Pros
1) Health/dental/vision are top notch, and ST covers a significant amount of the monthly premium. 2) Above average PTO. Recently switched from Sick/Vacation to PTO in recent years. 3) Retirement - While you don't participate in Social Security program at ST, they match 12% of your salary at 100%, with a 10% of your contribution. This reduces your take home a bit, but pays off long term. 4) Job Security - while ST has significant issues delivering projects, and delivering service (more on this in cons...), the industry itself is stable and secure.
Cons
1) Leadership - SPECIFICALLY(!) the Board of directors, the "executives" and their hand picked "top line" leaders. ST is hamstrung by being guided by an 18 member board comprised of 17 elected officials and the WSDOT sec. The Board leverages this role for political points (ala Balducci) for career advancement, advocates items specifically beneficial for their town (which isn't completely unreasonable, however...) despite being contrary to what is beneficial for ST and the program and not what is best for ST overall. We have a lame duck temporary CEO who was hand picked by an incompetent Board of Directors, who parades around as an agent of change, but the only changes that have been made in a year are lift and shifts of who reports to where, nothing of material impact - all smoke and mirrors. The executive leadership and top line leadership is comprised of outsiders, and hand picked individuals. There has been a mass exodus of leadership and high tenure individuals in the past few years and the outsiders have no idea what is going on, what teams do, and what the long term vision is. They also have an arrogance about them that they are saviors, while providing nothing materially beneficial that ST hasn't already done or is already pursuing. To the point of hand picking leaders, it is very apparent that it isn't about what you know, but who you know - which maybe isn't different from a private industry, but this is public and we have controls in place to prevent nepotism-ish practices. In short, the incompetent BoD selects incompetent CEO (Goran and Julie) who in turn select incompetent Leadership team - and folks wonder why ST can't deliver and why the cycle repeats itself. 2) Service Delivery - Many don't realize the complexity (unnecessary but politically driven) of ST operations. Tacoma Link is an internally operated service with ST staff. ST express and Sounder are services operated by 'partners', Peirce Transit, Community Transit, Metro, and BNSF. There are minimal ST staff to support these services, they operate essentially as contract oversight. Lastly, Link is operated by King County Metro. And oh boy is that a terribly inefficient relationship. The amount of fraud, waste, and abuse that KCM gets away would make even the most diehard mass transit advocate question reality. GPS records of facility staff driving up and down I5 all day killing time, repeatedly spending hours at restaurants, and so much more. You wonder why facilities are dirty, it's because KCM is not doing their job. The most ironic aspect is having the Board Chair asking why stations are dirty, and not having the awareness that it is his department. 3) DEI - ST is fully committed to being an anti-racist organization, which is fantastic!! Except they cannot provide how ST is actively and directly being racist, and how we will become anti-racist. It's all DEI gaslighting. They will say we have gender pay inequality, okay then fix it - you have an entire department in HR that stares at a spreadsheet with salaries who can make the necessary change. But they don't, why? More controversial but anecdotally true, you need not apply yourself if you're a white, male. There is no denying that ST bleeds Seattle progressivism, but it is borderline hostile work place for white males. 4) Culture/Values. These values are only expected to be followed by individual contributors, and non-top layer leaders. Too many examples of executives demonstrably violating values that there is so little trust in the executives. This is reflected annually in our employee engagement surveys that continue to have results so low in executive trust that the facilitators of the results had to legit lie and gas light as to reasons why during last year's rollout of results. 5) RTO - executives are saying we need RTO for culture building. RTO isn't going to address the root cause of the culture at ST. See all the above for what is driving culture. Furthermore, ST had actively hired staff all across the state for the past almost 5 full years. This is going to result in significant talent outflow at the individual contributors level that no outside executive is going to be able to overcome. This has also resulted into a professional union forming internally, which is demonstrative of the lack of trust and poor decision making of the executive class at ST. 5) project delivery - instead of building a durable, reliable, and redundant system, ST has been distracted by chasing one time, zero long term benefit achievements, pet projects, and political directives (WSLE prime contemporaneous example.) The fact that we have built so few pocket tracks, and all of our stations are custom and unique is reflective of a misguided pursuit of personal accolades and not what's best for the community and ST - we'd rather have a plaque on the wall that says LEED platinum instead of being able to effectively and efficiently respond to a brake failure on a car. All the custom attributes only contributes to long term maintenance and capital replacement costs, and further service impacts.