Great place to rapidly gain energy industry experience
Pros
Ascend is a small, but well-established software and consulting company that works with risk management, long-term planning, and various other teams within some of the largest organizations in the energy industry (both the largest IPP and largest vertically-integrated utility in the U.S. are clients). Ascend's software is well-respected and provides a great deal of value to clients, and it was a great opportunity to work with and understand all that goes into portfolio-wide energy risk modeling. Because of the small size of the company, there is a genuine need for energy analysts to be involved in all aspects of running the business: from software support and maintenance to account/project management and business development. This was a big pro for me, and I think the exposure to all these different roles is a very unique opportunity to be gained by working at Ascend. The caveat here is that you need to want to be involved in various aspects of the business. In my experience, Ascend was not a place where you could simply put your head down and focus only on your own tasks; if you find yourself routinely turning down responsibility or additional work because it's "not your job", then you may find Ascend frustrating. If you can remain flexible, learn independently, and take on a variety of tasks at once, then you may thrive on the opportunities that present themselves to you at Ascend. Advancement in both salary and responsibility was, in my opinion, quite good. I think that if you work hard and engage with the team, you will have both the ability to advance and to shape the nature of your own career in terms of the focus of your work. I gained a large amount of experience on what I feel was a very compressed timeline. This came at the price of (at times very) hard work, but for me the ability to take on large amounts of responsibility and to learn at a fast pace outweighed the hardships I encountered. Benefits were also reasonably good, and paid time off of almost 4 weeks a year is better than most comparable positions, as far as I'm aware. Location in the heart of downtown Boulder is superb and was a significant perk of working for Ascend. In general, the people I worked with at Ascend were excellent. The team of which I was a part was very collaborative, and all members were highly-educated, capable, motivated, and always willing to help out if needed. Overall, my experience at Ascend was a very positive one and I'm happy I began my career there. If you can roll with the punches and weather the storms that come with working for a small company, you'll gain a great deal of experience in a challenging and engaging setting, and you'll be able to significantly contribute to supporting and improving Ascend's products and services.
Cons
As mentioned above, daily tasks and responsibilities can vary widely and, at times, seem scattered. There is almost always more work than can be accomplished with the staff on hand, and so priorities both within and across projects can shift dramatically on a daily basis. I imagine this is not uncommon for a small company, but it can make it difficult to take significant ownership of projects, since resourcing and prioritization are often entirely out of your control. Software/code management at Ascend was a source of frustration. Because of the custom nature of Ascend's software deployments, many clients operate on distinct codebases with distinct and sometimes incompatible functionality. This makes software support a very manual and labor-intensive process, and requires a significant amount of debugging/trouble-shooting on the part of the energy analysts. The knowledge required to run the business, especially as it relates to the company's products, is very specialized and is often siloed in individuals within the company. Again, perhaps this is a product of the size and nature of the company, but there was a significant "ripple effect" through the entire team with each turnover in staff.
