senior service associate

associate

senior associate

project associate

intern

Sargent & Lundy

In a rapidly declining fossil fuel market, Sargent & Lundy is too used to their old ways to diversify their business and hedge their future. There is a company culture of quelling young talent to keep the aging and inefficient engineers in power. 

Pay and bonuses are not based on performance which allows for a large percentage of employees to "punch the clock" every day at work with very few actual productive hours. This leads to a significant difference in work product and resentment between the intelligent, hard working engineers and the slackers. Engineers and project managers who have proven that they cannot complete a project under budget are given chance after chance while their unsuccessful projects eat in to the bonuses of successful employees and hurt the company's reputation.  

All of the good leads, project managers, and project directors are so overworked that you can watch the happiness drain from their bodies after every successive "promotion" (aka more responsibility with the same pay). I find that a good way to evaluate your company is to look at your boss or your boss's boss and ask yourself, "Do I want to be in that position one day?" In my opinion, the pay is not worth the unhappiness that I see on all of our Manager's and Director's faces day after day around the office. It is very hard to walk around our office and find someone who is happy.

In the last 4 years, I have watched half of our business group and most of the good young engineers leave the company for better pay and better positions. The fossil business group has lost over 100 of their employees while our competition is hiring them and growing their business. Every person I talk to here is looking for another job at the moment. Sargent & Lundy refuses to hire experienced engineers and project managers from different industries to grow their company into new markets. The lack of diversification, creativity, and foresight at the top of the organization could be the downfall of this company. 

Project directors / VP's are promoted from within which sounds great but does not work in practice. You do well as a detail oriented engineer sitting alone at your desk doing complex system calculations you are moved up to lead then maybe project manager. Now, you need to be great at a whole new skill set: managing teams of people, budgets, schedules, and communicating clearly with clients. That's where most people usually quit or plateau in the company. If you succeed as a project manager you may get the opportunity to be a project director / VP after 25 or so years where now you must learn a third skill set: business development. This is where the Peter Principle really sets in. Most great engineers are horrible at developing business because they have spent their whole career engineering things not cultivating business relationships. This is the fatal flaw in the career path at Sargent & Lundy. Project directors are so busy traveling 4 days a week trying to drum up business they do not have any time to direct their projects. This leads to bad projects snowballing into huge losses for the company. The company needs to hire dedicated business development individuals to grow into new territories and markets.

My advice to upper management: Promote your young, hard working, intelligent engineers and pay them based on their performance so they do not leave, they could be the future of your company. If these individuals are instrumental to the success of a profitable project why should the VP's be the only ones who reap the benefits? The only way to correct this path is to replace the old with the new and usher in a younger generation of engineers who can breath life into this archaic company.

I have been with S&L for over 15 years and have worked directly with literally hundreds of people across multiple office locations. I cannot say enough great things about this company. For me what has always had the most lasting impact is how employees here genuinely care about their work, their clients, and each other. 

Let’s start with the people. I have relationships with my coworkers that extend outside the office, which is what everyone should hope for in their job. You will meet people here with whom you’ll create lifetime relationships. These are people who will be at your weddings. At your baby showers. At your backyard summer parties. When you have achievements in your personal life, good and bad, you will have S&L people there with you. They will become a part of your life.

On to the job. So many people have been here for decades. Decades! This isn’t a start-up. Do you want to learn and build an established and respected career? This is the place to be. If you need help, just turn around and someone is ready to help. And our employees are not merely performing work; they are speaking at international conferences to educate others about the work we perform. You will be working alongside those very people. You can easily become one of those people. Having been with the company for this long, it’s really fun to watch it happen.

And let’s talk about the changes that are happening. Our CEO rules and our leadership team is capturing new work in so many new areas it’s unreal. Our industry is evolving, and S&L is quickly leveraging these changes to launch into directions in the power industry that are mindblowing: renewable energy, battery storage, plant security, national labs, data centers, WiFi networking … go have a look at the updates on our LinkedIn company page to see the extent of what we have going on these days. We have been firing up entirely new office locations and internal career opportunities are launching left and right.

Finally, I want to get a plug in here for my friends in Chattanooga because more recently my career has gotten me directly involved with the folks in this office. Everyone I’ve met in Chattanooga has been awesome. I genuinely look forward to my visits (which are frequent). My role has allowed me exposure to see the genuine concern leadership has if an employee has an issue, and the desire to fix it. And the people at all levels are so fantastically FRIENDLY. I love it.

My experience at Sargent & Lundy was a mixed one. I joined the company eager to contribute, grow, and improve their design processes, especially around CAD standards and project efficiency. Despite having the support and recommendation of top performers, I was often overlooked for roles that matched my skillset and initiative.

There were repeated instances where I was expected to deliver major design packages under unrealistic timeframes—sometimes compressing months of work into days—while absorbing blame for scope and budget overruns caused by constant client-driven changes. At one point, I was given three working days and a weekend to produce 36 P&ID drawings for an entire compressor station, after having estimated (with other senior designers) that the job would take 6 months. The end result was judged without regard to the impossible constraints.

The culture leaned heavily on unpaid overtime and lacked a clear sense of accountability from leadership. I was reprimanded for using a charge code that was directly assigned to me by my manager, who later refused to acknowledge the error. I went nearly 7 months without real time off, and was still asked to burn PTO when no work was available.

Ultimately, the environment did not support professional growth or honest feedback. While I did my best to exceed expectations and help others around me, I felt the culture prioritized optics and politics over skill, effort, and accountability.

Ok, I didn't hate working here - the working class folks were good friends - but this place has absolutely no company culture and upper management treats it's employees like profit generating cogs.  It's an unhealthy work environment for anyone. There is no investment in you, there is only a system of processes that, while perhaps very strong 40 years ago, hasn't been evolved over time.  As a result, the work is done to the best of the 1970s and investments in modern engineering technology are not just inadvertently neglected, but actively avoided. Technical ability isn't rewarded, and those who are too technical are looked down upon by HR and upper management. If you're one of the few who are chosen at birth as worthy of a bullet-proofed (not an exaggeration) corner office and if you are willing to wait it out for 30 years after being sent, multiple times and without your family, on work assignments to some of the most ungodly places on earth, there is a chance that you might be rewarded for your longevity in the system and be made a partner.  No doubt, it's good to be a partner among the 1% of individuals working at the firm that have any ownership stake (which is a very low ownership rate for an engineering firm). Otherwise, a technically capable but not venerated individual can expect to advance to a mid-level manager position where you will languish for eternity with no opportunity to develop, earning a salary and bonus that sharply lags that of peer firms.

This company has impressive infrastructure, has cornered it's markets with several key utilities by cutting rates to their bare bones, and is running on the back of a once impressive past.  It's best days are over.  Better to look elsewhere before you get assimilated.

Like the summary said, I have no complaints with the company. They are great to work with, very accommodating, usually a steady line of work, they're VERY quick to give out raises, everyone is happy to help out and answer questions; as an entry-level engineer, they provided everything I needed to begin a career. 

They do not provide any room for horizontal movement, however. Once you're hired in a group, you're sort of expected to stay in that group. Other companies may have "Rotational Programs" that put you through multiple subgroups in your field to determine what best suits you, and what you'd prefer, with the expectation that that's what you'll build your career in. S&L doesn't do that. Once you're hired for that group, you're working in that group, and that's that.

Also, to answer the typical Indeed questions:
 - What is a typical day at work? It's an office job. Expect A LOT of paperwork. ESPECIALLY if you're in the Nuclear group.
 - What did I learn? Things to do with power generation and power plants, as well as PLENTY of NRC regulations. 
 - How is management? Great. Very accommodating.
 - How is the workplace culture? Everyone is friendly and helpful.
 - What is the hardest part of the job? You need to be EXTREMELY detail-oriented. 
 - What is the most enjoyable part of the job? It's very satisfying to finish a project for a client.

Again, great company to work with! But the work they provided for the group I was in just wasn't for me. And there wasn't really an opportunity to "test the waters" to see if I'd fit in that group or any other group better.

Generally, the engineers and designers who are the ones actually turning out a deliverable product are intelligent, hard working, and supportive, as are immediate supervisors. The problem lies in the upper management and project managers. During the preparation of a proposal they will ask engineers and designers for input with regard to man-hours, all too often they then ignore that input. Then we get handed a project that is under budgeted, with a schedule that requires significant overtime. 

They also treat lower level employees as simply numbers on a payroll. For example, when someone leaves the company, there is no mention of that. If you find out at all it is only because the person leaving has sent an email saying goodbye. Similar with new hires. There have been many times when I have come to the office to find a previously empty desk occupied by someone. No announcement to welcome this new hire, nothing. For a company that touts communication, they do a poor job of actually communicating. 

S&L has made a lot of improvements embracing new ideas from all levels and fostering improved company culture. The work can be highly demanding at times, and for extended periods depending on your project assignment/team and your value as a performer. There is a large knowledge base of senior engineers and managers to lean on, and SMEs in various disciplines for technical support. Management is supportive (in my experience) and wants to retain talent; they do their best to keep employees interested in the work and still get projects done. Experience with particular clients, systems, or projects can pigeon hole individuals in one place at times. Some new hires on large projects do not enjoy the work initially as there is a large amount of administrative type work vs "real engineering", and large, complex projects can take many years to complete, so the satisfaction level can be low. At the middle management level/ senior engineer level the job can be extremely demanding juggling multiple projects, shifting resources, client interface and technical oversight simultaneously. The individuals that can do this well succeed, however, outside of a few select specialty groups, there are no real positions that are purely technical. One of the larger challenges is the lack of skilled senior designers that can work relatively autonomously, despite the company business process being structured such that engineers do very little to no true design (CAD work). Overall, the company is a great place for the average engineer interested in moving into management after 6-10+ years.

While at S&L I learned that the engineers run the shop ( like bull elephants in a china shop mentality) and that is extremely bad from a project cost perspective. They do not follow procurement protocols if they can find a way to circumvent the process. In fact this often costs the company excess dollars and runs into budget over runs. Engineers are typical engineers and extremely poor negotiators,if in fact any negotiation is done at all. They just accept what the vendor tells them the cost is and become very defensive when challenged. Don't get me wrong they are basically good engineers and they are only doing these things because management allows them to do business in this manner. However, the procurement/contracts people are constantly on guard to protect and correct the careless mistakes that the engineers make and there were a lot of them.The engineering head and a couple of partners in particular were responsible for this work mentality. There was some really great leadership also. In particular two partners and a senior project manager that I worked with. I enjoyed working at S&L and with most of the employees. We built some great fossil power plants. However there is no job stability. When the ripple effect from Enron hit, companies like S&L were forced to lay off / downsize a lot of people because of lack of work. My group was completely eliminated. I can only imagine the cost overruns.

This is a solid company to work for, especially those already in the Nuclear field or looking to enter the Nuclear field.  The compensation is almost unbeatable for young engineers fresh out of school.  If you perform well they will treat you well.  The downside is the lack of interesting work.  The projects are different ins a sense that you are replacing or upgrading a different piece of equipment or routing piping from point A to point B (mechanical only).  These types of projects have been done hundreds of times and it really is a copy and paste job, with minimal engineering input.  Yes you need the correct education and training.  Also, the clients the S&L works for are very demanding and unrealistic, they expect us to perform miracles in terms of scheduling.  The work/life balance is OK, it really depends on the week, but if you want to be a manager here it is terrible (but that is why they make more money).  However, the compensation and benefits are really one of the best in the industry.  All in all S&L is a very fair company, and treats their employees somewhat fairly (they do expect you to drop everything you have planned to finish a project).

I came into S&L very enthusiastic and was very accommodated from the start. Towards the end I can say the accommodation was not worth the strain working here. The work itself is very boring and this alone made myself find a new and better opportunity commencing my personnel departure. Management is extremely out of touch. The on job training is faulty at best and certain business groups tend to be cliquey like a high school cafeteria and the "culture" at S&L matches this at best. The culture is matched with a structure by fearing  management and directors by making a mistake in their direction to then blame it on the others below them assigned the task when the officers meeting comes around.

My best advice to management and the CEO Vic, who I met and is a very nice guy, is to keep an eye on the upper management and keep their egos in check. I would Ditch the corporate culture and treat employees with admiration rather than ill-mannered child behavior from grown adults. Especially with the younger engineers coming into the workforce you must understand that we cannot be bought and our happiness is not worth a paycheck so maybe leave the ego at home. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Senior service associate 6 salaries reported	$89,482 per year
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Intern 10 salaries reported	$24.45 per hour

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