Pros
There are some nice people who work for Alta. The work can be interesting, especially if you are passionate about active transportation.
Cons
The management and culture are lacking in major way. Managers in Oakland are some of the worst I've ever encountered. The turnover rate is unbelievably high due to poor management. I worked in Oakland for one year and watched 10 staff leave, quit, or be fired (the office is only about 20 people). Be prepared to be greeting newcomers and saying goodbye to colleagues regularly while the management pretends everything is great. There is a culture of consistently underbidding on work to secure contracts, thus resulting in a high pressure environment to get work done within budget while meeting an unrealistic billing quota. There has been an ongoing history of production staff being forced to bill less time than the work actually takes. This creates a situation where you will be required to work way beyond a typical work week so that you hit your billing quota and get the projects finished. Project managers regularly make you bid internally for work (i.e. There may be a task that genuinely requires 4 hours of time. The project manager will ask you how much time it will take you and if you say 4 hours, they will try to find someone who will agree to only bill 2 hours for the task, even though it takes that person 4 hours.) When you are constantly being forced to underbill, it makes it very difficult to meet an 85-95% billing/utilization rate.
