Pros
- Especially for younger professionals, can be a good company for quickly gaining experience on many projects (though this is also possible for motivated employees at other companies and in the public sector) - For those with well-defined roles and disciplines, can be a supportive and productive environment - While it depends on role, salaries can be quite good - Many offices across Canada and globally, making it easy to locate or relocate close to one, and (in theory, at least) workshare - Employee ownership means the opportunity to own company shares (or equivalent Deferred Share Units, in Canada)
Cons
- Matrix structure adds to bureaucracy and makes it hard to know who is in charge (I found it more bureaucratic than every government organization I had worked for previously) - People management is extremely weak - clear focus is project management and prioritizing billable and high-paying work for clients (often at the expense of providing a supportive and structured environment for most employees and teams) - Senior leadership in Canada extremely disconnected from the issues people are dealing with at the lower/mid leadership (middle management) level - A lot of confusion within the organization about whether it is matrixed, projectized, or hierarchical, wasting a lot of time and causing a lot of aggravation - Generally a worse experience for anyone who is not a traditional architect or engineer (internal code word: Cross Sector) - Very slow to hire...and fire - Workshare between offices often does not work as expected - a lot of unproductive internal competition that makes starting anything new extremely difficult