field technician

laboratory technician

environmental technician

environmental project manager

analyst

Montrose Environmental Group, Inc.

This job was not what it was drawn out to be. I worked for their Orlando office after just moving to the area, and was hoping to get started with them as an environmental and health specialist long term. It was a complete joke with how unprepared they were and how unprepared I felt since day 1. I had no access to communication tools or basic resources for a couple of weeks. 

Forewarned- I told their recruiter from the beginning that I didn't have any sampling experience and I might now be a fit, but he still insisted on moving forward said that the team will properly train me to get me up to speed. Well guess what, they didn't. I had 4 days of shadowing then I was thrown out to the wolves. 

Orientation- There was no real orientation or introduction either. There was a 1 hour on boarding then that was it. No meeting or conversation with my manager or anyone else. Not even like a get to know you kind of thing. I didn't even know how to access the front door because I was never told-- if that shows you what level of break down there is there. 

Corporate- I think this has to do with the fact that corporate keeps eating up companies and not managing them. Half of the employees are on outlook and the other half on google. There is definitely a lack of cohesion because of it. It puts pressure on the managers and of course down to us. I didn't even have access to my work email on my phone because in order to do that I would've had to let the company to have access and see everything I do on it. Not right. 
Also the only thing that managers cared about was getting us billable instead of taking the time to train us properly. 

Disconnected team- My manager never comes in the office, and it doesn't feel like really anyone comes into the office, so there's a lack of chemistry and understanding of basic communication. During my first tour my manager didn't even know who some people were or how to get around the office, so, there's that. A normal conversation with my direct manager or anyone there was so infrequent. 

Lack of training- I had a client that was an hour and a half away and got 4 days training for when it definitely needed more. I even expressed this to them, and it got addressed briefly, but still never saw any kind of extra training, shadowing, or changes. I even got up one morning at 3:00am to shadow one of our team members for some type of sampling, and by the time I got there the guy had already finished the sampling so I never even got to learn what he did. Talk about a huge slap in the face to have me wake up that early, drive an hour and a half away, and then not do the one thing I was supposed to do there. 
Also, as part of my 30/60/90 day plan, they literally wrote in writing "Figure it out" as a goal. I was not set up for success in this role, this is not okay, and it's not what I signed up for. 

Montrose consists of 3 young Wharton grads running classroom experiments in an industry with which they have no experience at all. The core belief seems to be that hiring a bevy of superfluous high-level managers, VPs, sales/marketing executives and legal counsel will somehow make up for the poor quality of service. Further, there is little evidence of wanting to improve the quality of service by training and educating personnel, replacing archaic, danger-laden equipment, or retaining their most-skilled employees by treating them with dignity and respect.  Rather, a corporate emphasis on marketing and sales dominates, with the apparent goal of beguiling investors with enticing PowerPoint slides detailing their grand designs and a promise of high returns. Cutting corners in order to pay the salaries of their multiple VPs, they offer no 401k matching, provide inadequate and overpriced health insurance - particularly hurtful to employees with families, refuse to invest in the education/training of employees, and continue to operate with outdated, often damaged, equipment. Clients will soon catch on to their current bait-and-switch operation, however, as high prices paired with shoddy and incompetent services seldom results in return customers, no matter how many executive VPs are running the show.

I worked at the Lab/Office in Eldorado Hills, they have other locations but this is my experience there.

They're a small company going through growing pains and they are not dealing with it well. The only positive thing I can say about them is that they are somehow successful and have a lot of work to do. They're overworked and understaffed. Quite a few people I met do several different jobs at once and take on massive amounts of overtime. They desperately need to hire more people but they're incredibly slow with that for whatever reason.

The training is a joke, it's practically non-existent. It's sink or swim, they tell you how to do something once and then expect you to know how to do it perfectly.

My "trainer" was out for a few days because of COVID, so they just had me doing grunt work in the lab instead. When my trainer got back, my boss told me "she's going to be too busy to train you". I was shocked at what I just heard.

Also, my particular role, the job title was very misleading. They call it Report Writer, but it's really just throwing documents together in Adobe. There's a review process they expect you to do afterward, which requires quite a bit of know-how in the industry. My "trainer" took 5 minutes to quickly go over it and call it a day.

I was desperately trying to find something new after only a week in and I fortunately found one. This is the fastest I've ever left a job by far.

If you are a recent college grad, this is a decent place to start your career being that they do a good job of giving people with little experience opportunities but I don't think this is a good place for those further along in their careers. The pay is on the lower end of the spectrum and there is very little differentiation between job titles (lab technicians and analyst II do the same work, just with a 2-3 dollar pay difference) . New employee training is unorganized and can be very overwhelming for new employees, as well as the old employees who have to train them. Some managers are great, others not so much. Communication isn't the best between the toxicology lab, smoke lab, and chemistry lab and it can make completing job duties more stressful than they should be. Overtime is often stated as a plus during interviews but restrictions are placed on overtime very frequently due to unexpected decreases in workload. When work does pick up however, expect to work some 12 hour days and skip or take late lunches. Bonuses are also spoken of but vary dramatically year to year. Promotions are typically given to people by means of counteroffers to keep people from leaving the company. Haven't experienced any major layoffs while working here, which is an issue at many of the other labs, but as stated earlier, the company has a hard time keeping people.

Working at enthalpy definitely allows for a good learning experience at the cost of maybe some sanity. You will be expected to work at a fast pace unitizing basic knowledge of lab concepts.

A typical day consist of you checking a work log and prioritizing what you need to get done on an ever growing list of required testing. Once you plan out how you will use your day to get the task done, expect to leave a some time in your schedule in the case of rush orders, inefficient work systems and other unforeseeable outcomes.

One of the hardest parts of the job is the fact that a lot of the testing that you do will be time sensitive with each type of test having their own parameters. Prioritizing skills is a must for excellence. Because of the nature of the job being like this, it is a good way to learn how to plan and focus on important matters while being in a stressful work enviornment..

Other difficulties also include annoying sporadic work loads based on demands of each client, paired with the fact that you must constantly balance productivity and efficiency. Combine all this with high probability of long hours and even longer work weeks which are all depending on extremely dynamic and unpredictable project demands.  

All in all, working here will push your mental fitness to its limits with considerably poor compensation but if you decide to work here, know that excelling here will probably make other jobs feel easy by comparison.

I have worked as an Field Technician here for about a year now. I would not recommend working in this role here unless you don't have alternatives.  

Pros: 
- 4 weeks of paid vacation per year. 
- Excellent benefits package. 
- You get to learn a variety of methods of air emissions testing. 
- Most coworkers are supportive and will help you. 

Cons: 
-Managers can pass abusive/derogatory comments and unfairly blame technicians for mistakes. 
-Some coworkers are big-time bullies who will try to harass their less capable counterparts. 
-Work hours are too long (average day is 10 hours long). 
- Endless twists and turns and unexpected complications regardless of however much one plans ahead. 
- Teams rarely use to-do-lists, so sometimes they end up driving miles back to the office from far away locations in order to get missing items. 
- Work as a Technician is very physically laborious (climbing stacks as much as 300 feet high, often several times). Other tasks are also physically laborious, such as loading equipment in trucks. 
-Work often requires extreme attentiveness to detail and exceptional listening skills.  
- Technicians often have to work in extreme heat/cold in refineries, which have very high noise levels. 
- Very high percentage of travel, sometime to locations 11 hours away. 
-New lunch policy is inflexible and one frequently ends up paying for lunch from one's own pocket. 
-Testing equipment frequently malfunctions.

Running the records department at an environmental consulting firm can become very tedious at times. It requires long hours of focus and being very detail oriented. On any given day, even a slow day, I'm scanning, archiving, tracking, boxing up, and shipping tens of thousands of pages of raw scientific data. While my position doesn't require that my degree be specifically in chemistry or geology, I've learned from working with Chemist and Geologist for the past four years that it helps to know exactly what your company does and their process of work. In three years I've turned archiving into a company wide records department, supervising four employees. Scanning hard copy files, digitizing them, storing them off site at a document storage facility, tracking the locations of files that are being passed around from worker to worker, and approving invoices for received data is just part of my job. One thing I would love to do here is try and eliminate the use of paper within the company unless needed. While that plan has yet to take off I think with the right amount of time and trust I'll be able to make that change if not completely I'd help significantly limit the use of paper within the office.

I wouldn’t recommend working for this company at all. The pay is an absolute joke. It is unbelievably low, the lowest among any laboratory in the area and surrounding areas. Between being required to have a college degree and the amount of work you’re made to do, the pay is degrading. The turnover rate is extremely high, it is a literal revolving door of new employees. There are zero training procedures in place for new hires, so there are constant problems with things being done wrong because no one is trained properly. The environment used to be laid back but management has started picking employees apart, demanding higher work volumes and have started forcing people to do jobs they weren’t hired for and aren’t compensated for, so the morale is low and the overall environment is miserable. Management/group leaders show blatant favoritism, which has lead to work being distributed very unfairly/unevenly and has really created a hostile work environment. One positive is they offer good benefits. Other than that, I’d say steer clear of this company. 

I wouldn’t recommend working for this company at all. The pay is unbelievably low, the lowest among any laboratory in the area and surrounding areas. Between being required to have a college degree and the amount of work you’re made to do, the pay is degrading. The turnover rate is extremely high, it is a literal revolving door of new employees. There are zero training procedures in place for new hires, so there are constant problems with things being done wrong because no one is trained properly. The environment used to be laid back but management has started picking employees apart, demanding higher work volumes and have started forcing people to do jobs they weren’t hired for and aren’t compensated for, so the morale is low and the overall environment is miserable. Management/group leaders show blatant favoritism, which has lead to many issues and a tense work environment. One positive is they offer good benefits. Other than that, I’d say steer clear of this company.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Working with motivated individuals that are really passionate about their goals and having aspersions for their future. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Nothing was stressful at all, when you have full support of your team, there was always someone willing to help you with any questions or issues you might have. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
I worked alone with my main office being across the country, but it never felt that way. The culture was you were part of the office and team . 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Always a pleasure to work at Montrose and exceeding my daily goals and work load. Checking the water plant , daily numbers and performing daily tests of the equipment. Keeping the plant running smoothly as much as possible without any disruptions.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Field technician 138 salaries reported	$24.87 per hour
Laboratory technician 101 salaries reported	$19.26 per hour
Environmental technician 63 salaries reported	$25.02 per hour
Environmental project manager 31 salaries reported	$33.56 per hour
Analyst 32 salaries reported	$21.73 per hour

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