Good projects, Bad Work - Anonymous employee SmithGroup Employee Review

2.0
Nov 14, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Win lots of nice looking projects to put in your portfolio. Great learning experience for young staff- for a year or two. Nice people.

Cons

No design influence from majority of staff. Design dictated down by design director. Not a lot of thinking outside the box is expected or accepted. Do as you’re told, Status quo. Often hires unqualified candidates. Over worked and under paid. Burnout. Design and sustainability are not thought through and often BS’ed. Think entire buildings designed in a 100 hour work week leading up to deadlines. Staffing/management issues. Money first, design second.

Explore other reviews about SmithGroup

5.0
May 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very welcoming environment with talented engineers and architects. They’re passionate about sustainability and performance-driven design. IMPACT is great as well.

Cons

Tasks could get boring after a while, which is true for repetitive work in any field, not just this company. But for a short-term internship, everything felt enjoyable and educational.

2.0
Dec 9, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Work life balance, hybrid work. - Fridays off. - Office location. - Free lunches. - Office culture.

Cons

- Design quality is mediocre. They tried to involve everyone in the firm wide design dialogue, like "design week" and other design competition, for example, to show they value "design". However, on the project level, opportunity to involve in the design process is very limited to none. There are no typical project design review (pin up) or critic where everyone can get involve to help bring up the design quality. Everything is being done segregated, there's no cross path between design, technical and management. - Favoritism is real. You have to kiss up or be pretentious to get notice. - Career path is listed out but there's no opportunities of getting there. They don't seem to value people's experiences and skill set. Talking to mentor and management didn't provide solid solution, but putting all the burden on the staff and leadership doesn't take any responsibility of meeting people half way.

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