Pros
Large company with advancement and educatonal opportunities. Worldwide locations, especially across U.S. and Canada. Strong encouragement to pursue proffessional certificates. Very politically correct environment with a strong team atmosphere. Many core employess have worked there for 10+ years. Strong health benefits and wellness programs. Very good 401k, stock and retirement plans. Incredibly diverse work force you could only find in Southern California. Stantec often received very large ongoing projects that are visible and known throughoutt the industry. The type of large projects that you put on your resume and people are impressed that you worked on high profile designs. They also sponsored off work hours events like basketball, softball and bowling that are fun and allow you to get to know your team members and others from different departments and services you wouldn't otherwise have had the chance to; thus helping to build a strong team mentality.
Cons
In many positions here your voice will never be heard. You will be just an asset that they will not hesitate to replace without any explanation. At this particular location many employess leave to go to competing local firms and then come back a few months later for a substantial raise, often at the cost of the new employee who had replaced them or fellow department members raises. There have been several new start up firms that came exclusively from our Irvine location. Whole teams have left at once with no warning and in each instance department managers have left, leaving their longtime employess to basically start over with new department heads. In several instances employess with 20+ years at the firm (or the original firm TKC that was purchased by Stantec) were fired or laid off because the new department managers wanted to clean house and bring in their own people. The worst part being many of these new startups took new projects and contacts with them and were immediately succesful because Stantec Irvine Senior Management flat out refused to do that type of work even though it was capable of doing it and would have lead to huge revenues.