- Terrain's culture of long hours, immense pressure and abuse from leadership is exactly the type of outdated work style that gives the landscape architecture and architecture industry a bad name.
- Work expectations are intense, commonly expecting employees to work 60 hour weeks, join meetings well after work hours and work consistent long days for constant deadlines. Management expects employees to be available to work after hours at all times. I was implicitly told that I needed to be available nights and weekends. While long hours during the time around deadlines is to be expected in this industry, the amount and consistency of deadlines at Terrain made these long hours happen way too frequently creating a terrible work-life balance and becoming very damaging to my mental health.
- Management is very stuck in their own way of doing things and does not take employee feedback into account. They say they are open to employee feedback and often ask for it, but any feedback is met with resistance. Employees are afraid (not an exaggeration) to provide any real feedback to management.
- Employees are treated differently based on whether they are US Citizens or Visa holders.
-Design is held in the hands of leadership and younger designers do not get a chance to design much. If leadership doesn't like your design style your ideas and designs will rarely be accepted or be completely redesigned by principals.
- There is a lot of passive and abusive language that occurs at Terrain. You constantly receive comments that your work is not up to standards, back-handed insults towards your work quality or style, gaslighting, and you are often compared to other employees. This makes working here very damaging to your mental health.
Be very, very aware of what you are getting into if you work here. There are some benefits, but in my opinion, they are far outweighed by the cons.
