Pros
I have been with Sound Transit for 8+ years and I am currently a director. I can only speak for the department/team I work in and no organization is perfect including Sound Transit: - I work with a team of smart and passionate people who want to make a positive impact in the agency and for the Puget Sound community. - It feels good to work for an organization that wants to make the world a better place. - Sound Transit provides a really great benefits package - In my area the pay is competitive and I am aware that in some other departments employees feel differently - The agency believes in its values and is a purpose driven organization which I really appreciate. I does not mean there isn't plenty still to be done and worked on. - While Peter (our CEO) has been controversial at times, I really appreciate him as our leader over the past 6+ years. I personally admire any person who wants to be CEO of a transit agency as I consider it to be mostly a thankless job. - As a leader my goal is to create a psychological safe environment where everyone can bring their views and ideas to the table so that we can make the best decisions possible. I am incredible grateful to the people I work with that we succeed in this regard most of the time.
Cons
- As is normal for an agency or government entity there are a lot of rules and procedures which we have to follow and that creates a lot of red tape. Which means it can take a long time to get things done or for changes to occur. - Because Sound Transit has been entrusted with huge amount of tax dollars there is a lot of interest from the public in what we do, and rightly so. However, it is not always easy for employees to navigate all the different demands, views, and opinions. - Traditionally we have been very siloed and cross functional collaboration has been lacking. I am happy to report this has improved significantly over the last 5 years and we still have more work to do to on that front.
