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
1.0
May 7, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

When I started the pay was great and my coworkers were good people.

Cons

It’s extremely stressful there. Leadership tends to have bully PM’s who question everything in a harsh accusatory manner, when a project isn’t going well. The worst part is when Covid happened, they came up with a terrible plan to only pay salary exempt employees for billable hours, even if there was only as little as 6 hours a week. You might make enough to cover your health insurance, if you’re lucky, but nothing else. Then they gave everyone the option to switch to “Modified Regular” or go part time. That was just a fancy word that means, you’re no longer allowed to be an exempt salary employee and instead we’re using this as a means to force you to switch to an hourly employee structure when we have billable work. Guess what, nearly all billable work disappeared for half the year. They tried to make it seem like a good thing by saying that we get to spend more time at home with our family, while acting like no one had bills to pay. Those who wouldn’t conform were laid off or furloughed. And in some states, you can’t draw unemployment, unless you’re let go fully and because it was the companies fault. So taking that “Modified Regular” option kept you from being eligible to get unemployment. The executives acted like they were feeling the pain too by taking a 10% pay cut. Then at the end of 2020, (to add insult to injury), they boasted in Linked about how they had record profits that year. Fast forward to 2022 and apparently they’re still practicing this highly unethical and I would think barely legal practice and in some groups there’s still little to no work, so some employees are getting furloughed still. Employees are having to use up their vacation time, until it runs out to get a full payday for 1 - how ever many vacation days that have saved up, until they run out.

1.0
Mar 17, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Any project experience is experience, and the compensation is competitive. Great future office location. Flexible schedule.

Cons

If you’re an engineer out of college, this is not the best place to learn and develop. There are long gaps of little to no work. You find yourself trying to seek out work. The management is not experienced in growing and developing young engineers, especially during the current work from home situation. There is a lot of disorganization in projects which has caused some people to leave. The mentorship and training on projects is not up to par with other engineering firms. No transparency or good communication from managers.

1.0
Nov 19, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Access to a wide range of expertise and projects.

Cons

You are no more than a cog in the machine. The absolute focus on utilisation means that if you are between projects, you are no or than 2 weeks from a long term secondment to a client to search archives and get forgotten about. If you are lucky enough to stay within the company, as a graduate, your career is likely to be wasted becoming an expert in managing a spreadsheet or just being a bum on a seat to bill hours to projects. Luckily due to the company size and scale, if you have zero skills and want to spend your time making no contribution to the company, there's bound to be a role for you, heading up some internal scheme that achieves very little tangible results other than an email that people read in their lunch break for a laugh or for looking good on LinkedIn!

Viewing 178 - 180 of 7,764 Reviews

Glassdoor has 8,806 Jacobs reviews submitted anonymously by Jacobs employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Jacobs is right for you.