Arcadis touts “employee first” policies, but in practice it’s always clients and leadership first.
Highly bureaucratic structure.
Benefits fall below what you might find elsewhere within the industry. PTO starts at ~3 weeks per year (accumulated), increases by 1 day a year. 2 floating holidays and 7 federal holidays. No sick days—gotta chew into limited PTO for that. Office remains open during the holidays.
Salary is below industry standard and lacks transparency. Merit increases chronically lag behind rates of inflation. Upward mobility/promotions are used as a carrot for people willing to work ridiculous overtime and/or take on managerial responsibilities no single person should ever have to bear. Otherwise, career advancement moves at a snail’s pace.
Max 4% 401K match.
Work-life balance is exceedingly difficult to achieve. A cheery work culture/discourse around health and safety masks an outdated work ethic that rewards self-sacrifice. “Always online” culture. Expect regular emails late into the night or on weekends. Feeling overwhelmed and unwell? Better snap out of it fast, else you have to use one of those precious PTO days.
Icky one-upsmanship of who stayed longer in the office/who worked more overtime. Overtime rarely pays out. Management prioritizes billability and persistently under-budgets and under-staffs for projects in order to remain competitive. The tacit expectation is to quietly under-bill your own work.
Career progression is a mixed bag. The work at Arcadis is interdisciplinary and in theory, one could move in many directions—but most teams work in siloes, and in the end your teams’ project needs 100% dictate the kind of things you’ll end up learning and doing. This may vary somewhat by team/manager.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is considered a core (recent) value but not much to show for it.
Senior staff tend to be stuck in their old ways and often dismissive of new talent and/or inflexible about real change.
