geotechnical engineer

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HALEY & ALDRICH

The projects you have the opportunity to work on with this company are amazing. The clients are great, and the company does great work. However, they have no respect for work-life boundaries unless you are in upper management. The principle engineers are actively pulling up the ladder after themselves and are locked in to great benefits. New employees should expect negligible salary growth, long hours, and vacations to get cancelled.   If you're considering joining, plan on sticking it out for 3 years until you figure out if you're in the "in" group and tracked upwards or if you're just going to be given the "leftovers" projects and assignments and stagnate. It's a good company, but you, the employee, need to be able to capitalize on the internal opportunities it offers. Advancement is not a given, and in this way H&A is more akin to a strategy consulting firm than many legacy engineering design firms. For me, the compensation and lack of time off that I could take wasn't enough to offset the projects and people, so I left. (Managers who may see this review and be surprised, because THEIR compensation and time off get protected, your young engineers receive no such luxury.)

Haley & Aldrich does contain a fair number of good/bright people, but expect to be stressed, and work 50-60 hours a week with little gratitude. Management likes to talk about the company "culture, core values, being a learning organization, stewardship"...all of which is an allusion that employees joke about around the water cooler. What it all boils down to is being billable, and creating profit, which is only shared at bonus time with the top 25%.

One hour you could be working, and the next, be fired with no warning or valid reason, especially if you are in an “at-will” state. The day before, management will tell you that you are doing great, producing great numbers, etc, but will then replace you because some big boss just decided to get rid of you. No performance plan, no warning, if the big boss says it, it happens. No questions asked.  If your manager in your 1:1 tells you that you are doing an excellent job and have no issues, BE SCARED! You are most likely next. Remember, you are replaceable. At Haley & Aldrich,  your job is 100% NOT secure.

It’s an employee owned company so the big executives have a stake in ownership of the company. They are very hesitant to change and hesitant to paying employees a fair wage because that would mean less money for their personal pockets. I was told by one of the senior managers about this multiple times. 

DEI initiatives are only there to make a client happy. Senior management doesn’t back up the initiatives or ERG groups that were created. 

Culture at this company is non-existent. It ultimately sucks the life out of you. Management preaches growth and accomodating different personality and thinking types but does nothing to actually apply it. Many toxic employees are placed in positions of power. There is mention of diversity and inclusion and a department exists but in my tenure I never saw efforts made to make the rare minority employee feel empowered to succeed. Seeing that many of the employees are Phd's, scientists, engineers, etc., interacting with different departments is dreadful. Many people speak in an arrogant, condescending and unfriendly tone of voice due to their credentials. Being in corporate, people often project the need to satisfy these toxic attitudes on to you. The work is boring. The offices are dreary. There's nothing to make you feel like the company is invested in it's employees. All that exists at this company is work, work, work. 

My experience working at Haley & Aldrich was disappointing due to the overwhelming workload and an unsettling company culture. From the start, the expectations were unrealistic, with an excessive amount of work piled on without proper support or reasonable deadlines. The high-pressure environment made it difficult to maintain a healthy work-life balance, and burnout seemed common among employees.

Beyond the workload, the company culture felt off. There was a strange dynamic in how management interacted with employees, and despite the company’s claims of fostering collaboration, the atmosphere often felt disconnected and unwelcoming. It seemed like people were just going through the motions rather than genuinely engaged with their work. Communication from leadership was also lacking, making it hard to know where you stood or what was expected.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend Haley & Aldrich to anyone looking for a sustainable and positive work environment.

Pros:
You’ll learn a lot, fast. Exposure to a variety of projects and regulatory frameworks makes it a solid training ground for junior staff. Colleagues are generally smart and well-intentioned, and there’s pride in the technical quality of the work.

Cons:
The work-life balance is virtually nonexistent. Utilization targets are extremely high, often leaving little to no time for professional development, admin, or just breathing room. Expect to work late nights and weekends during “crunch periods” — which happen often and with little warning. Long hours are normalized, and there’s a strong expectation to always be available, even outside of billable time. The unpredictability of workload makes it hard to plan anything outside of work, and burnout is common.

I worked 20 to 30 hours a week part-time giving support to a staff of 6 people and sometimes working on projects with other Haley and Aldrich employees in other states. The Columbus staff was a great group of people and I miss working with them. It was a very team environment on all projects.

I most enjoyable part of the job was setting up the company conference for over 30 out of town employees and Columbus staff. Worked with hotel staff and transportation companies to arranged and organized the meeting. Worked with other H&A employees on this project to confirm flight and car rental for the people who needed it. 
The hardest part of the job was they just did not have enough work to keep me busy for the full 30 hours a week I needed. This company lost there funding to keep me at 20 hours.

Management shake up occurred my first two weeks. I was neglected and untrained and given work at a level that was far too high without training and background then dinged for poor performance. The say to ask a lot of questions but when I did I was penalized and had a project taken away from me. I suffered a devastating loss of confidence as a result and I have had nothing but stellar performance reviews for 20 years. When I asked management to step in as I was having issues with a person in particular I was told to try and be friends with her. One day my work was one micro inch off to the left and the next day it was off one micro inch to the right.  After a few weeks of this I was shaking every day. A psychological hellscape…besides the one bad person and uninterested supervisor the rest of the staff was wonderful. Recommend sticking up for yourself early and often and you have to have tough skin.

I worked with this company for over a decade.  

 There are a lot of great people in the organization that are quite bright!  This is a great place to learn as they are progressive when it comes to their computer systems, software and their networks!  There is a lot of talent to learn and grow from, and I think very highly of many people in the organization! 

 There does tend to be a fair amount of turnover as the company is always trying new and different things.

Great benefits!  

Everyone has a different experience here depending on your management.  There are some truly talented managers, but they are a rare commodity.  Expect to work a lot of hours with little gratitude.

Tattle Tale Culture is welcomed- Anytime someone has a concern with you, they go to your superior before coming to you. HR encourages this communication strategy.

DEI- It’s just to check off a box to make clients happy. They created ERG’s, but the company does not back them up for fear of and I quote “backlash”. 

Layoffs- Very impersonal. No warning. One hour you are working, the next you can be terminated, lie to your face as to the reason why, and shut your computer off. 

Power Trips- Senior managers treat Junior employees with no respect. Poor communication and can’t relate to them. High turnover amongst junior staff for this reason.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Geotechnical engineer 27 salaries reported	$98,574 per year
Environmental engineer 31 salaries reported	$88,957 per year
Environmental scientist 18 salaries reported	$94,662 per year
Geologist 16 salaries reported	$76,654 per year
Civil engineer 9 salaries reported	$113,333 per year

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