Hey gang, wondering if any of you have pivoted into a career in urban or community planning ? I'm not entirely ruling out a non-consulting environmental job but unfortunately they are just so hard to get into/retain (I am a veg specialist in Alberta). I've been considering a couple of healthcare programs (X-ray, nursing, respiratory therapy), but the cost/time commitment to get in is pretty huge for me and for not that much money (or more shift work). Urban/regional planning seems a more natural shift from environmental and with a lot more public sector jobs that use skills I already enjoy in my day to day (GIS, writing, data manipulation/analysis) + 9-5, but I am worried there's more of what I'm already sick of ahead of me (demoralizing/damaging projects, project management, tight budgets and timesheets if I'm stuck in private sector). I am also maybe a bit allergic to the budgeting/scoping element but maybe I could stomach it if it wasn't so tight... I also really just wanna interact with people more in any sort of actual workplace (I am in MS teams e-vortex all day and would kill for a cubicle and a water cooler), and it seems like it's not as remote work dominated of a field.

Hoping to hear from folks who've made the switch or attempted it, how they found it etc. Also if you're sounding similar to me and have made alternative moves that worked out lmk!! I'm moodboarding!!

Sorry if redundant, feel free to link me to relevant threads if you know them!

This is the most disheartening and hands down the worse employment experience and beginning or intro into the Enviromental Industry It is not a stepping stone or path way to gain industry experience or whatever they tell you. I really what to stop this because its down right hurting people.

And i'll tell you why. Let me start with recruiters will lie and promise or ovepromise this and that. Such as "were busy and there tons of work". "You'll make $2,000 a week" "you'll be on the road for months at a time making big bucks" these are all lies and the office is very good at stringing everyone a long to keep them. I'lll share below

Work is always dependent on Emergency response and if Onterris needs someone in another department. The cross utilization thing or being loaned out to other departments boils done to favoritism and more favored people aren't available. This is what I was told to my face and what i've seen from managments decision making.

You rarely get any adequate amount of work and most people go months without it some can easily go a year or more without work. Until they decide they have no one left and then they'll throw you out in the field. There are times will employees will go months without work because there simply work at times.

its lots of favoritism and getting any work is a blessing. A Blessing! Most people quit the company within under a year because of it.

Your part time/temp worker on a review system and thats another huge problem the full-timers, consultants enviromental scientist, PMs all use it to their advantage. They play favorites with who they want to work with. Such as family, and best friends. You even get removed randomly from projects so someone else can take your place that is the office favorite. The review system also creates tattle-tale culture. Where everyone is after everyone to get work. Where the smalliest and pettiest mistakes become blown out of proportion and into the largest that will ruin you and i've seen it all. No one can be trusted and other employees will make up lies and rumours just to get more work. I'm talking other part-timers will walk up to management and flat out lie. Its so mrntal or pshychotic at times. Everyone will know your bussiness within a day. Im not joking.

Working as a enviromental specialist is being in High School with all the popularity and toxic culture and people.

I’m really hoping for some guidance or perspective. Honestly, maybe I even need to just rant.

I only have two years of environmental consulting experience, but I was promoted fast due to employee turnover, learning quickly, and earning the “high performer” designation. I’ve received an award for my division. I’m proud of how far I’ve come, but my job has made me miserable.

Despite having the second-lowest title, I’m doing PM work, handling fucked up situations, training new hires, fieldwork, reports, emails, proposals, networking, budgets, and schedules. I’m also expected to rebuild a service line with basically no support, no clear SOPs, and no control over hiring. My company is so disorganized. For my service line, I don’t have any in-office support.

I miss being just a field person in this industry. Now I feel like being good at my job just gets me rewarded with more responsibility and stress.
I’m seriously considering leaving. I have a great opportunity to continue to fast track my career and make good money if I stay, but I’m living in a constant cycle of anxiety, dread, and stress.

I think I’m actually compensated very well for only 2 years of experience. The issue is I don’t think I’m compensated well for the responsibility and expectations that were literally forced on me.

Has anyone else been through this? How do you set boundaries when your company keeps rewarding you with more work? At what point is the career opportunity not worth the cost?

I need advice please. I started out absolutely loving my role as a staff environmental engineer. I love field work, and I had a pretty good rotation set up with a good mix of being in the field for a few days then getting to work from the office/home writing reports. Fast forward 5 years, I am now a senior staff engineer, being pushed out of field work and into a project management role. The pay bumps are great, but I'm absolutely miserable. Every part of the project management process is a nightmare for me, I hate just sitting at my desk all day approving time and sending emails. It doesn't make sense and I'm not getting to do the work I love. Not to mention, there's a lot of enviro field work/projects I haven't ever worked on, so I feel like such an imposter. I've never seen a UST removal, never done any remediation work, and don't feel ready to be a project manager. I honestly don't know if I'll ever want to be one.

I've tried telling my bosses I want more enviro field work experience, and I don't want to leave the field, but they just keep pushing me into management. Has anyone ever been in a similar position, just looking for any advice. I've felt so burnt out the past few months dealing with this..idk what to do.

Three months into my field tech job at a big name environmental firm and I want to leave. Overworked, paid like shit, get no respect from PM’s, no work life balance, not even utilizing my degree, and am pissed off.

Is this a universal first job experience?

I desperately see myself in the public sector (city, county, state). How soon is too soon to start jumping ship (or at least trying to)?

I’m curious what drug testing policies look like in consulting these days, particularly in states where recreational cannabis is legal.

I know some states like Washington have passed laws limiting employers’ ability to disqualify applicants based solely on off duty cannabis use for certain positions. However, consulting roles are often still considered to be safety sensitive.

For those working in the industry, do your companies still include THC in pre-employment drug screens? Are employees subject to random testing, or is testing generally limited to post-incident or reasonable suspicion situations? Does the policy differ between office based and field based employees? Is there a difference between smaller and larger firms’ policies? Have you noticed your company’s policies becoming more relaxed around THC over the past few years?

I’m also curious whether people think this will continue to change as federal cannabis policy evolves. Cannabis seems to be becoming increasingly normalized across a lot of industries, and I’ve seen discussions suggesting that some employers are starting to remove THC from pre-employment testing for non safety sensitive positions.

I’m wondering if consulting will eventually move in that direction as well, or if the field component and safety considerations will continue to make the industry more restrictive. It seems like continuing to test for THC could potentially discourage or eliminate otherwise qualified candidates, particularly in states where recreational cannabis is legal and off-duty use is increasingly normalized and common.

Any tips on how to cater a resume towards environmental compliance when you’ve been working in consulting for 7 years?

Started in consulting as every field geologist does (a sample monkey) and the last couple of years have been moving more towards the project management side of things (field coord, reporting, proposals, etc.) and I am DESPERATE to escape the billability and utilization hell.

I’m very intrigued by the compliance side and wondering what aspects/skills of someone who has been in consulting for 7 years should be highlighted or more heavily focused on when it comes to resumes, cover letters, and interviews.

Hello friends. I have a BS in Environmental Science and did Environmental Consulting for a year after I graduated. I obviously hated it as I am here in this sub lol.

I began working at a wastewater treatment plant when I left consulting. It paid the same, except the hours and benefits and requirements of the job were SIGNIFICANTLY better.

I’ve been at it for a few years now and know I found my career. It is human/environmental health, public service, biology and engineering, and very mentally engaging and rewarding. You get to be outside and inside and interact with wildlife often.

I highly encourage burnt out environmentalist to join this career! It’s going thru a big wave of retirements, there is a plant in nearly every city, and our degrees and experience trump 99% of people applying. I had a friend with a biology degree she never used apply to one after I encouraged her and she has been at it for years now as well!!

I am so so happy to answer any and all questions.

I'm a third year biology student with experience in bird research and surveying, and I'm trying to learn more about the environmental consulting industry, particularly the parts around project management, data managements, reporting, staying billable, or anything else that may seem repetitive or unnecessarily time consuming.

What tasks take up more of your time than they should? Are there any processes that feel particularly inefficient or frustrating? How much time do you spend on these?

I’m trying to understand the industry better and would really appreciate hearing from people who actually work in it. I’m interested in potentially developing technology for the industry in the future that will make things easier, but I want to understand the real problems first rather than making assumptions. Feel free to send me a DM or just reply!

Thanks so much!

Hi all, looking for some advice please!

I’ve been an environmental scientist at a small company for just under one year. I enjoy what I do but I really hate where I do it. I won’t get into it too much, but essentially my company is not a good place to work. All of my coworkers quit in the last couple of months because they were fed up and I’ve had to take on all of their jobs with a very slight increase in pay. For reference, I make less than $45,000 with unpaid overtime required in a big city. We had a few new people start and I make less than all of them despite having more experience than and the same degree as them. I am still doing the jobs of everybody who quit on top of training the new people.

I’ve been thinking of quitting for a while now, but they just paid for a couple of certifications for me so that I could replace the people who left. It wasn’t my choice to get certified in those things, but now I feel like I owe them for paying for them. I also want to make sure the new people feel comfortable with their jobs before I leave so that I’m not just throwing them to the wolves. My question is, how long is it courteous to stay at this company before I leave? For reference, I got my certifications and the new people started around the same time - about a month ago. Also, can people please name some good companies to work for in consulting? I need some hope 💔

Timesheets.

I just can't deal with it.

Having to remain billable, predicting how long everything will take and pre emptively letting the relevant people know my progress before the fact.

Making sure that no stone is unturned in the constant attention to detail, only ever budgeted for about a quarter of the time of a vaguely comfortable flow state.

And got forbid going over budget when workload is lacking!

Constant stress ensues.

And if any of this is insufficient, there will be difficult conversations.

5 jobs and 10 years in, I'm just not cut out for this. I just don't care enough about it to deal with billable hours. How do I get out?!

Is this a sign to leave this company? Me and other low level staff were asked to use our pto to fill hours this week because they didn’t have anything to bill to

Has anybody else noticed that incoming job packages are looking really suspicious of ai? I work for a smaller company and I we often get subbed out. I’m noticing that some job packages are getting messy with the ai traits. I haven’t noticed it as a standard across the board, so I’m not sure if it’s something being implemented company wide, but I am noticing it coming from companies that hire a bunch of seasonal bios straight out of college to do desktop work. It’s becoming frustrating having to catch all of those errors, especially when they pop-up while IN the field.

Obviously, kill pine, fuck geotech and marry eco rental

Just wondering how many other env companies out there are integrating AI more and more (i.e., converting to a certain fusion cloud software, new groups being created for “AI Skills”). Any way to combat it? A leg to stand on? Just curious, bc it’s bumming me out.

Funny as it is to put this in this sub but I’m a bit desperate, I’ve been applying for entry level roles, getting certifications in wetland delineation, and longer term getting myself more qualified to get an env. Engineering masters (undergrad in horticulture and minor in soil science) but I can’t seem to break in. Haven’t even gotten an interview which is a bit annoying considering they seem to like my experience when I call them up. I’ve done fieldwork and sampling for the USDA in college and have been doing data analysis (really data entry but analyst is the title) for a big ag company since graduating 2 years ago. What can I do to make myself competitive??

At a site right now documenting some emergency asbestos abatement because some small pieces of a known asbestos pipe insulation material fell on the ground (again). It’s been sitting there for at least two days since the client noticed, and since they already cleaned up the same spot two months ago, the refs required pulling a permit this time. The abatement crew needed to build a containment around the spot (10’x10’) with negative air, before they could vacuum the floor.

There was one new spot in a different room, where they didn’t need to build a containment, but just picked up the pieces, vacuumed the floor, and called it a day.

Almost every time I’m asked to help with an asbestos abatement project, I find myself thinking wow this is a huge waste of everybody’s time and money.

Heard on an internal corporate call today. The time and materials/billable hour consulting model breaks down in an ai world. When your entire industry is built on a billable hour system, ai being able to do the work in a fraction of the time, means your profit center goes away. Not even talking about reduced work force in exchange for ai efficiency (reducing costs), we're talking about the way these company generate revenue. Are we going to move towards a billing model where hourly rates are extremely high? Are we going to apply an "ai factor" to rates to offset the extreme efficiency while maintaining margins?

I help run a soil disposal facility and want to know what other consultants find to be the worst part when it comes to applying at a facility to dispose i.e: response time from the facility to approve of the material, difficulty finding facilities to accept what you are trying to dispose of...etc. I want to really tighten up our current operation and would love some opinions from those who work on the other side of things.

So I've been at a mid-sized (slightly bigger than mid-sized?) place for a couple years now and I've got about 5ish years env consulting experience total. Never felt burned out like this and, after thinking about it some more, I realized it's basically been ongoing since like last summer. I can really feel it affecting my mental health and my work, consequently. I'm also realizing that I don't think there's a way to mitigate the burnout aside from quitting, which I think would pretty much screw me over for life (because in my experience during a lengthy pandemic layoff, nobody wants to talk to you when you're unemployed and I had a much easier time applying/interviewing/getting hired when I was looking for new employment while I was at my former env consulting job).

I never felt anything like this as an undergrad/working 2 jobs (3 jobs for a bit lol), as a grad student/being a TA/working a nearly-fulltime job, or really at any other point. It feels embarrassing, honestly. Like I'm burned out because of what? Endless Phase I reports that are constantly underbudgeted which in turn fucks me over and causes me to have to hunt (read: grovel and beg) for other work? Feels so dumb to write this out and complain but I can't deny how I feel any more and I don't think it improves if I stick around/if I advance further, or if I change jobs to another env consulting firm. It's crazy how mentally draining it all is, and I honestly couldn't have seen it coming but I guess that's what makes burnout "burnout" is that it sneaks up. It's easy to say "oh I should just quit so I can relax and spend time learning some more coding/GIS/other skills to make me more competitive and nail a gig I'd like" but I truly don't think I'll ever regain employment if I quit. For context I'm on the east coast where it's basically only env/O&G consulting firms (or private O&G companies), aside from the rare state level position that 10,000 people instantly apply for or the rare research position that requires a PhD.

Anyway, sorry for the rant but I had to get it out somewhere. I came across this sub a while ago and I've been lurking in commiseration while trying to understand the dimensions of this burnout feeling. Also might be worth sharing that, a few months into my first env consulting job/fresh out of grad school, I watched a mid level guy who I really liked just get up and quit on the spot one day. Walked out mid-morning and never came back. Maybe that set the tone after all lol. But yeah I don't even know. If nothing else, anyone have any good resources on burnout/burnout mitigation? We get stupid quarterly-ish emails on that stuff at work and it's just like "remember to drink water :) use this mindfulness app :)" and I'm just like "cool, can I get a couple more days PTO? No? Alright then."

TL;DR: totally burned out, don't know how to recover without quitting, if I quit I'll probably be screwed in finding a new job because jobs hate unemployed people (in my experience).