My perception is if a firm is too small, the company has a harder time taking care of its employees, too large and it just doesn't care anymore. My firm has between 20 and 30 employees at any given time. Based on my limited data, that is the sweet spot in the AEC industry. My data is very limited however since this is the first firm I've worked for and I've been here almost 9 years. I have friends who left this company and bounced around for years due to lay-offs or to personal nonsatisfaction. I've often felt I would have to be offered a lot more money over my current salary to consider leaving, because leaving comes with risks of "last hired first fired" or finding that the firm is not a good fit in the happiness department.

I once worked as a wood truss designer for a truss plant. Even though the skills required for that job took some training to get good, the company never saw the benefit in treating its employees right. Therefore they couldn't hold them for long. I lasted 9 months, even though I enjoyed the work, the company ate away the natural loyalty I brought with me after 6 months when they failed to keep a promise related to my paycheck. A month later when my supervisor took 2 weeks leave to have a tumor removed, I ran the Design department by myself. I worked 13 hour days to keep the shop from having to close down and send its workers home. I did some work that was more complicated than I had ever attempted before in that time frame and did it without errors. During those 2 weeks I got no recognition for my work. When my super got back he gave me the deserved recognition, but that was as high up as I heard it from. Christmas rolled around and I was on the fence about staying. The company announced that there would be no Christmas bonuses (about $60 per employee is what I figured). Even though I could have used the $60, it pissed me off more that they couldn't come up with at the very most $6000 from somewhere to keep everybody happy. (And we all knew management got a bonus) A month later I had secured a job with my current firm, and 2 weeks after that was working here. I gave the old company the 2 weeks notice and gave 2 replacements very rudimentry training in that time while my supervisor was on vaction. It was winter so the workload wasn't heavy anyway. The part that still makes me laugh is that a year later when I got my first Christmas bonus at the new firm it was about the equivalent of 2 weeks pay. I was so shocked because I was expecting the paltry $60 I was used to. Since this is a profit sharing company We have had our share of down times which the bonuses reflected, we have also been well rewarded in the prosperous years that came before and after 2001 in particular.