IT Division: No work/life balance and unreasonable expectations
Pros
There are some Pros to PGE - they finally revamped their incredibly stingy PTO policy to separate vacation from sick leave, and provide additional paid federal holidays. It all used to come out of a small bank of PTO days. For IT workers, they also have allowed full-time remote work in Washington or Oregon. The company is working hard towards reducing carbon emissions and moving to green energy. Individual contributors are smart and dedicated and have been great to work with.
Cons
IT jobs at PGE have become a miserable slog under the newest CIO. There have been 5 division re-orgs, multiple projects with massive expectations and unreasonable deadlines - and then blow back when we couldn't deliver a perfect product. For salaried people, the pay rate seems good until you realize you're expected to work extreme amounts of overtime to meet the unrealistic goals/deadlines. Working 60-80 hour weeks has come to be the expectation instead of the occasional exception. At least if you're contract, you get paid for the overtime. They say they appreciate all the hard work, but then they pile on more in the next quarter. Don't believe anything about it being Agile. There is no leadership buy-in at any level on agile practices. We work in sprints - but sprint commitments can be derailed by any manager at any time to suit whatever whim is highest on the priority list that day. Of course, we then have to justify why sprint commitments weren't met. I don't know about other divisions, but anything related to IT is a mess, and I highly suggest staying away. I still work there, but I'm trying to get out- as are a lot of my peers.
