Golder Associates reviews

There's a review below that I think demonstrates Golder's problems very well. A Principal says that the only negative is long hours, and advice to management is to "keep up the good work." That's how the Principals think: everything great, the CEO is king, and if there's a problem it's because you aren't working hard enough. With roughly 90% of the reviews here saying management is terrible, non-existent, bullying, or otherwise bereft of leadership (a sentiment shared by almost everyone who isn't a Principal), saying "keep up the good work" is either willfully ignorant or is coming from a position so far removed from the working conditions that the building could be on fire and they wouldn't notice. Suffice it to say, when you have an entire group of seniors who feel this way the results can be catastrophic. While reading these reviews any post with Principal in the title can't be taken as accurate. The Principals collectively run the company, so in the case of the review I mention, this Principal is telling themselves to "keep up the good work." We see the same behavior in communications where they talk about what great leaders they think they are. The rest of us just eye-roll. In all my years at Golder I've never had a client demand long or late hours from me. Never. Our clients do not care about that. The long hours usually happen because the project manager ignored the deadline until two days prior and then wanted a slew of changes made to the work you delivered weeks ago.

Golder in Canada amalgamated operations with the US in Fall 2015, almost immediately after I was hired, resulting in mass lay-offs with almost no warning. The dedicated team who took me out for lunch on my first day was, by day 3, half gone, walked to the door. The floor I worked on was basically emptied, and personal items of these long term employees were left behind and unattended to for a very long time. I wondered why I had been hired when tenured employees were walked to the door. I felt guilty for even having my job when others, who were really bonded to Golder, were let go without warning. I eventually left before more unfair layoffs could take place, hopefully sparing a long-term employee their job. It seemed that Golder didn't really care about their employees after all, that someone was sitting in the sky with a spreadsheet containing only salaries to get rid of. Layoffs seemed to be decided without thought to the quality of work of the individual, dedication and long-term commitment or their reputation in the consulting world. It was a really ugly way of handling a lay-off situation. Nothing was communicated to anyone, your colleagues just disappeared. Moreover, a lay-off is really hard to explain to future employers. Potential employers assume that if you were laid off, you were not performing. I do not believe was the case with Golder. I believe that a too high percentage of their top-performers were let go unfairly, and left them to struggle with the stigma of a lay-off in a tough market. It didn't seem to me that Golder used a fair methodology to lay-off employees.