Pros
Company still offers a pension
Cons
If you’re looking for an innovative employer that believes in the value of its employees; somewhere that truly believes in diversity and equity and works to allow its employees to feel valued, look elsewhere. If you’re excited for either professional or personal growth opportunities, look elsewhere. If you’d like to work with cutting edge or emerging technologies, look elsewhere. If you’d like to be fairly compensated, look elsewhere. Internal promotions and hiring decisions are made with an overall general disregard for individual skills, background, qualifications or contributions. Women and minorities are severely underrepresented in every group above craft- from management to director-level to executive leadership. The company has eliminated thousands of jobs over the past few years - increasing the amount of work each employee is expected to take on - and without additional resources to actually accomplish that work. The company is now hiring as fast as possible to account for the massive cuts made to the workforce. Pay across crafts is the lowest of all Class I railroads. Pay for office personnel is not at all competitive with respective industries. Bonus pay at lower levels is based on “individual performance”. In truth, this is a control mechanism for the company to cap the amount of bonus paid to employees - regardless of actual performance. The review tiers are structured in such a way that if you perform your job well - you’ll receive the lowest possible annual bonus rate. Communication is atrocious. You’ll have no official avenue to comment on the performance of management at any level. Performance reviews at Norfolk Southern are one-sided at best leaning towards farcical. Norfolk Southern offers nothing in terms of education reimbursement or career training if you’re looking to further your career by taking online courses or college credits outside of work. The education reimbursement program was cancelled, abruptly a couple of years ago with no notice to employees enrolled in the program. The company has made an absurd number of ‘re-orgs’ in the past few years. Most with no prior notification or planning. This lack of proper planning or communication obviously has an adverse effect on the systems, applications and processes that support day-to-day operations in the organization. If you want to work somewhere where you’ll be under-compensated, unappreciated, and forced to take on additional responsibilities at a moments whim without additional compensation - come to NS. If you want to work for a company that outwardly touts its “commitment to diversity” while internally setting up “diversity councils” consisting of an oddly homogenous group of males - come to NS. If you envision working for management or departmental leadership with no formal education and no actual management experience - come to NS. To all recent new hires - make sure you have a backup plan in case of an impending economic downturn.