Pros
a) Pay is amazing b) Bonuses c) solid job security d) they don't fire anyone e) good diversity and solid company culture goals. f) if you are lucky enough to get a good manager, it's pretty good. g) Staff is generally great people. Good hiring practices.
Cons
a) Zero accountability at any level of the company. Large numbers of staff have never been trained at their job and lack basic skills required to do them. New hires are thrust into project work with no guidance and expected to "ask questions." That's the extent of training at AEP. There is no decent review process and no verification that a project is done correctly. Management/Supervision has zero oversight on projects. b) Management is completely absent and rarely does anything besides go to meetings and exist and has no involvement with their staff. Staff members could do nothing all day and still get paid. Managers/supervisors are generally completely lost and provide no value with a few notable exceptions. Staff tends to identify a few base level employees that have answers and go to them instead of leadership. c) Expected to work as needed to keep up with crazy budget expectations. You are not compensated for going above and beyond and will be overworked. Workload is unmanagable for most employees. d) Minimal support from leadership. Problems are ignored or swept under the rug. Extreme resistance to modern practices and a cult-like following of "The AEP way" because we're "an industry leader". Tool and process development is intentionally incomplete and done poorly so as to pass the buck to lower level staff. e) About half the staff is middle management. Most of them rose to their level of incompetence and are terrible leaders. Promotions are based on tenure, not skills. f) Innovation and staying current and technically sound is not a priority. AEP does not value knowledge, they value "investment dollars" aka spending money on projects to get a return from shareholders. This leads to lots of poor quality work. Engineers lean heavily on company standards with little understanding of the things behind them.