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.
