Pros
The casual dress code and liberal time off policy are nice (you still have to get your manager's approval and be in the office during regular hours), but being a results-only-work-environment is a plus. Most people there are rather easy to work with, so office politics aren't a major issue. Office location is nice, as well. Due to all of the unnecessary challenges, you can learn a lot rather quickly and get meaningful experience.
Cons
There is no real company culture here. There are department and company-wide activities, and the like, but it's all very superficial. Most people here also have no previous experience in the energy sector, so they don't necessarily see the bigger picture. Sales from the retail side (their core business) have been in decline, and it appears that they don't really value their non-retail businesses, even though that's what they should be doing. Communication from executives is sorely lacking and their foresight and decision-making seems to be questionable, at best. Recently, some departments' jobs were moved to Columbus and consolidated with AEP, the utility parent company. I suspect that will happen again for additional departments, if not the whole Chicago office. Being a subsidiary of AEP causes numerous conflicts of interest, since AEP is a rather conservative utility, which probably prevents AEP Energy from doing certain kinds of business that other retail energy suppliers and competitors do. Having the IT / development team partly outsourced to Peru causes a lot of unnecessary problems that probably cost the company at least twice as much money as whatever they're saving by not having those jobs be internal. Communication and cooperation between departments is also lacking, which becomes problematic when issues or opportunities come about that impact multiple departments.
