AECOM reviews

Bloated management, middle management has no power to pay properly resulting in loss of multiple senior staff. Lost staff means more work for remaining employees with no compensation, and the diminished ability to learn and advance your career from that staff. Working at this company does not promise a profitable/fulfilling work life. Management will say what you want to hear only so you hang around longer hoping for a positive change. New hires of equal experience are paid 20-30% higher than existing staff (YES - this is absolutely true). AGAIN resulting in poor morale and lost staff. If you have to work here, negotiate a very high starting wage as raises are below cost of living increases. The 5 star reviews on this site have been suspected of being AECOM plants trying to raise the rating, I could not agree more. I would not recommend this company to an enemy. Formerly was UMA Engineering. UMA was a company I used to see myself working at for a long long time (possibly decades) the group was great the work was challenging and the rewards were fair to generous. AECOM has effectively obliterated that in less than 4 years. I am moving on with my career and only see the death of UMA as such a shame, a waste of a excellent company absorbed into the machine. AECOM defines growth as buying up companies faster than the employees quit. When an office goes from nearly 200 strong to below 90 employees (including new hires) in two years in an extremely booming market, you should be able to draw your own conclusions. Much of the money seems to be going into the new mining department they are trying to establish. Saskatchewan is small enough that the bad reputation AECOM is earning will come back around and affect them on that end also. Do yourself a favor and keep looking for a better company.

• Totally unethical company based on lies and corruption. How AECOM ever received an award for being ethical is incredible. Must have been by bribery. • Constant harassment about billability (utilization), yet keep hiring more “business development managers” who have 0% billability. • Threaten employees with redundancy due to their low billability whilst hiring new staff with same or similar skills. • Culture of exclusion. Only group leaders and their inner circle deal with clients. People who actually work on the projects are kept in the background and don’t even meet the client. Groups have sub-groups such as “Project Delivery Group”, ”Leadership Group”, “Business Development Group”, “Client Relationship Group” and “Research Group” which consist of same select few individuals and exclude everyone else. Most group members don’t know the existence of the sub-groups. Only select individuals attend client functions, give presentations at professional meetings etc. Project Delivery Group treats itself to lunch at expensive restaurant for its “success in delivering projects” which were actually delivered by the people who worked on them. Complete insult. • Group leader who bullied team members and was total jerk was promoted to Technical Director despite widespread complaints to management. • Reward and recognition is based on favouritism rather than actual achievement. Awards given for totally trivial accomplishments like sending out a client survey, while real achievements are ignored. • Unfair promotion process that is not based on merit or credentials. • People taking credit for the work of others and getting promoted on that basis. Cutting and pasting of other people’s work into conference papers and presentations and making false claims on CPEng career episode reports is endorsed by management. • Company is so paranoid that it has a social media policy to try and control anything negative on the internet. Surprised AECOM hasn’t managed to close down Glassdoor. Suspect it is behind all those five star ratings. • Expectation to work significant extra hours without any additional pay or reward. • Expectation to keep up to date with technical developments but AECOM won’t pay for attendance at conferences and seminars. • Management pretends to care about employee satisfaction but does nothing about legitimate complaints. • No privacy. People constantly picking up stuff on your desk, reading your e-mails on your monitor, stealing pens and reference materials. • Americanisation at its worst.