BGC Engineering Reviews

Work you to the bone. Working only 40 hours a week is frowned upon in company culture, whether management admit it or not. Guilt at taking vacation or banked time. Guilt at taking a day or so break after lengthy fieldwork. Burnout is expected and they're there with superficial sympathy when it inevitably happens , but haven't created a work culture to avoid it in the first place. Clique / "boys club" (not limited to males) culture. If you're in, you're golden. If not, you will struggle to progress in your career. There's a distinct "cult" feel to the culture. If you aren't seen to buy into that, again, you'll struggle to progress here. Talk a very big game on employee welfare (physical and mental), but don't come close to stepping up to it. Are selective re. benefits that are supposed to be based on hard rules (on their internal webpage) e.g. extra week annual vacation 10-yrs post graduation. Don't expect to be able to plan anything personal from spring to fall - you're expected to drop everything anytime for fieldwork. They're nowhere near as flexible on this as they claim. And when they do make an exception for you, it will build against you later. I've seen at least 2 separate cases where the bullied is held accountable, rather than the bully. Never seen a bully held accountable. Management and high ups pass the buck heavily to juniors and intermediates, both on technical work and on professional conduct. They used to be small with a flat structure, but exploded in size and still claim the same culture and structure. It is not a flat structure anymore, no matter what they claim. People don't know each other, particularly in the big Vancouver office. Reluctance to hire short-term or contracts because it'd "damage the unique BGC culture". But the staff are overworked because of it, which damages the culture anyway. Talk a big game on encouraging employees to carve out a career path (technical specialty, project management, etc) but getting them to support you on it is difficult if it doesn't match the box they've already put you in. Blatantly punish employees on the bonus / promotion front, regardless of what they've achieved and how many hours they've worked. If you've done one small thing to annoy someone high up, it'll override all else. They'll claim thinly veiled excuses for it. I've seen it multiple times with multiple people. Once you're in management's bad books (your fault or not), you'll struggle to get out of it.

The "One-team approach" they are so adamant about is completely untrue . Many small groups have developed over the years and are very inclusive of the staff they hire. Little room to grow within the company outside of the projects they choose for you. Project managers have a high degree of favouritism to select employees (that dedicate insane hours to their computer screen). Vacation requests are like playing mario, be prepared to dodge obstacles, leap through hoops, and most definitely fail a few times before successfully getting time off. Company is growing faster than they can keep up with, resulting in frustrated staff at all levels and a serious lack of communication. Senior staff are very secretive, therefore trust is hard to establish. Junior staff can be very adamant, but are often under-qualified for the roles they are given. New recruits are usually selected from a number of BGC's "choice" recruiting universities. If they don't have a presence at your institution, better off applying elsewhere.