Jacobs reviews

I really hated to see what has happened at this place over the last 20 years. When I first got out of college (more than 20 years ago), the Greenville Jacobs office was the place to be for a young engineer. Good mentors, smart set up for projects, good overall personnel, and so on. Granted, there were a lot of politics, but the pros far outweighed the cons. Now? Place has completely gone haywire. Some of the best people cut loose or gone. The younger people.....it is obvious they haven't been mentored at all. (Really lacking in know-how.) But probably one of the craziest parts is how affirmative action has gone wild. They have a lot of women in positions who clearly aren't qualified for the job (by temperament or experience). Interestingly enough, I overheard one of them (one of their "section leads" or whatever it was called) acknowledge that privately. A generation ago, she never would have been considered for that based on her level of experience. On the personality side, one stunner was the fact a woman I had the displeasure of working with the first time I was there (incredibly rude, abrasive person, whom it seemed like was never there) has actually been made a higher up in the organization's management! Unbelievable. I remember thinking 20 years ago, they'd can her the first time layoffs came.....instead, *this* happens. Oh well.

I only worked for the company for two months. My manager was an extreme micromanager. They seemed to have a deep mistrust for me, and had me report my every move, and how long it took to do them twice a day. My manager did not take the time to sit and train with me, and I was only mentored by my colleagues. I was thrown into leading 2 different pursuits only 1 month into my time at the company. I wasn’t even given time to shadow a full proposal cycle. Multiple team members expressed concern and empathy for my manager “throwing me to the wolves” by being assigned such large pursuits so quickly. At 1.5 months my manager said they needed to see “immediate improvement” and laid out 6 key changes but did not give a timeline. 2 weeks later, halfway through leading 2 more new pursuits, I was fired for not progressing quickly enough, although when I started, everyone said it would take at least 3-9 months to get your footing and feel somewhat acclimated. While I can admit, my work was not always perfect, I believe I was set up to fail from the start, not given the chance to learn without fear of condescending remarks, and received no training from management. My manager jumped the gun to berate me at least twice, without asking for clarity and realizing they’d made a mistake or misread something. In addition, looking at the recent work of my white counterparts that had been in the industry for over 10 years, I spotted many of the same errors that I, a young, black, entry level coordinator with 3 years of experience, made. The difference is that I was chastised for those same mistakes while still at a draft level, while their mistakes went unseen, uncriticized, and were actually submitted to clients. All I wanted was guidance from the person that hired me and fair and equal treatment, and I got neither. I was talked down to and stressed to the point of tears almost daily. It was a very hostile work environment and no matter what I did, nothing was good enough and that was made blatantly clear every day of my short, 2 month tenure.