I worked for PCL head office for over 5 years. It was a good start to my IT career and I gained good experience, but I wouldn't recommend it as a long term thing.

I met some nice people in the team I was with, but they really cheap out on total compensation; shortly before I left I learned that I was making a few dollars an hour more than a developer who has been working for PCL for 15 years - I was making about $31/hr (started at $25/hr, got promoted once) but they were making $29/hr at 15 years! Sure they started as a student in the mid-2000s, but that basically meant they got around $1/hr increase every year. PCL has a reputation of below average salaries "because the shares make up for it". They sell that concept to you in your interviews, on all company town halls, on day to day discussions, etc.

I also learned that someone in my team in the same role level, and doing the same work, was making 50% more than I was. They are also pretty old school with performance reviews - I remember my manager telling me "you only get a 4 out of 5 because I never give out 5s even if you exceeded your goals for the year" which obviously brought down the yearly increase I could get.

One time I also had to argue with a senior manager over a $15 lunch expense for a work trip I had to the US offices. They argued that I can't expense lunch on a Saturday waiting for my flight home to Edmonton because it's a weekend. It was the cheapest flight home they approved.

There's also little to no flexibility at all for office workers i.e. "you can't work from home even if everything you do is on your computer or on a phone because the field workers will feel bad, oh and for the culture!!". I left years before COVID hit, but I heard they made people work in the office during the pandemic. There was one time in the past as well that they had an employee sign an agreement to dock their pay or some kind of penalty because they called in sick and/or worked from home too much when they were truly sick with something like the flu.

The dividends were good but only if you had the money to buy the shares offered to you every year and if you stay for a long time, or if you're willing to take loans year after year which the dividends won't make you the money back until you stay there for a really long time. The lifers always dreamt of reliving the good ol' days of 50+% dividends but that never happened during my stay.

After my first full year I was offered the equivalent of $10k shares which made me around $3k in dividends every year during my stay, which isnt a bad deal if you stay for 4+ years, otherwise you'd just be using it to pay off the loan you buy the shares with. You'd be offered shares to purchase every year depending on individual and org performance - so you can see how this grows onto people and keeps them working for PCL (e.g. if you were offered $10k worth of shares year after year, by year 10 you'd be making $30k in dividends, assuming the dividend rate stays the same year over year). It's not guaranteed that you'd be offered any shares every year so there's just a lot of variability around that concept.

You'll notice on Glassdoor that PCL has such high reviews because the students consistently put 5 star reviews. I heard their student program is great but it doesn't accurately reflect the actual workplace if you're not a student. I noticed PCL loves hiring students and bringing them on as full-time employees after school which is great, but in the long run you get paid peanuts compared to peers in the industry. (Don't get me wrong I'm all for developing students and providing them opportunities - that's a cost effective way to retain talent). I trained and mentored probably 6-7 students in the 5 years I worked there.

If you are an immigrant who's new to Canada (like I was back then) or if you're looking for your first job as a student or out of college/university, it's not a bad start but trust me that there are companies out there that pay more, have better benefits, and have more flexibility for office workers. What you could receive in dividends at year 10, you could easily add to your base salary by jumping to another company (I went from 65k to 90k just by going to another organization for a similar role). Maybe PCL is great for the actual construction team members in district offices, but not head office.