I don't know the Seattle office, so I can't really help you. But I used to work in the same building as BCJ Philly and everyone I met there was wonderful and cool and it seemed like a great place to work.

What level of experience are you? Email me and I'll give you the scoop!

You are aware that they have nothing to do with paper product warehousing and distribution...

Are you looking to add "a laugh" to the office?

if this position doesn't pan out, you could always reunite with foregone conclusion, hit the road and top the charts once more.

(sorry...couldn't resist)

Or get juxtaposition records going, and then sell it to Universal.

BCJ does some nice work. They hire a lot of smart, talented younger people.
It's the firm type that expects very long hours and assumes you will give up your nights and weekends on a semi-regular basis.
Interns don't usually get a chance to work on the bigger schematic gestures or organizational principles of projects - that's usually handed down from above. Younger, newer people get the little bits-and-pieces types of things to design, or more accurately to detail. You learn a lot about detailing. You can spend weeks on just something like a floor pattern or a shelf.
Everything is critiqued from above. You have to have a thick skin to work there and you have to be ok with being told to do and redo things exactly as someone tells you. There are rules about everything, even what colors you can use and they don't take kindly to innovation from newbies. A lot of the people making decisions won't be in your office, since the firm has several offices nationwide, so you can be getting orders from people in Philly or Wilkes-Barre, and their criticism too, but you might never meet those people.
Mostly at first new people get put on really routine things and then they pinpoint some talent of yours and you'll be doing mostly that thing from then on. But you also can get bounced from project to project and team to team often. You might not see the projects you work on because a lot of them are far away and you might not be one of the people who deals with the client directly or goes to the site. The projects take years to get built and some never do.
They make a point of telling new people and intern-level people that they can't be "self assigning" meaning the firm tells you what you will work on and they don't want to hear what your preferences might be. It helps to be easygoing and pliable. You'll be working with lots of talented people but that has its troubles with personalities stepping on each others' toes.

Negotiate a good starting salary if you can because any raise you get will be a couple percentage points and you'll probably wait 2 years. Firm's not great at having staff reviews regularly or acknowledging salary issues. Bonuses are decent size but really paying you for all your extra hours over the year.

I had the opportunity to check references for and work with BCJ on a project. The consistent message from the reference checks was that "the principals are fun to work with," and I tend to agree. They are very entertaining in front of clients, and I appreciate their approach to architecture. They tend to look for innovative ways of solving problems.

Their Philadelphia office was busting at the seams when I last visited, and I think they were planning to expand partially into an adjacent suite.

Thanks for the responses particularly LFLH. It sounds like you have a lot of insider info. One of my attractions to the office is that they do both single family homes and public/institutional projects. Of course the fee structure for these two types are wildly different. I assume they are not spending weeks on a shelf or floor patterns for the public work. Or are they using the homes to fund the public work? How does their working method translate to the public projects? Are the public/institutional projects few and far between or is there usually a pretty good mix?

Also I am hearing the turn over rate is high. Is this just a function of the market or is there some sort of personality or managment problem in the office? How much of a problem is it that there are no principals in the Seattle Office?

dml955i, I have about 6 years of experience

The larger projects are the bigger part of the work of most of the offices. The residential projects that are taken on are far fewer and the firm is more selective about which ones they take. The residential work is better known because it is better published and there is a recent book of it, but if you study that book you can see that those projects span 30 years and there are only a few per year firm-wide. You could work in the firm for a few years and never work on a residential project.
The very intense and long detailing process I was talking about is on the larger projects as much as on the residential, perhaps more so in fact. Maybe I was exaggerating a little about the length of time for design of one shelf, but it wouldn't be unusual for someone to spend days on a shelf system or panel system or muntin pattern. How do they afford this: there are a lot of people working a lot of unpaid overtime and there are a lot of very junior staff with low salaries.
Not having a principal in the Seattle office is sometimes a good thing. But the way the firm works, I tried to describe above: the principals manage from afar. There's a lot of sending things back and forth by fax and email and lots of very specific phone calls where you get your orders from the principals in Pennsylvania. Design is very closely monitored and controlled by a few people.
The turnover is always high, it's not a result of any recent market issues but more of a continuous flow of employees in and out. That is another thing you can see in the more recent book. In the back are all the names of everyone who worked in the firm over the time that the work in the book was done and the number is several hundred people at least. There are people who stay for many years and become associates and sr. associates after a few years but I think if you averaged every employee's tenure there you might get an average of two years or less. They go through literally hundreds of interns. To be fair this is partly because some are just taking a year to work before grad school or there for the summer or semester or things like that but many people stay just a year or two. This is not just limited to entry-level either. Most people just don't stay very long. Also they have small-scale layoffs once in awhile and they usually go for the middle-level people who are costing them the most but who aren't associates yet.
It is easy to burn out. Part of it is the hours and intensity. Part of it I tried to explain above: there are a lot of strong personalities and a lot of people trying to be in charge of their little corner of things. It is like everyone is trying to be innovative in their own work and at the same time trying to make sure nobody else is being innovative in their procedures, right down to what colors and fonts you can use in a diagram.
With 6 years of experience you would probably start out on somebody's team on a big project, at first doing some rote CAD task. Then you might get moved onto some more managerial aspect of a smaller project. Eventually you might be more of a middle manager who would go along on some meetings for projects in progress, to coordinate some aspect of the project. You might get a team of more junior people to help you. If you stay a couple years you'd probably become an associate if they like you.

what's the 411 on Frank G. at BCJ?

I've been in meetings with Frank on a number of occasions. I believe him to be a true Architect in his vision and cleverness. His demeanor is refreshing, and his approach is delightful.

Have you worked with him, celeriter? Are you Frank in disguise? :)