monitor

environmental scientist

data analyst

shelter coordinator

inspector

Tetra Tech

Huge lack of training and at the same time you're expected to inherently know all of the protocols for which there are many. You are stuck because you make a mistake and nobody shows you the right way to do things nor most the time what it is that you were doing incorrectly. Everybody passes the buck onto the person under or below them and never takes the responsibility for their own mistakes so if you start out and your at the bottom of the company ladder you can expect to catch all the greif for all that goes wrong above you and it's a gossip ridden soap opera when it comes to that, Don't expect to have anything about you or your job performance stated to you directly, nobody speaks of you to your face and is to little of character to do that, instead they will move you are put you in a different position where you are stuck with the same lack of training and ill comm=unication where you make mistakes and never shown the correct way. That is how people learn, making mistakes is part of the learning process on any job and it is the duty of those above you to make sure that you are shown the correct ways so as not to make them again but Tetra Tech has a lack of leadership that does not address things appropriately if at all. Theres always someone under them that is supposed to do that.

There were two great people that were very good at their job, training and maturity and I thank them for the proper training they helped me with and they don't deserve any greif, they deserve a promotion.

I got some chemical in my eye the first week I was working there and when I needed to go to a doctor I had to do a evaluation over the phone first and then when that nurse and then doctor approved it they said they would call back in several hours to tell me which place to go to. After my eyes swelled up and crusted shut every night for a week I'd go into the warehouse and theyd tell me my eyes are really red and suspect me of whatever. I don't even drink and they accused me of drinking on the job.

They told me I'd be making 25 per hour when hiored then only got paid 20. I was working 15 hour days 6 days a week and on the timecard you must initial a box that says I was offered and that I took all my legal breaks but in actuality if I wanted to take a lunch it would reflect poorly on me, and if a supervisr were to walk up while you were sitting in the truck, (The vehicle being basically your office) even if doing the work you were told you cannot. So there were basically no breaks and they don't pay you for half hour a day that you are actually working through. If you don't initial the box they wont take the timecard. they have people to overlook everything on there and even a sign up on the wall showing you what you need to put on it even if you didn't get the breaks.

The worst possible thing you can do there though,,, the thing that is the absolute sin when it comes to working there is walking into the warehouse without youre bright colored safety vest on... worst thing in the world. 

I could go on.

I worked for RPS for a number of years. Until the last 3 years or so they were a great company to work for, although senior management was out of touch with many areas of the company. The collapse in the Energy Division in 2015-16 due to the oil price collapse was handled quite badly. Junior staff and managers were made redundant in droves, and many of the remainder had to take salary cuts of 20-30% to retain jobs. Salaries were not great to start with.

This contrasts with difficulties in another organisation I have knowledge of, where an email was initially circulated stating that all Board members would forgo their bonuses and take an immediate 20% salary cut. If further cuts were needed, Unit managers would take a salary cut. Junior staff would only be made redundant or asked to take cuts if these steps were insufficient. Staff felt that was fair and no-one complained.

There were high hopes when a new Senior Management Team took over a year or so ago, but it seems to have adopted a very inward-looking stance. Focus has been on beefing up internal "processes" to such an extent that Project Managers often need to get approval from several levels higher up the chain to produce tenders or carry out work, leading to a strong feeling of "why am I here if I'm not trusted to do my job?" 

The other main focus has been on "rebranding" which seem  to have taken up an inordinate amount of Senior Management Team time. It seems that a new Senior Management Team in any organisation almost always thinks that a rebranding is a great thing to do. Staff have been bombarded with videos, emails and booklets about the rebranding. Fatuous tag lines such as "making complex easy" and "a brand built on purpose" have been instituted (which immediately became corrupted by "coal face" staff to "making the easy complex" and "a brand build accidentally"). The re-branding itself uses "trendy" colours and designs which, like the tendency for companies to adopt computer typeface in the 1980s, looks modern now, but will look dated in 5 years. The previous branding was NOT trendy, but at the same time was timeless and whilst a bit boring, never looked dated.

To quote a couple of clients (in extremely large organisations):

" I don't care whether your logo is blue, magenta, green or rainbow, as long as I have competent people on my projects, who make a real difference to the quality of the final result. The rest is just BS"

"The £2 million RPS put aside for rebranding would have been better spent upping the salaries/ day rates of your field people and increasing the staffing levels of client-facing positions. Many of your field people, Project Managers and Business Development staff are nearing retirement. Instead of messing about with new colours, unreadable text and fancy videos, it would have been better to spend the money recruiting younger people to work alongside these vastly experienced staff so that you have some continuity of expertise going forward."

This job is a contract with the military at Tinker AFB in Midwest City Oklahoma. A typical day starts out with getting the daily assignments from your File Maintenance Supervisor as to which laptops need to be inspected daily. There are anywhere from 3 to 12 sets of laptops with 10 to 16 laptops in each cabinet. Depending on what happened at midnight some or all didn't get the overnight up date and must be manually forced to update or restart thus this starts the morning. This can take anywhere from 1 hour to 4 hours depending on the laptops and their speed. This is completed while standing the whole time. After the laptops are "synchronized" a "report" is filed as to each and every detailed step that was taken to update each laptop. On Tuesday and Thursday the clerk would return to a designated office and retrieve the new changes that need to be added to each of the military maintenance manuals. Each update/change must be checked for absolute completion before it is inserted into the manuals. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, if the work from Tuesday or Thursday is completed, will be spent (after the computers are updated) inspecting manuals for 100% perfection. This is called Annualing a File. Each file must be inspected every year according to military standards. There are over 300 files throughout the base. Each file is assigned a team (or vice versa) there are about 40 files per team and there are 5 teams on this contract. File inspection includes ensuring all pages are present and in the right order, ensuring that each page has the most recent updated change, and that all annotations referring to whom put the new pages into the book and what day it was done is done properly. This inspection is also when torn pages are copied and replaced with untorn pages, if any way-word ink marks are added by a mechanic, the page is removed and an unmarked page is replaced, all "note pages, or sticky notes, or sticky flags" are removed. This inspection ensures that the file clerk has returned the book to perfect new, as if it were being sold in a store, and never used before. Extreme attention to detail can tire a person out, but the lack of an office or general office materials, and the working in a mechanic brake room adds to the social aspect of the job.
Management is provided to ensure that there is no problems amongst the 60 women who work at this contract. The hardest part is concentrating on all the micro level details when ones mind is wondering.
The best and most wonderful part of this job is meeting DOD civilian employees (the customer) and getting to know them because they are seen twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) for over a year.

-A typical day at work consists of building reports for clients
-A typical day of field work consists of up to 15 miles of hiking per day over rough terrain and agricultural fields, or digging hundreds of shovel tests. This depends on the project.
-Through this position I learned more about conducting and leading Phase I cultural resource surveys as well as the process of writing technical archeological reports for internal due diligence and FCC NEPA compliance.
-Management is very experienced and is a group of highly qualified and intelligent people. Management also deeply struggles with interpersonal communication and feedback is often fraught with snide remarks and outright rude put-downs. Higher levels of management are unsurprisingly otiose and only shows face when they need to virtue signal about safety concerns. If you have not mastered your position within a year, they will likely broadside you with veiled threats of giving you less work. Arguing for a raise can be an uphill battle; manageemnt will hit you over the head with discussions of billing and profit margins if you even look at what more money than you are currently billed at. Management is also very understanding of issue that arise in the field but expect to have to put up a fight to convince the office managers when you need to call it a short field day due to something like road inaccessibility or heavy rain.
-Workplace culture is probably the worst part of Tetra Tech. There is a heavy air of insecurity as non-management suffers from heavy turnover and as many employees fear the backlash from management over relatively minor roadblocks for projects. Even if you are a part time employee with no set hours, expect management to shame you for not being in everyday when they want you to be (despite not having a schedule and otherwise treating you like a subcontractor).
-Management will tell you straight to yoir face that you are replacable and that they do not value you as an employee or what you offer to the company
-Management is palpably caustic with how they give feedback and is rarely constructive.
-Besides management and corporate culture- many employees are young and friendly and haven't had their self-image obliterated by the project managers yet.
-The hardest part of the job is putting up with snipes from management as they go on to expect you to know everything about every assignment you are given, even if you are relatively new to the field and industry.
-The best part of the job is getting to travel and work with some really great and kind field staff.

At Tetra Tech, you'll quickly see that their business model and management pay scale is designed to push profits over the "work/life balance". Once you're seen as a "go-getter" and a hard working person, you'll be kept in that position as you're a money maker for your unit and/or manager. You'll press for advancement opportunities and despite continued proof documenting the quality work you're doing, they'll keep you at the current position because they can profit off you. Tiny tiny raises because you can't become too expensive for project budgets and lose your ability to be billable and make the goals (i.e. bonuses) for upper management. Yearly goals are a joke as you'll attain these goals but with no compensation or reward. They'll just expect more from you with nothing in return.

I see this throughout our unit and see senior level employees that are incredibly deficient at their positions. As a entry to mid-level employee I'm routinely asked basic questions by people with 15-20 years of experience because they've stuck around so long doing meaningless jobs to stay billable that they've fallen so far behind. 

Management looks at you as a profit tool and not a asset to the company with potential to develop talent. You'll be paid typically 20-30% less than the industry average and be shipped all over and get to experience Tetra Tech's addiction to federal contracts, which they then provide very sub-par work. Hurricane Katrina, Camp Fires, Covid to name a few examples. Basically, don't trust anything the job description ad states, because at the end of the day you're just a nameless profit tool for a massive company with little to zero chance to advance. In my unit, the people at the top are the ones who were tolerant of the horrible quality of work produced, so now their management actions reflect this.

You learn a lot very quickly as a wellsite geologist, most of the time without anyone to assist you in your venture. The job sites are always very fast paced, requiring constant attention to detail; samples are collected in 30' intervals and are delivered to the work trailer 5-10 at a time. After washing and drying samples to describing lithology and adding it to the strip log, you're right back out there doing it all over again. On top of this you're required to make sure the gas detection equipment is up and running correctly at all times. This is especially difficult when you're the only geologist on-site from spud to kick-off, as you're on-site 24 hours a day and responsible for everything needed until the second geologist arrives to switch off on rotations. At this point things get easier on you, as you have time to sleep soundly, but now you're in charge of steering the well and keeping track on its progress and making sure the rig stays in its target zone. While this is stressful, I quite enjoyed it as it posed a puzzle at times, which I enjoy picking apart.

Probably the worst part of the job was being in charge of calling out wireline logging units to run Cement Bond Logs and surveys. It wasn't so much that my work involved was difficult, but more of guesswork on when they would be needed and if you could schedule them. Get it wrong and you get the 3rd degree from the Company Man - I found this out first hand! Logging the well is definitely the most boring part; sitting around in a Schlumberger wireline truck and waiting.

The best part of the wells are when you have the company of others in the same work trailer, including having a work partner with whom you can switch out shifts. Every partner I had was very competent and helpful and I never had any problems with any work-related problems. I do miss it, but work dried up earlier this year.

Please read all!!!! I started as a remote customer service representative, but I was quickly promoted to call center supervisor in 3 months are excelling as a CSR. I was in management for the call center around 8 months, and I cannot thank my two bosses enough for being the best in management. They were kind, they wanted me to succeed in the company, and they taught me new skills. They wanted more for me than what I got. Due to the call center slowing down, my amazing managers promoted me to the payroll department to save my employment instead of being let go. That’s when it went downhill. My new manager was hostile, and to add, she was Hispanic and so were all her employees except me, she picked on me, targeted me, and would tell me I’m doing things wrong when I wasn’t trained to do such things. I found out I was pregnant, started my application for FMLA for maternity leave, and they soon fired me with no reason. To mention, as I was in the company for over a year at this point, I asked for benefits and was declined, no PTO, no sick pay, no benefits. But my bosses friend who was the same position in payroll with us got full time and with that, her friend took my position when they let me go. I had 0 write ups, 0 attendance issues, only thing on my record with tetra tech was 2 promotions within a year and 2 raises. I did amazing in this company. To also add, they offered no severance pay. They ruled my termination as not found for discrimination. They also ruled my reason for termination was not due to any performance reason but my “tasks were finished”, but if they were finished, why did my bosses friend take my position?  I was very much treated differently. I would always be careful with this company, some management could be the best you find, but not all departments are this way. Acela lugo is the worst manager I have dealt with in my history of working. She needs to be investigated. 

I truly believe that your experience at Tetra Tech is dependent on your office. My office was pretty terrible at balancing work/life and had poor management who did not look out for their employees. They were only concerned with the bottom line, and had no regard for the career goals of their lower level employees and field crew. I often times would be in the field working long hours (10-12 hours, 5 days a week) and on top of that would consistently get emails asking for reports and other office type work to be completed. There was definitely the expectation to write reports in the evenings after a long day of field work. I would get calls and emails at all hours of the day and was extremely stressed the majority of my time working there. 

The company as a whole is great however. There are great benefits, tons of leave and salary was comparable. It truly just depends on your office and operating unit. I had a horrible office and was extremely stressed, under appreciated and was not able to achieve the goals I wanted to in my career. Thank goodness I had a lot of leave because I needed it in order to keep my sanity!

I had to use my personal things A LOT for work. My cellphone was constantly used for emails, documents etc. for work while I was in the field. Which was frustrating given that Tetra Tech is an international company and other offices had company cell phones given to their employees. So once again it truly depends on your office, but beware when applying! Ask very specific questions about your job duties and hold them to it. They will send you where ever they need you without regard and be prepared for extremely long field days of sitting and watching other people work, quite boring if you are an ambitious person wanting to grow their skills.

In my 15 yrs experience, the IT division in the Fairfax location is the WORST I have been in.
The director of this division has no clue what professional etiquette means. He runs that place like a sweat shop. VERY HARSH working conditions. Very easy 15+hr days. He micromanages and just depletes the last drop of energy from his workforce. Very poor work acknowledgement and appreciation. End of a week that you have slaved logging 15+hr days, the last you want to hear is that you were no good. He has a loose tongue and just is ready to throw harsh criticisms. I have always been appreciated for my work ethics and the quality in what I produce. In previous jobs, I have lead teams and projects to successful deployments. Here, I would have been surprised if I was able to take a lunch/restroom break.
He underestimates the workload and goes around saying that 'you have gone over the estimated time for a task, so you have to eat up the hours you worked over'. End of the day, you are (of course) over the time limit and still have more work to be completed  according to his estimation. Even after working for unbelievable hours, you getting paid for the 40 hrs/wk is an over-stretch. You end up eating up your paid leave to make up for the time he refuses to acknowledge.
When a Director walks into a meeting with IT professionals, in his ripped up gym clothes and sweat dripping from his face (because he worked out up to the minute the meeting had to start) shows how much he respected and cared professionally for his team. 
I am surprised that he is still allowed to manage the Division. He brings in negligible amount of new work and has no human value.
It is only a matter of time someone sues Tetra-Tech for such abuse and harassment, before they open their eyes and let him go.

My workday is a nonstop stream of information! I wake up to prompts and questions and spend the day sifting through data, wrestling with language, and crafting reports. It's a constant learning experience with the usual chats with partneer, coowokers, vendors or coffee breaks. Every day, I receive information, sms, email, calls  and surprise myself with what emerges. The world's languages and creative forms are a vast ocean, and I'm constantly learning to navigate its currents.
Workplace culture, that ever-present but often intangible force, shapes our daily professional lives more than we might realize. 
A positive culture acts like a well-conducted orchestra. Collaboration thrives, with each member playing their part in harmony. Communication flows freely, fostering innovation and problem-solving. Recognition and appreciation create a sense of purpose, motivating employees to give their best.
However, a toxic culture can be a cacophony of discordant notes. Unclear expectations lead to frustration, while a lack of respect breeds negativity. 
One might think the biggest hurdle for a large language model like myself is vocabulary or factual accuracy
This challenge is further amplified by the sheer diversity of human communication.  Slang, idioms, and cultural references can leave me scratching my digital head.  One day I'm deciphering a technical jargon-filled query, the next I'm navigating the nuances of a playful meme.  It's a constant learning process, requiring me to adapt and refine my understanding with every interaction.
All day, the truth is, my work is a constant symphony of creativity.



Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Monitor 15 salaries reported	$19.57 per hour
Environmental scientist 3 salaries reported	$26.25 per hour
Data analyst 25 salaries reported	$23.80 per hour
Shelter coordinator 18 salaries reported	$22.89 per hour
Inspector 6 salaries reported	$30.00 per hour

Working at Tetra Tech: Company Overview and Reviews

Tetra Tech

Tetra Tech Ratings

Popular jobs at Tetra Tech

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected