Pros
The co-workers at North Shore Gas are some of the best and brightest I’ve meet. While the acquisition by WE Energies is trying to break up the “family” feel, the employees here will not let it go easily. Everyone truly has everyone’s back...at the employee level.
Since there are so few people, you get to wear a lot of hats and learn a lot about how gas distribution works. This makes everyone very well rounded and helps to eliminate some of the silos you’d see at larger utilities.
Some managers are very easy to approach, more on this later.
Cons
It must have been the best (or worst?) kept secret that one of the managers was going back to school and basically shut himself off to everyone in the Company. During this time, North Shore was basically down to one manager due to this one’s non-responsiveness and lack of being available. I don’t know how/why the top brass at WEC let this one slide as it was pretty well known amongst the rank and file that he was doing "other work" instead of North Shore Gas work for almost 2 years.
While some managers are easy to approach, others are not. The one that is not has a short temper and operates under the old school mentality of “I’m the manager, so I’m always right”. This has resulted in some questionable business decisions as project specific team recommendations go ignored for the ego boost. I was told a couple times to significantly lower project estimates so it wouldn't have to go to a VP for approval. This didn't seem ethical to me, but I was told to do it anyways. While teamwork is “supported” verbally from this individual, it is not backed up by their actions. It's nothing more than a stunt in my opinion.