Handel Architects Reviews

Many of the managers (senior associates) are TERRIBLE. These are folks who merely stuck around long enough to get a promotion, but really lack communication skills and management skills. Quite a few are temperamental and fail to give clear direction. The office's practice of promoting loyal employees or talented designers should be a good thing, but because there have been so many senior associates with poor management skills, the most talented staff end up leaving before reaching senior associate status. This creates a revolving door environment that the partners probably like to tell themselves filters out the lazy/poorly equipped staff but more realistically filters out the most ambitious and hungry designers leaving just the timid and ambivalent staff to remain. Also HR could offer more solutions to these issues but remains typically silent//powerless.

Middle management and HR is a joke. A "People and Culture" position was created recently as a stopgap to no avail. They just laid off half of the office in San Francisco, 99% of which consisted of the minority/POC employees - if you weren't Caucasian, blond haired, or blue-eyed you were out. It's a service firm that pretends to be boutique. No such thing as loyalty in this place. Get out as soon as the opportunity presents itself.