Trammell Crow Company Development -- can anyone share their experience?

I am a current Senior Associate at TCC. Given the small size of the company I am going to have to be fairly vague in my response, but if you give me a list of questions I'll answer what I can.

Analyst 2's comment about "good for a few years, but not going to get wealthy there" is a wildly inaccurate representation of the company. We pay much better than our competitors when you include upside/promote, even if the basic salary + target bonus lags behind (at senior levels). There is a reason almost no one ever leaves unless laid off or specifically pushed out (for performance, etc). The payouts in good years for principals (and also for VPs and Associates too) would be called fake on this board if people heard it. WLB is also fantastic, with hours being in the 45-50 range outside of a handful of sprints.

I also have honestly never heard of someone leaving (from a development team) for "more responsibility" unless the real reason was they weren't good enough to keep moving up. There is no separate sourcing/acquisition/asset management/etc vertical. At TCC you work cradle to grave on your deals, with the only division being that each market has a handful of construction managers for the day to day "boots on the ground" on site. A $200M project might have one principal, 2-3 mid/junior staff, and 1-2 construction staff for the whole deal, and they will handle 100% of everything from initial DD to leasing and sale. It's hard to have more responsibility unless you shift to much smaller product.

Hiring is very stingy (10 new junior staff each year, if that), as the expectation is that everyone hired should be good enough to eventually make it to principal (obviously there is going to be attrition on the way, but there's no sense of "hire 10 analysts expecting 1 or 2 to stay until principal with the rest leaving for somewhere better"). The only way structured way to get hired is through MBA recruitment, with any other hires being on an ad hoc basis. There is essentially no pre-MBA/undergrad hiring outside of random exceptions or to fill specific roles. You can join as a VP in theory, but essentially the hiring approach is to hire MBAs and keep them forever, and then to fill in at the senior level as needed with SVP level hires whose goal from day 1 is to source deals to try and make principal. Construction staff has a different hiring approach obviously, but similarly low-turnover.

Also all the comments about each market operating separately are true, for better and for worse.