a ghost-town as soon as the clock turns to 5pm. - Some of the coworkers are actually nice people to talk to. - As part of the project team you learn the nitty gritty of all aspects of a project from all the different disciplines (electrical, structural, civil, architectural etc etc). This develops your own technical competency.
Cons
- Compensation is not the best. You can keep slaving away and earning an "excellent" rating year after year (the best in your team) and still get only a 2.5% increase in salary. They also make it seem like they are doing you a huge favour by giving this raise. - No concept of bonuses or profit sharing for junior/intermediate level staff. The actual folks doing the work (designing, producing drawings, specifications) do not get bonuses but the upper management whose job is administrative at best earn bonuses from all successful projects. VERY UNFAIR. - Projects are very top heavy. More budgets were allocated for Project Managers and Design Managers rather than the engineers of each discipline to complete their work. Besides why do you need so many managers on even the most basic of projects? All they do is waste budget. - Job security isn't the best, but if you are good at what you do you will generally avoid getting laid off.
