Good Salary, Great Benefits, Baby Boomers with a Politically Conservative Organization
Pros
Salary, benefits, recession resistant industry, new technologies, work life balance The salary and benefits are pretty good. Salary is about average with the benefits being pretty good. Full 401k match, backup child care, fitness membership $'s, wellness program, education assistance, employee discount programs, etc. You name AEP probably offers some form of it. The fact that we (20k+ employees) haven't had any layoffs up to this point in the recession is remarkable. Granted it's probably due to the fact that we're regulated in many of our service territories. Being able to work with some newer technologies is nice, although the majority of work we do is based off of centurys old technologies, ie coal, gas, and hydro generation w/ a single nuke plant. We do have a couple of wind plants in Texas and are leasing wind generation from other companies throughout our service territories. The work life balance is okay with the benefits being pretty good. I think that AEP upper management has done some good research and determined what its employees would like from a work life balance program. Working in generation this can be difficult due to outages running for a couple of weeks to a few months. It can be trying at times and as stated by someone else, a person that doesn't have the personal life responsibilities of a family may find themself working many more hours than someone who doesn't, but this is surely going to be different depending on your boss. There are people with families with invaluable experience that work many more hours than others with no family but with less experience (see baby boomers abound below).
Cons
Political climate, baby boomers abound, work life balance Politically, the majority of people in my work area (territory in generation typically rural) are conservative Republicans, which can make for a difficult work climate at times, being more liberal myself. I think that upper management is typically conservative as well but not wearing their political views on their shoulder like a lot of the people I work with (picture a chip). This does create a culture of defiance to diversity and EEO programs, although AEP continues to receive recognition for best places to work as a woman/mother, minority, military, and other awards (check AEP website), in the area where I work and other areas, including TX, OK, LA, AR, WV, IN, KY, OH, MI, VA I've seen the climate become a lot more volatile since the election of our current Democratic president. That being said I do think there are areas within the company that aren't this way, I just haven't seen it in my area. This is a fairly large company. Generation is inhabited by many baby boomers. The majority of the plants were built a long time ago so the jobs were/have been taken and held by the baby boomers for awhile. I'm sure you've read about the knowledge loss from retirements in other industries. Power generation is no different and probably more so in danger. There has been low hiring and turn over in this area and AEP is no different. Now that the economics are the way they are less people are retiring and hiring freezes are in place. This can be okay for learning the skills required for the job but can make it difficult for a younger, progressive like myself to fit in with the culture. Work life balance as discussed above is a pro and a con. Outages can be long. When there isn't an outage you're planning for the next outage. It can be very demanding with the salary (average) and benefits being the rewards.