Good people but out of touch management
Pros
All of the low-level consultants i worked with were genuinely great people. Lots of recent grads who are passionate and all around great to work with
Cons
The worst parts of consulting and working in environmental fields, all in one. They work you hard like they do in management consulting, but the pay is abysmal, and there's very little adjustment for local COL and no bonuses for consultant level employees. You just get the pleasure of being worked to death by management so they can get their bonus and going home to your five roommates. The western business unit leadership in particular is extremely out of touch. They constantly make promises about trying to improve pay, work balance, etc, and then nothing ever happens. They already got their napa estate and there's always new blood to burn out, so no reason for them to actually care I suppose. This is of course normal for companies, but all the more frustrating because of the front they put up. I think a lot of people go to Ramboll thinking is a scandanavian company with strong ethics, working for less isn't so bad. And to be fair, employees in Europe probably do have it pretty good. But on the American side its just like any other money grubbing corporation. The inequity within the company depending on where you are hired into is extremely bad. Turnover is crazy high especially in the bay area. This is really bad for morale and makes retaining institutional knowledge very difficult. Its common for low level staff to be working on at least 5 and maybe even up to 10 projects at once, with different managers always pulling you in different directions. They will say they care about work life balance and whatnot and then five seconds later will guilt you into doing yet another task.
