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Design Collective

Is this your company?

Talented staff with unfortunate leadership - Architect Design Collective Employee Review

1.0
Aug 29, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

-Very talented and generally welcoming lower level staff; a few higher level staff are energetic, passionate, and talented people that encourage and inspire the lower staff -Typically an inclusive and collaborative design process with all disciplines -Attempts at listening sessions for lower level staff to voice concerns were a good start, but more needs to be done -Generally speaking, the work life balance is good. Most people can maintain a 5 day work week

Cons

-Extremely top heavy structure with zero accountability for upper management (80 person firm, roughly 20 principals); many principals at the firm are inappropriate to staff and are unproductive. Arrive late, leave early, sit around and chat. No one monitors or reviews their performance -Poor response to criticism -Promotions are solely based on how the Senior Prinicpals feel about a person; there is no true metric that is used to determine an employees value and employees are told contradictory information about promotions (ie “you don’t have enough experience” but someone with 2 years less is promoted above you) -Boy’s club/fraternity atmosphere, especially at the top -The company president has posted inaccurate/fake, discriminatory, and arguably racist posts on his public social media accounts; many staff learned of these posts, but the company failed to acknowledge them -Poor ethics and morals -Extremely high turnover for a small firm (majority is lower level) -As a previous review noted, the sexism, racism, nepotism, etc. is very prevalent and obvious

Explore other reviews about Design Collective

5.0
Aug 4, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

large office work environment made it easy to meet new people.

Cons

Old office that has seen better days.

4.0
Jun 24, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great mentorship within the firm - There is support for licensure and continuing education - Great involvement with local networking - Multidisciplinary firm with flexibility to collaborate more with other design teams between architecture, interiors, urban design, and landscape architecture - Good firmwide communication and engagement on current pursuits and ongoing projects

Cons

- During my time at DCI, there was an imbalance in workload between upper and lower level staff, principals worked far more - Mixed support for inclusivity efforts

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