Kimley-Horn reviews

- Work/life balance is not achievable due to utilization goals and company culture. - Utilization goals are extremely high for all employees, particularly for younger staff. Since training, marketing, federal holidays, and paid time off all count against UT, employees have to "make up" any time they take off in order to reach their UT goals. This system discourages employees from taking the paid time off that they earn and from attending training/professional development events. - KH is meticulous about forecasting workload months out and on a weekly basis as well. However, employees are routinely forecasting 50-60 hour work weeks and nothing is done to rectify that. The expectation is that staff will cancel their outside plans and give up their free time in order to meet deadlines that their PMs set. - Overtime is essentially required in order to reach the recommended 115% effort (46 hours per week = 6 extra hours per week, 24 per month, 288 per year minimum). Despite this expectation, employees are not compensated for their extra time. - Staff are repeatedly drowned in the KHool-aid that "all consulting firms are like this, but at Kimley-Horn is transparent about it." From experience, this is not the case; other firms have managed to remain profitable while allowing their employees to have lives outside of the office as well.

My biggest issue with Kimley-Horn boils down to their execution of utilization. According to Kimley-Horn, analysts should have a 96% utilization rate by the end of the year, meaning that 96% of their time should be spent on billable work. Makes total sense, right? It ensures that the firm focuses on profitable work. However, it gets much murkier than that... Vacation days, federal holidays, and sick days are also included in that equation. So, basically, any time spent not at work during the typical M-F work week is considered unproductive time. Upper management says that utilization rates are developed to include built in vacation/holidays, but it doesn't take advanced calculus to realize that that's not exactly true. Let's say you decide to take 10 work days off throughout 1 year, which is basically 8 federal holidays plus a few extra days here and there. If you are 100% billable for the rest of the year, you will reach a UT of 96.1% at the end of the year, which barely meets the goal established by the firm. However, that is only if you are 100% billable every single day... which is almost impossible. Why? Because, along with technical work, you are expected to balance technical training, marketing, professional development, and other non-billable work. You are expected to do these things, regardless of whether or not they are required, on your own time, resulting in many early mornings and late nights. Ultimately, you are encouraged to work at 115% effort to make sure you are making up any time that is considered un-billable... There is a reason why many analysts "joke" that vacations don't exist - because you have to make those hours up at some point or another. So yeah, let that sink in. If you want anything resembling a work-life balance, this place is not for you. And, trust me, they may try to sway you with a bonus to reward you for your efforts, but, again, it doesn't take much math to realize that whatever bonus you get still doesn't cover the number of extra hours you worked throughout the year. As if that weren't bad enough, very few project managers respected my time and always assumed that I was willing to drop either 1.) other project managers' work or 2.) my own personal obligations to meet their strict deadlines, which were usually a result of them over-promising a client something that wasn't realistic. This place is extremely toxic.