Jacobs reviews

4.0

81% would recommend to a friend

(7,764 total reviews)
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Bob Pragada

90% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

Jacobs has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 7,764 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Jacobs employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Servicios de construcción, reparación y mantenimiento industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

8K reviews
2.0
Feb 5, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay (but I made $25,000 less last year than the year before because they reduced my hours), ability to telecommute

Cons

The biggest con is that under no circumstances are you allowed to charge to overhead. This means that they conduct staff meetings and informational meetings during lunch hour. If you are asked to update your resume for a proposal, you have to beg and plead for a project number to charge your time to (they expect you to work extra on billable work to get your 40 hours). If you aren't part of the "in" group, you have to find your own projects to work on. If you find work but someone in the "in" group wants it, you'll have to fight to keep it from being handed over to them. I have one project that I work on. Since it only provides me an average of 27 hours a week, I was converted to modified full-time which means I only get paid for the hours I can bill to a project. My client expects me to be available 40 hours a week in case something comes up or an ASAP request comes in so basically I'm "on call" for 40 hours but don't get paid for it. I received a score of 98% on the client satisfaction survey that is associated with the one project I have. I also have never received a negative performance review. This past year I got a 1.5% raise. The year before I got a 1% raise. The year before that was also 1%. What's interesting though is that the rate that the client pays for me goes up by 5% automatically each year. He even asked me if I was seeing any of that and was disappointed to hear that I was not being rewarded for the great job I was doing. The only reason I am still with Jacobs is because I care about the project I am on and I love working from home. By the way, Jacobs no longer pays for my former cubicle, landline phone or parking space but won't pay for the cell phone I use to communicate with my client and staff. I recently needed the professional version of some software to do my job but couldn't get my manager to approve it. Thankfully the trial version worked. My manager checks in with me about 3 times a year for administrative tasks. In a nutshell, it's awful. I won't get into the culture and values but it's all smoke and mirrors. You will not feel cared for. You will not feel like you are their greatest asset. All you will feel is anxiety when you can't find the minimum 21 hours of billable work that they require that you have.

2.0
Feb 2, 2013

Management had their heads permanently up their behinds...

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Preface: I worked for Jacobs as a contractor on-site at NASA Johnson Space Center, so I can only comment on that particular division (ESCG). The ONLY PRO is that the work was interesting--I mean, c'mon, it was NASA! The rank-and-file guys "in the trenches" are awesome to work with.

Cons

Disclaimer: I worked for Jacobs as a contractor on-site at NASA Johnson Space Center, so I can only comment on that particular division (ESCG). The management out there had their heads permanently up their behinds--yes, more so than usual. They would always over-extend/allocate the employees, and then throw them under the bus at the end of the project. Us workers used to joke that management had skins of Teflon because nothing ever seemed to "stick" on them when stuff went awry. I worked there for over 5 years, and it was like this the whole time. Without any risk of exaggeration, I would say that a majority of my time was spent trying to work around them. It was exhausting...

5.0
Feb 2, 2013

Very satisfactory

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Technical Growth, Friendly job environment,

Cons

Overtime is the only con I see

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