URS Reviews

Pros

Great balance between life and work
Pressure is OK
Comfortable environment

Cons

Compensation is average
Health insurance plan is below average

Pros

Many interesting projects in multiple locations across the country
Many opportunities to travel
Friendly office environment
Many learning opportunities for entry level employees
Lots of field experience to offer future employers

Cons

Terrible Work/Life Balance -- extensive travel requirements without disclosing how it works in the interview (I was told max of 10 days traveling at a time with 4 days off. What they didn't say was they would stack those 10/4 shifts endlessly, and eventually get rid of the 10/4 schedule and go to a 26/2 schedule instead)
Very old school in their approach -- large disconnect between management and entry level employees
Lethargic corporate-wide IT (local help desk was good though)
Travel (for environmental consulting) is to very unglamorous places
Compensation is low (a peer left for an in-house environmental job and got almost a 50% pay raise plus better benefits)
Expectation that you'll work overtime (sometimes without pay) while not voicing that expectation
While your job title will be engineer or scientist, in entry level environmental you'll spend 10% of your time doing that type of work. The other 90% will be writing, clerical, or just being a body on a field job.

Advice to Senior Management

Connect with your entry level employees to reduce turnover. My office had many people with 10+ years of experience and a moderate number of people with less than 4 years of experience. The 4-10 year gap was very evident on long field jobs when field supervisors were new or lacked experience. Complaining that younger employees aren't as loyal to the company as your generation is/was won't solve the problem.

Pros

- Good benefits but pretty high insurance costs

Cons

Salary adjustments do not cover COLA;
Minimum opportunities for promotion;
Morale is low, no respect in the workplace whatsoever;
Any concerns shared with HR are not being addressed;
Low salaries;
Promotions and recognition are based on "favoritism"

Advice to Senior Management

Office is run by executive asistants...what else to say?

Pros

job stability
work environment
work load is not too much.
overytime pay

Cons

low salary
thankless
lower salary than person who joined later with less experiences

Advice to Senior Management

appreciate hard worker

Pros

Diversity in project work and exposure to different project managers.
Overall company is relatively stable.
Good place to gain experience.

Cons

Extremely bureaucratic organization with way too many levels of management.
Very shortsided and singleminded focus - billability, revenue and profits on a weekly basis are all that count.
Professional development is limited, and training that is offered is expected to be completed on employee's own time.
Required corporate training is expected to be completed on employee's time.
Number of inept personnel in management roles.

Advice to Senior Management

Flatten management and give more autonomy to remaining managers.
Get rid of inept managers.
Invest some dollars in professional development and allow employees to attend outside training and seminars.
Restructure financial goals beyond solely looking at individual office P&L.

Pros

Can advance if you come from the outside or are in the military.

Cons

Favortism toward hiring and advancing former military individuals.

Advice to Senior Management

Look at qualifications of individuals. There are so many in executive positions who don't know what they should...

Pros

The pay is very good compared to other companies, but that may be because it is nuclear work
Great work environment
Pays overtime

Cons

Sometimes workload can get heavy - working nights and weekends
The location is isolated from civilization

Pros

They have some of the best projects..It can be a good experience provided you have a good boss..

Cons

Zero appreciation for your hardwork..Be prepared to do a thankless job..
Average pay compared to other companies
No growth after a while..
They go on books and fail to identify the real talented professionals...
undue credit given to managers who barely manages the projects...
Good projects are assigned based on Favoritism...

Advice to Senior Management

Fair opportunities have to be given to hardworking and talented professionals...

Pros

Work and life balance is pretty good

Cons

Top heavy- too many executives
Not enough projects - work

Pros

Performance is valued greatly regardless of office politics. My experience has been that the local management is willing to provide opportunities to work on complex work (with more visibility) if you've shown that you have the potential regardless of your seniority.

Cons

The HQ being in San Francisco, there aren't room for growth locally. Also, local management seems to prefer to hire externally rather than promoting from within. The management is poor at communicating any changes as they tend to be very secretive about pretty much everything. This leads to rumors and speculations in the office pretty much all the time.