I did for a brief period during the tech. boom (early 2000). I did time in the DC office. Very talented people, doing solid work. Atmosphere was very "school" like, with desks/studios arranged in a very open-colaborative manner. Like many firms at this level, everything looks like great fun from the outside, but there is quite a bit of nepotism, little clicks, and politics involved. I particularly had "beef" with an elderly woman who was a PM...now a VP. Todd Degarmo, and Guy Martin who were the 2 head guys back in the day were very nice, and fair guys.
Shortly after the "crash" and the lay-offs the DC office saved itself from certain death by securing wedge 5 of the pentagon.
I also had issues with their Mac based system...running archicad...but that is just my pers. pref. Please oh please, let's not turn this into a Mac vs PC thing, I'm just stating my opinion and the fact that Studios uses Macs.

j3, is autocad to archicad a "rough transition?" I used autocad through all of highschool, as well as 3dstudio max/ viz. I am wondering if this shift to macs is one that has a large learning curve. Also, do u remember what other programs they tend to use?

thanks a lot for the insight

i mean college, not hs

The transition was not very difficult, just a pain in the ass after using Autocad for 7yrs. They provided 1 wk training (basically me sitting at a station going through the tuturial and working through some simple drawings to catch up to speed) More than the actual drawing process (object vs line/vector) the plotting/layout process didn't seem as simple but maybe if I'd lasted longer it would have seemed easier. As far as what other software, I really don't remember.

I worked at Studios as an intern, not the DC office, and have a couple of friends that are still there or have begun working there since I have finished my internships. The office was small enough to feel like an actual "studio" but large enough to work on big projects. If you want basebuild work you have to be in the DC or San Fran office but I don't think this is their strongest aspect. The interior work is evolving and becoming stonger and stronger - i.e. moving away from the tech-y stuff.

There did seem to be some social problems with the team I worked on, meaning this one guy was a complete dick but has since been fired, not sure if this still exists. One of my friends has been given a great deal of responsibilty but it is mostly on small projects with almost no budget so she hasn't been enjoying it as much. However, if you are efficient, creative and outspoken you can do ok there.

Moving from autocad to archi-cad was not fun. I dislike archi-cad but it is a preference, I know people that love them.

i dont mean to butt into a thread that i know nothing about other than archi-cad/autoCAD but my personal pref. is archiCAD, i didn't think the transition was that rough, i now am facing going back to autoCAD with a new job, and not looking forward to it.

i guess STUDIOS is based on the mac... as far as 3d modelling, do you guys know what they use? Is it FORM Z? 3ds is not for the mac, correct?

straight archicad 99% of the time, all mac - they have some deep knowledge
of how to get it to perform for presentations, studies, dd, and cd's - a
core group has been using the program for a very long time - the in-house
knowledge of this program is pretty amazing.
is very easy to learn, especially in the dc office - good luck
btw- photoshop and indesign are the other essentials for design work...and
increasingly, good old sharp knife and glue.