Burns & McDonnell Reviews

Pros

Great learning and advancement opportunities. Fun, challenging and innovative projects

Cons

Lack of communication between departments. Very accelerated deadlines.

Pros

Interesting and large scale aviation projects. The company's overall performance is great but there are terrible, underqualified managers at branch offices. Employee ownership is the buzzword but the total compensation is below competitors' package in this market

Cons

My comments below are not for the corporate but only for the specific branch office where I worked at. The management at your NYC branch office needs to be improved. The department manager doesn't know what she's doing and is demonstrating terrible leadership style. Keep in mind that long career history doesn't always guarantee a great technical expertise. Please take a look at the structural engineering teams' turn over rate at this NYC office: A 5~6 year airport design project had almost 70% of the engineer quit their jobs. This department manager's lack of technical expertise made herself completely rely on the peer review from 2 or 3 senior engineers to ensure her project design accuracy. She's more interested in finding out "which engineer made the mistake" than "why the team under my supervision always screw up". This “finger-pointing" review style fostered an extremely toxic working environment filled with criticism, judgement, and cold violence.. Constantly blaming the current and even the engineers who quit years ago in front of the team is absolutely not the professional leadership style. The department manager abuses the performance review to manipulate the employees' loyalty and motivation in career growth and is almost driving a rat race within the department. With zero interest in team building, she's keeping a team only to continue the project, not for the long term growth of this office or the corporate.

Pros

ESOP is great however you won't yield a full percentage of it until a certain amount of years, Houston is great culinary wise and vibe wise, coworkers are fantastic and top talent is amongst you constantly, great experience, rewarding projects, travel is also nice.. company reimburses you

Cons

More of a switch and bait company than anything. They'll hover the concept of ESOP, and a juicy 401k over your head until the end of time. Very lucrative company with short and aggressive schedules, which will make your work/life balance almost non-existing. Managers will try to squeeze the last dime of breath out of you if they can. Never in my life have I seen a more unprofessionally run company than this one. Even heard the COO of the company poor mouth an individual explicitly with curse words. From lower management, to top management executives, the entire structure needs a rework. Pitiful organization, and I would HIGHLY wouldn't recommend any woman in this environment. You are treated horrendously, and will hate your life every single working second here. I personally opted out on visiting human resources in fear of retaliation. You will constantly find yourself working over 9 hours to finish projects. The second you run out of work, kiss your job goodbye. Job security isn't much here. If you're looking for a more stable job, seek elsewhere.

Pros

Stable long term employment with challenging projects. Office environment is clean, friendly people and overall positive vibe. ESOP benefits are great if you plan on retiring with Burns.

Cons

Lack of work life balance. Needs more flexibility for remote work company only provides 30 days per year. Benefits are expensive even if you participate in the company’s health program. Out of pocket costs are high. No room for growth for lower level staff. Raises/promotions take forever even if you are a top performer.

Pros

The culture and people are great. The company is 100% employee owned (it's an ESOP) which helps drive the culture. ESOP is a great retirement vehicle - I don't know of any engineer here who hasn't retired a millionaire if they started at BMcD early and stuck with it. Compensation model seems about as fair as you could make it in terms of progression. Salaried employees can be paid an hourly rate after 40 hours of work if the projects their working on have the budget, so for young folks who are looking to grind and build a foundation for themselves early, it's a great opportunity. We work on very cool projects, which is always exciting.

Cons

Work from home flexibility is there, but lower than I like. My personal management is more flexible than the company official policy, but in general I feel that the flexibility is not consistent, and highly depends on which department you're in. Compensation structure can be daunting since it's very bonus-heavy and includes retirement options that most companies don't offer. You end up making a great living, but for some folks with an offer in front of them, it's hard to really get a sense of what you'll actually make. Salary tends to be lower than industry avg with much higher bonuses than industry avg after you get a few years in. ESOP contributions each year are also around 11-12% of total take-home pay (including salary, bonus, overtime). This complicated compensation structure is confusing or just not preferable for some folks.

Pros

Base salary is equal (potentially slightly lower) to other architecture firms in Kansas City, but the year-end cash bonus puts you way ahead of peers in the profession. When ESOP contribution/dividends are included, the comp is first class. Overtime is not required, but you get paid for it when worked. Depending on the division, great opportunities to travel and work on large scale projects early in your career. A lot of responsibility is put on your shoulders, and you get to work on projects from conceptual design through construction. 30 WHF days and 15 PTO days a year to start as new hire. Horizontal organizational structure, so there are not a ton of layers of bosses.

Cons

Engineers you work with everyday on the same projects make about 10%-20% more base salary than you depending on the discipline, and there is nothing you can do about it because of industry-standard bill rates. Overtime is optional, but often times work-life balance is hard to maintain around deadline time. Horizontal organizational structure, so leadership positions can be hard to come by.