Associate Project Engineer (IT) - Associate Project Engineer Union Pacific Employee Review

2.0
Aug 30, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent work/life balance. Excellent technology stack: SOA, JMS, Spring. Automated deployment/provisioning system means no late-night manual deployment processess. Dev->Test->Production turnaround time is less than three days. Pay was pretty good for someone coming out of academia in 2012.

Cons

UP is a transportation company. You will be made very aware of this fact, repeatedly. IT is a second-class citizen; if you're dealing with an internal customer that's involved in the process of moving trains around, you're expected to do exactly what they want, even if they can't effectively communicate what that actually is. The needs of the business may shift while you're being hired and while you're in training. I was originally hired for a specialized role, but when I came out of training, I was tasked with mundane intern-level work...for 2.5 years. This was very detrimental to my career. Compensation was somewhat arbitrary. An MSCS with 4.5 years of experience can make 4-5% less than a BSCS with 3 years of experience, if the BSCS has been assigned to more impressive or important tasks. It's generally accepted that the newer you are, the more you get paid. Team norms and management styles are extremely inconsistent. Some teams are extremely Agile, others are extremely ad-hoc. Emphasis on refactoring and code quality varies wildly between individual teams. Backstabbing is rewarded. You can become a tech lead in two years and get a promotion every year if you're willing to take credit for others' ideas and blame others for your mistakes. Attempting to improve processes is punished. My decision to leave was finalized when I questioned the fact that we are permitted to close our own QA tickets without any oversight, and was told "you're paid too much to have a babysitter."

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5.0
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Pros

Great flexibility and opportunity to move around within the company

Cons

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3.0
Jul 6, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

Good benefits Work about every other day Pay has potential to be good

Cons

New hires do 100% of the work for 80% of the pay and won’t get fully compensated for the first 4 years. They are also expected to know every transportation job on site rather than focusing on one area like guys who have been here longer so 20% less pay but required to know more, do more, have to wear orange hats for a full year allowing management to easily identify them on camera or in person so they can watch them more closely hoping to catch them breaking a rule. So less pay but a more stressful work place requiring you to know more and get singled out hoping to catch them in a mistake. There is absolutely zero work life balance. Coming from a place where I had 20 plus years and able to hold a decent amount of PTO to getting a single day of paid vacation the first year and trying to balance a family life while also trying to provide for them is impossible. You sacrifice seeing your children grow up, play sports, go on vacations with them so you can provide for them. By the time you have enough years in to take a vacation with them they are grown and you missed the most important years of their lives. I know this as a child of a railroader and now as a parent who’s children barely get to see him.

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