Gensler Employee Reviews about "gensler"

Pros

Recognizable global brand, project scope, ability to make a difference for communities and clients. Resume builder opens doors at other companies. Staff expertise across a variety of areas – there is an expert for anything and everything. Long term client relationships. Strong portfolio of work. Company size means flexibility in where to go (geographically) and what to do. Retirement contributions, such as profit sharing. Unique size is both a pro and a con. Gensler is a great learning experience for young to mid-level designers and architects. You will work hard, but work on some amazing project with talented people.

Cons

The company size is too large to maintain Art Gensler’s intended focus and values. The push to be the biggest might look good to clients but dilutes the brand’s actual power because behind the shiny curtain, the back of house area gets to be more messy. For the biggest design firm, the standards and tools to execute the work are inconsistent because some big decision makers won’t invest in those resources – choosing profit over quality. Big decisions about this are made regionally. Being in a smaller office in the region means improvements are impossible. The decision makers didn’t even know who I was, and communication with them was heavily filtered through locals. Office culture will vary quite a bit depending on what office you work at. The larger offices can be competitive, politic-y, and catty. Not unusual for large design offices, but exacerbated by the Gensler promotion structure. The smaller offices can suffer when operated by only one managing director who is out of touch with daily operations. Pay is below average but they’ll defend it with talk about bonuses and perks and the value of the Gensler name. With rare exceptions, you won’t be a principal if you can’t pull in a large amount of work to the firm. That means that most principal roles are 90% sales. It’s a flaw in the firm structure because (in my experience) principals are isolated from operations and project production. Sales is their job. Daily mentorship and project execution is not their job. That means they are unbillable but also paid about 2x more than the senior project team members who are billable because they’re actually executing the work. It puts principals in an ivory tower who are great at talking big but weak leaders and out of touch. With more of a blurred line between principals and everyone else who executes the work, the pay would be more equally distributed, the staff would feel more engaged with leadership, and there would feel like a more natural path for advancing. I was surprised that when resigning, there was no exit interview with HR – just the principal trying to convince me not to leave. They were obsessed with the “why,” but explaining the departure reasons to the person who is the main problem is a waste of time. HR apparently didn’t care about why I was leaving, I only heard from them at the last minute about getting my laptop back to them. Hence nothing will change for the team members who remain. Job roles are fairly tightly siloed in a way that too rigid for me. Every project needed a design director that (depending on which one) wanted to micromanage the design. Progression of people to expand their role in projects is fairly slow because it’s easy to get stuck doing what you’re good at. The big machine has to move so quickly to produce project work and keep up with deadlines and fees, there isn’t always time to let people try new things. Mentorship can be challenging in the same way. It’s an industry problem, not solely a Gensler problem.

Pros

Great opportunities with high end and large scale project types. Great workplace fit-out within their own offices. Gensler pushes design and lives up to a high design standard. Resources are available when requested.

Cons

Values set forth by Art Gensler and slowly disappearing. The company is loosing site of its employee experience in order to maintain client relationships. Little work-life balance and more "favoritism" than should be allowed from upper management. Principals get away with a lot of bad behavior. It is an environment that will test your morals and ethics. Base pay is not competitive within the market.

Pros

Amazingly creative design professionals who are skillled in a variety of areas.

Cons

Where do I start? I began at Gensler where i immediately sensed that the onboarding process was poor. Once immersed into the work culture, there was very little if no work guidance and trajectory on day-to-day activities. Seeking this advice and guidance, I was met with indifference due to a lack of organization with managment. In order to continue with albeit some direction, I had to use my own personal laptop to achieve these directives as the advice from co-workers and management was they "didn't have the time or budget to spend on the software" after explaining certain software and platforms were necessary to perform the design and render objectives. I did use my personal laptop from home but then several co workers were upset that the work wasn't going "fast enough." Really...after explained my laptop was a bit out of date due to personal finances and the salary I was being paid at Gensler to purchase another was not adequate to purchase (which wasn't my responsiblity obviously). I did seek constantly direction in meetings and assistance and guidance on achieving the goals of certain projects to no avail. I also went to several other employees to learn about circumferential and peripheral projects in hope I would learn about what I would be doing. As always, I was met with indifference and then anger when I would try to ask. Really....this is from a large, professional design firm in NYC where the managment was distant and had no interest in pursuing a trajectory toward success on my behalf. Yes, it was super strange this experience and there is no exaggeration on how poor the environment was at Gensler in Midtown NYC. I have worked in design firms for years and have never seen such arrogance and disorganization. Seriously unbelievable and seems almost hallucinatory. A sincerely bad experience that I last 4 months and I have tried to put behind me.

Pros

High profile projects. Great portfolio and resume building firm. Most of the people are nice, especially admin staff who aren't directly competing with you.

Cons

Gensler NY literally has a spread sheet of "rising stars" or people they are tracking and grooming for leadership. These people, not necessarily based for talent or work ethic, are given opportunities and experiences that others are not. Many of the design staff will play the game, make friends with those who are favored, and back stab those at similar levels of experience to get a foot forward. It truly is a rat race. After averaging 60+ hour weeks for 2.5 years, I was let go during the pandemic (its estimated they cut about 40-50% firm wide, but for a firm that touts transparency, these lay offs happened essentially in secret), but honestly thankful I was. Having time off on unemployment really put things in perspective for me.

Pros

Being the largest design firm , Gensler has, what seems like, an unlimited number of project opportunities, doing a variety of design work, for the best clients all over the world , while working alongside some of the best design and technical talent there is.

Cons

The firm is so focused on the bottom line, that they have forgotten who the people are that are working hard to contribute to that bottom line. Unfortunately, the firm has gotten far away from the values they preach and the mostly new senior management team is unable to see the forest through the trees.

Pros

Gensler hires so many talented people that are passionate about design and their clients. The majority of people you'll find here are awesome human beings. There are also many wonderful resources working for such a large firm - both for your personal growth with continuing education, thought leadership opportunities, and access to great clients, and for your projects. The ability to pick up the phone and call an expert on some random subject that has come up in your job is such a gift and such a great way to make connections across the firm. Compared to smaller firms in the Bay Area we are also well compensated, though there needs to be more transparency and clarity in regards to raises, especially this year when some have been told there's no money and others get more significant raises. I'm sure there's valid reasons pertaining to compensation levels, but staff is confused without further explanation.

Cons

1. Don't underestimate that this is the largest architectural firm in the world- and it didn't get there by always putting it's employees first. Profit is first and if you fall in line properly to help make profit you'll have a better chance of success. Our high billing rates are meant to pay for all those Gensler extra overheads, yet billing to overhead numbers is strongly discouraged. 2. If you're bringing in work you have cart blanche to treat people however you want. I've seen people use this for good to bring up young designers and give them great opportunities. I've also seen them use it for more nefarious purposes of removing staff from projects and treating people disrespectfully. 3. If you see something wrong, like really wrong, keep it to yourself. HR works for Gensler- not for you and they don't want to make principals mad either. I've seen popular, well-connected, and good employees pushed out because they had no support from the firm regarding poor behavior.