Black & Veatch Reviews

Pros

An all-inclusive list of the Pros of being a Black & Veatch professional are too numerous to list, but here are my favorites: *Opportunity to work alongside the Industry's top talent and experts to have an impact on world-changing projects that provide critical human infrastructure (Clean Power, life-sustaining Water, essential Telecommunications, and more). *Job security and growth opportunities - There is a huge demand for our services in the markets and clients we serve. *100% Employee-Owned company with company-provided contributions to Employee Stock Ownership Plan account. *Great total compensation package: Includes base salary + cash bonuses + company 401k match + Employee Stock Ownership Plan distributions + medical/dental/insurance benefits + more. *Work/Life Balance - Flexible work schedules including ability to work from home (or anywhere) 2 days per week, flexible work hours, 9/80 schedule (every-other Friday off). *Vacation and Holidays - 10.5 paid holidays per year, new-grads start at 3 weeks vacation, 4 weeks paid parental bonding leave, and more. *Committed to creating and sustaining diverse, equitable and inclusive work environments. Able to work with professionals across the country and globe that have a diverse set of backgrounds and personal experiences.

Cons

Black and Veatch has the same challenges that I am sure many other large companies must continually strive to overcome and sometimes things move slow, or at least not as quickly as one would like. B&V has made progress, but needs to keep striving to push decision making lower in the organization to allow us to be more nimble and responsive. Even with a few challenges associated with working in a large organization, the overall benefits of a large organization far exceed any drawbacks. It is a luxury (and huge competitive advantage) to have the resources and experts internally to solve almost any problem that may come up on a project.

Pros

Excellent Company Overall with good benefits and great people

Cons

Sometime to corporate of an environment

Pros

Nothing comes to mind as a 22 year veteran

Cons

The company made an agreement with employees that we could work in new ways under an anytime, anywhere, anyplace approach to getting work done. We began this journey in 2019 well before the pandemic. We were offered plenty of opportunity to create incredibly flexible work schedules and had an amazing work-life balance and this year will achieve our highest revenue ever. Many of us changed our lives to work in these new ways. Then a new outsider CEO took over in late summer and he has started dismantling this amazing culture with a decision made mostly at the top and with the disagreement of many employees by mandating we work in the office three days week. This is very disappointing and I turned in my resignation today as this is just the start of a new command and control way of working and not trusting employees.

Pros

Unlimited sick pay, great co-workers, good pay, 3 floating holidays, minimum, 3 weeks paid time off, meaningful work, opportunities for growth and promotion.

Cons

Mario Azar is not a good CEO. His leadership involves lying, bullying, and threatening people to get what he wants, not what is good for the company or what the employee-owners want. His approach is antiquated and he is creating a hostile culture at BV. Paid time off caps off at 4 weeks. Overall corporate leadership is all over the place and they attempt to completely restructure the company every 6-months, which is ultimately fruitless and needlessly disruptive.

Pros

My coworkers were incredible - brilliant, kind, resourceful. I enjoyed my clients. The pay was competitive and the benefits were decent. The variety of work made it exciting and never boring - new industries to learn and projects to design.

Cons

The overarching leadership is full of performative rhetoric, touting 'diversity' and 'psychological safety', neither of which are practiced in action. Professionals have submitted qualifying ADA requests with documentation, only to be rejected and subsequently mishandled by HR (blasting requests with specifics across the HR department, which sounds like a major violation of privacy). Now, strange yearly performance goals, which determine raises, were rolled out to require each person to mentor a diverse professional. Note that it says 'mentor', not build a relationship with, as the person of diversity is assumed to be a lower level. While the effort to embrace diversity should be celebrated, neither of these actions actually demonstrate embracing differences or create inclusion, but rather single out and ostracize those that are different. Earlier this year, Azar gave a textbook definition of gaslighting when discussing the RTO yammer threads, laughing off professionals' concerns and turning it into him as the both the victim and hero. Also, career growth is not clear for all positions and red tape during proposals are cumbersome.

Pros

Awesome work, very diverse projects, they allow you to flow freely between different project teams which has been great for my career development.

Cons

The old CEO (Who was beloved and worked at the company for over 30 years) was forced out by the new CEO (Who has been here for less than 5). He forced a RTO mandate which so many people arent enjoying and has either ignored or gaslighted all of the negative talk about RTO. Pretty toxic C-suite culture right now. If you can look past that, its a great company.

Pros

Diversity of offerings to our clients positions BV well for weathering recessions.

Cons

By far the most significant downside to working at BV is the lack of effective leadership from new CEO, Mario Azar. In less than a year, Azar has dismantled the incredibly positive and “shared ownership” mindset that previous CEO’s Len Rodman and Steve’s Edwards worked so hard to foster among the employee-owners. Gone are the days of feeling connected to our leaders and feeling inspired to share in their vision of moving the company forward, because frankly Azar has worked to move the company backwards, seemingly treating his role as one of the old Partners instead of as CEO of an employee-owned company, affecting a dictatorial leadership style. Clumsy re-organizations, a laughably inept attempt at a Return To Office policy, and deceptive, dismissive, and condescending communication with employee-owners, have all resulted in morale being at an all-time low and many talented employee-owners leaving the company.

Pros

Productive environment and enough space and opportunities to grow with a very nice work-life balance. the only reasons that has kept me here the past 5 years.

Cons

Not enough encouragement to work hard. Performance based raise and merit structure is a farce. I have had a really tough year and 'met expectations' and worked really really hard and made impact and also 'met expectations'. This is all because the upper management thinks they have a better understanding of what every employee does on a day to day basis. My colleagues and supervisors vouch for me in my feedback cycle, but management tones the ratings down. 1 year the excuse was that I have been recently promoted. How does that really have to do anything with performance ratings? the next year it was the 'transformation' and that my newly appointed supervisor doesn't have enough credibility to decide if I worked hard enough and overruled his generous feedback.

Pros

- Strong Benefits Program (Great Insurance) - Employee Owned-Company w/ Good Stock Benefits - Some Great Co-workers

Cons

- New CEO lied to the entire company about RTO (Return-to-Office) - Loyalty is NOT appreciated or recognized - Outside applicants are treated significantly better financially than internal candidates or employees within those existing roles - Promotions/advancement are difficult due to "red-tape" & "blackout periods" - Unprofessional & Unsupportive HR Department - "Transformation" created an environment where direct supervisors are not involved with or aware of your day to do responsibilities/capabilities - Over the past year, many employees who I worked with directly have gone from being happy to being dissatisfied with the work environment/changes to the culture we USED to be so proud of

Pros

Love the team I work with. Everyone is so supportive and eager to answer any questions. My current manager Jason Rogers is the BEST MANAGER I'VE ever had. I wasn't excited about coming to the office. HOWEVER, now that I come to the office I love it! I love the change of scenery.

Cons

I wish the organization provided an Macbook instead of a Dell.