Good place to work - Project Manager RVA Employee Review

They have an excellenct compensation plan.

The work life balance could use some work.

Good starter job. Decent Coop opportunity for university students. Great presence at job fairs. There's a multi-use quiet space room if you want to pray, make sensitive phone calls, take some time to gather your thoughts, etc. There's a social committee that is very involved and plans year round events for everyone. Young staff are encouraged to take part and take the lead on certain events. Yearly fundraisers for great causes. The company remembers your work anniversary and sends out a monthly e-blast with other positive news. Encourages staff to get involved in the community. Encourages staff to be lifelong learners and keeps track on a yearly basis. You start off with 3 weeks paid vacation time and 1 sick day per calendar month (i.e. 12 sick days). Great benefits package!

Cheap. RVA has an industry reputation for underpaying it's employees. It also has a reputation to be close to a sweatshop. Uses its EIT's & Technicians to spend about 10 hours a day or more doing the brunt work and get paid peanuts. When yearly bonuses come around, people at the 'bottom' or 'non-engineers' get one transit pass's worth of a bonus while middle to upper management gets bonuses worth more than one paycheck. When the CEO was confronted at a townhall, his response was "well, this is an Engineering company". That answers shows that if you're not a licensed or experienced Engineer (i.e. have a P.Eng, and have been working for them for over 5 years), you're worthless. If you want to fulfill a Co-op, this is the place to go. But if you're looking for a full-time gig, go elsewhere. The staff turnover rate is quite high. The senior staff do a poor job training the junior/intermediate staff to eventually be able to move up the ladder. You're trained to be a paper pusher and get pushed to the brink of burning out. There have been a few incidents where staff had to take time off from being burned out. The company claims to be one of the 'best managed companies' not because it really is but because they have a bunch of boxes checked for award's sake. Male to female ratio is great! Unfortunately, the opportunity for women to move up the ladder is few and far between. The mentorship program that they have is a joke. Very few intermediate and senior staff are actually worthy of being called a Mentor. When it officially came around, you'd be surprised at how many people were stumped on who to put as a mentor, let alone have a second mentor. Certain Managers told their staff to put their name as the primary mentor and left it up to the staff to find a secondary mentor. As mentioned above, staff are expected to work extensive hours. Some work over the weekend and maybe even the holidays. Very few of them got compensated for their hardwork, if at all. One of the main reasons that people have left is because of their work/life balance. EIT's are drowning in work and don't even feel comfortable going to HR to get help. They're redirected to their managers who were giving them the pressure to the begin with. RVA likes to encourage its staff for professional development by offering financial support. Staff in each department are encouraged to write papers, do presentations, etc., etc. so that the department itself can get a yearly budget for its staff to professionally develop. But it gets blown early in the year for select engineers to go to conferences and the rest of the department has to wait for the next term to see if they can get reimbursed for their professional development. Then there's the aspect of not really getting a raise after showing your hard work, improvements and great results. Sadly, there's more than one intermediate staff that is working more than one job to make ends meet at home. Leads back to the point of having a reputation for underpaying its staff. Upper management doesn't know what's going on in the trenches and give off the vibe that they don't care. You'll get more shrugged shoulders than you care for.