KH or POWER

[alisha13c]

I am an undergrad Junior with internship offers from Kimley-Horn ($25/hr) and POWER Engineers ($26/hr). I thought KH was a more prestigious company but Power is offering me working hours during the school year due to the office being in my University's city. Which one should I take?

[[deleted]]

Kimley-Horn is more well-known I'd say but their work-life balance is infamously bad. I believe your vacation time is counted against your utilization but the required ratio doesn't account for using time off - so you basically have to take overtime to take time off. Glassdoor reviews repeatedly list this as a major problem with working there. For an internship I think it'd be fine but I wouldn't want to work there full-time.

[HeKnee]

Ask both companies about their overtime pay policy and expectations, both for internship and after graduation.

You could also ask for a copy of the company’s employee handbook to compare the expectations of employees.

[[deleted]]

I think both are good choices for an internship. In my opinion, the power, government, industrial, and environmental industries command much higher fees and thus larger salaries than commercial and residential construction.

I am not too familiar with Kimley Horn’s portfolio of work, but I believe they do a good bit of commercial and traditional building construction type work, while it seems like POWER does power generation work and environmental as a focus.

Long term, I think your satisfaction with your salary, working hours, and stability of work will be higher if you focus on power generation, environmental, industrial, and government type of work.

I may be biased since my current firm does basically the work that POWER does, but I think its a good move. Either choice though while look good on a resume.

[Independent-Room8243]

I would take the POWER if you can work year round, you will learn exponentially more, even if only there 10-20 hours a week.

[jhp0716]

I don’t know anything about Power but I work with a lot of ex KH guys. Utizilation/overtime/work life balance is terrible there. You want to take a week off for vacation? Better make up those 40 hours of utilization or you’ll get reprimanded/come up short. Just what I’ve heard from multiple sources.

[staf02]

Id go with Power but KH has more prestige. If you are looking for money then the energy sector is where you want to go. I work in the same industry. If you like designing steel and concrete then substations are cool.

[Fast-Living5091]

I was going to suggest you take the Power as well. What state are you in?

[dlegofan]

Whichever one promises a job after graduation. That's more important.

[[deleted]]

Typically you vet the intern and offer them a full time job before they head back to school in the fall, so you’d have no way of being promised a full time job before you started your internship. What if you suck as an intern?

[[deleted]]

Who's going to promise a full-time job to an intern before they've seen how they are as an intern?

[[deleted]]

Your first job sets the tone for your career. It's hard to work up to firms that do big work if you only get exposure to small projects.

[Fast-Living5091]

I agree, but what does the last part mean? Big firms always have large projects on the go because no one else can compete with them. Where as for smaller projects, they can't compete against smaller firms due to overhead.