Pros
ONEGAS employees are separated by office personnel and field support personnel. I cant speak for the office personnel, however the field support areas are really unhappy with their situation. The field support side is divided into the engineering personnel and then the field support personnel. The work is good if you enjoy using your hands. Your outside all the time and get exposure to all sorts of cool experiences. If your are a new employee who hires in from the outside, your going to earn a good salary.... But just that one time only, read below... The regular employees develop a wonderful relationship with each other and for the most part respect and help each other without question. Its a great family feeling at that level. Its the only reason most stay around as long as they do.
Cons
Granted the majority of field support personnel don't have higher level educations, but the few that do, if it is not an engineering degree, then your promotion potential seriously limited due to the fact that it is predominantly the Good-Ole-Boy system. If your an educated and management experienced field hand from previous positions in other companies, then your not the desired person for a management position because it is assumed that your salary requirement will obviously be too much for the management to want to authorize, OR your not the YES man they need. They have also inflated their management levels to include directors that have no natural gas experience but are experienced accountants. So their understanding of how field operations really work is confounding to them and restricts their view of the importance of certain aspects of the job and what it takes to keep and retain quality employees and to foster and develop an environment where the employee is rewarded for their desire to advance and excel. Oh and please don't take advantage of their education program, reason being is that you wont be looked at as a quality employee, but regarded as a regular employee with nothing more to offer that being a pack mule to carry the load. You will have to stay with the company two years after the degree is awarded, understandable, but when a management position comes available, and they paid for your management degree and not promote you to a management position and take someone without the degree over you, its really discouraging. They paid for that education, why wouldn't they want to harness that education and put it to work. Consequently, the person selected also took a lesser salary than the one that was qualified would have had to have been paid. When ambition hits me and I want to start to help my management staff with their duties, i.e. asking for more responsibility, I get the cold shoulder and told that I just need to focus on my duties. No grooming for higher level responsibilities. They want you where they have you. This company has turned into a numbers based company only concerned about the bottom line. This is completely understandable. However, when it comes to quality of people in the management positions to help to form and shape the future of the company, there is a whole bunch to be desired for their decisions. Such as when they hire an internal applicant for a higher paying management position, they don't give them the salary, they do incremental steps to that particular salary over a certain time frame. Like a two year span. However, if they hire for that same position from external, they get the full allotment of the salary right away. Very upsetting. The company has a practice of having a salary scale for a position and you never seeing the full spectrum, like ever. Some employees are even hired into a position at below the bottom end of the posted pay scale and told if they don't like it they can leave. That should be illegal. If by some terrible chance you have to sue the company, their tactic to combat that suit is to drag out the litigation for so long that eventually you as the plaintiff, will run out of money before the company does, and have to settle for whatever chump change they offer you.
