Louis Berger Reviews

Pros

Flecible workplace. Always respectful of family and outside work demands. managed to ride out recessions pretty well. Great health benefits.

Cons

A very cheap company to work for when compared with other companies in the industry. Somewhat inflexible with it subsidiaries.

Advice to Senior Management

Better pay

Pros

Support from your peers is excellent. People are very encouraging and willing to help if you are willing to learn.

Cons

The highest levels of politics are played. Unless you are favored by someone in management; hard work and dedication will go unrewarded.

Advice to Senior Management

Please take employee complaints seriously. There is a big discrepancy between how groups of individuals are paid; and the reasons given are without merit.

Pros

Some groups allow staff to work with flexible time.
Employees will earn three weeks vacation after working three years with the company.

Cons

Not enough works to support the current staff levels in some groups.
Do not provide adequate budgets to complete projects.
Very limited annual raise since the past several years.

Pros

Salary was good; working conditions were acceptable. Fellow employees were smart and great to work with. The work itself was challenging and rewarding.

Cons

Senior management micro manages. Employees are treated as commodities that can easily be replaced. Employees who leave are not promptly paid their last pay check, unused leave, expenses. It usually takes 4-6 months to get your final pay. Internal procedures are inefficient.

Advice to Senior Management

Value employees. Treat them fairly. Pay your bills (employees' compensation) in a timely fashion.

Pros

Interesting projects.....if your lucky enough to get them.
Not all offices are bad. Work environment along with leadership varies greatly among each office.
Benefits are equal to that of other companies.

Cons

Management has a habit of laying off engineers in order to suit their need. For example, they would lay off an electrical or structural engineer in order to hire a mechanical engineer. Then when the job is done, they will layoff the mechanical engineer in order to hire an electrical engineer. So it would appear as job growth when in fact it is not. Expect to stay employed about 2-3yrs. only, unless you are a manager.

 Managers will give conflicting demands and not communicate with each other, even on the same project. Everything is done last minute due to lack of communication and then it is a rush to the deadline.

Advice to Senior Management

You pay your managers too much for the experience they have. If your department has a high turnaround ratio what does that say about the managers that run it? Employees are frustrated by bad leadership.

Pros

The relationships you build. In the DC (very different than HQ in NJ) office, there is a great environment. Laid back, and everyone (including senior management) is accessible. First name basis with executives. The company does good work. You get a chance to travel too depending on your job function. There are some great managers, and some great groups.

Cons

Hard to grow within the company. Low pay. Company grew WAY too fast, and they are busy putting the policies and procedures in place that were overlooked.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers. Keep the good ones, get rid of the bad ones...

Pros

The people are great, highly educated and hard working.

Cons

Compensation; base and total package if there is one beyond base pay, is under market and the fringe benefits are downright dangerous if you're needing medical/dental coverage and other insurance. The 401-K is the worst I've ever seen, so don't count on retirement planning here. Raises are not always given and very few. if any, bonuses. HR really isn't.
There are numerous Government compliance issues and no strategic planning, so I wouldn't plan on being around for a long time. It's privately held and no equity for most.

Advice to Senior Management

Get proper leadership.

Pros

Many interesting projects and many interesting people to work with. It has an unstructured business model to where you can move around and see different projects if you'd like.

Cons

Company can be fairly disorganized, doesnt invest in new technologies or processes, very little career path for admin-level folks. Salaries are lower than industry average.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to make decisions faster and let employees know the direction of the company, need to pay people more and make them feel like a family/team if you want to keep your people.

Pros

The work can be interesting depending on what practice you are in. The international focus of the company is refreshing. Very eclectic work force.

Cons

Very nepotistic company. Management is extremely slow to react and ambiguous. Trying to be a large company but still acts very 'small'...and not in a good way.

Advice to Senior Management

Communicate better with employees. Less nepotism, more meritocracy. Mid level managers must delegate better. Much better benefits required to match competitors.

Pros

Met some very intelligent people and generally enjoyed working with most of the people there.

Cons

Expect late nights/weekends with no adequate compensation.
No career path for administrative staff.
No reward system for the general population. Only officers and private shareholders reap rewards.

Advice to Senior Management

Share the wealth.