Pros
- Except for a few bad apples, other contractors are great to work with. There are a few, and I stress "few", full timers that care about their jobs. - A huge amount of work for people - there is always something broke. - Due to all of the systems, there is always something to learn on or play with. ....uh, yea, that's about it. This review is going to be long...
Cons
- SOME of the full timers (aka: FTE's) are competent, but the majority should be tossed out. - Management is just useless at BPA. I could list all kinds of reasons, but please trust me that management here is terrible. They refuse to allow good things to happen due to multiple points that could span a book. Most major projects (like upgrading desktops) fail, then are renamed, fail again, renamed - see a pattern here? That was a real example... - The contracting companies control all aspects of life for a contractor. BPA is not allowed to provide feedback, most pay a crappy amount of the actual contract amount (negotiate VERY hard for a rate) and most of the companies are "body farms". Use Glassdoor for the company you're working with and ensure to use ALL their names to locate all the reviews on them. - Some groups go out of their way to make life miserable for everyone, including the janitors. It seems that groups that are almost completely FTE's seem to have this issue. This can be everything from people complaining about stupid stuff to "Shh people working here" signs ALL OVER the place. - LAYOFFS - That's right folks, a government agency is laying contractors off left and right while the President claims things are getting better. Yet another failed DOE "investment". If you're not working on a project that is not O&M, be afraid for your job. - Too much work. As another contractor pointed out, there are more IT depts than there should be, about 300 more IT employees than there should be and nearly 1 server (VM and Physical) per employee at this place. Again - always something broke, which you will no doubt re-fix again later. - Small cubes where you can touch both walls at the same time. - The FTE's are walled in with Unions and extra rules and regs. As a contractor, you have absolutely no rights. - 2 IT directors because things are so bad, people are worried (and partially because the current one was seen packing his office up). - I hope you like silo's because we're all walled off and there are turf wars over whom does what on each type of server. - 3 internal business units run this one company. Transmission, Power and Energy Efficiency are all depts that act like spoiled brats when they want something. Having all the money, everyone bends over backwards to make those groups happy. All do what they want, when they want, to include going outside the company for the same services that are provided internally.
