Sargent & Lundy Reviews

Pros

Chicago is a great office location.
Plenty of opportunity, to gain field work / experience.
Great for learning and training collage hires.
Looks good on resume.
Nice Christmas bonus

Cons

Pay is not comparable to responsibilities
A lot of politics
Keep an eye out for field pay promises not kept once you are at location

Advice to Senior Management

Pay employees for the job and responsibilities they are performing not based on their age or years of service to S&L. A lot of young folks are performing well above their pay grade, while a lot of “senior” designers are not pulling their weight.

Pros

Easy work. Lots of down time.

Cons

Management doesn't notice who is doing what. Too many people working for "the man" that no one knows. Too many men in the "old boys" club.

Advice to Senior Management

Quit.

Pros

You will have oppurtunity to work on the site. You will do a lot of calculation which is good for your career.

Cons

Promotions are hard to come by and the basis of how they do it seems to be more political than merit.

Advice to Senior Management

They should review people more often rather than once a year. I still think this is the best place to work for.

Pros

Pros - lots of design opportunities for young engineers

Cons

Cons - ONE WORD: Management

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more attention to what the company stands for in the first place....ENGINEERING!

Pros

Salary is competitive because management is close to retirement, nothing more.

Cons

Politics, no recognition for any effort, management operates on a CYA mentality, HR hides behind a closed door and a lawyer with a do not disturb policy, training is OTJ criticism/grovelling, all the benefits you are willing to pay for, recruiter promises you anything to get your acceptance and then excessive field assignments

Advice to Senior Management

Get down in the trenches with the employees to know the real story.

Pros

Good place to start and learn engineering, in particular power plant engineering technical and organizational skills. Good place for new grads to start

Cons

Company is highly political. Credit for work done depends on who likes you. Blame for something that went wrong depends on who dislikes you. Promotions are totally based on who likes you. Your abilities are not actually a factor. Your main job at this company is to help the "fair haired boys" get ahead, hopefully to the "partnership" level. If you just want to do your job and can ignore the politics that impact you every day, then its an OK place to work. Otherwise, to get ahead, you need to play the game: some play the game, most lose.

Advice to Senior Management

Change management structure. Actually acknowledge employees you meet in the hallway. Stop creating phony titles to keep people happy, they're not.

Pros

Flexible work hours/ start time. Ability to work as much or as little overtime as you prefer. Not much of an issue in requesting time off.

Cons

Often deadlines are not specified clearly until the last minute causing a lot of rush work. Some managers take too long at reviewing deliverables forcing rush work to turn around comments and changes for issue to client.

Advice to Senior Management

Define deadlines sooner in project with realistic time frames.
Review deliverables in a more timely manner.
Seek discipline specific advice before making promises to clients.

Pros

Very competative pay. The company is known for creating very good and skilled engineers. Wonderful location in downtown Chicago.

Cons

Extremely poor working environment, no home-life balance. The company uses Lotus notes and Novell. The company has a lot of very new engineers with little to no life experience. Very few middle aged engineers and a significant quanitity of old engineers. It is obvious that many engineers get their four or five years of experience and can't wait to jump ship becuase the environment is so caustic.

Advice to Senior Management

For being a privately owned company, this company's attitudes seem to be stuck

Pros

Close to the train.
Decent Benefits.
That's it.

Cons

Layoffs are very common.
Management is the worst.

Advice to Senior Management

no

Pros

great pay, great benefits, great learning environment, supportive and knowledgable senior employees, great location, lunch and learns, mentor program, work with many peers

Cons

some engineers are socially awkward and cold, large generation gaps, work can be repetitious at times, some politics, shaky staff management, buggy software, use of Lotus notes

Advice to Senior Management

diversify and broaden your services and skill sets more, so that you maintain competitive edge in this era of rapidly evolving technology