Pros
- There are some good people within the organization who show up everyday and just work hard. Those people are some of the easiest people in the world to work for and with. I suspect that that was more how it was in the past. It is fun to work with people that come to work and enjoy actually working. You might like Powell: - If you like traveling for weeks to sites for commissioning switchgear or related products and getting hands on experience while troubleshooting and really enjoy that moment when it all comes together and works. - If you are interested in seeing how switchgear is manufactured. - If you want to work for a manufacture ,not consulting, and get to work with a variety of relay and communication equipment from different manufactures. - If you ever wanted to get involved in the actual R&D design of breakers and associated products. - If you want to get involved in selling switchgear and switchgear solutions,.
Cons
- You'll be oversold and mislead on nature of the position and the travel involved in your interview. You will be told stuff like hardly ever will does anyone travel on weekends while you find out it is pretty common to be sent to site for three weeks. You'll get told crap too like oh you'll get to pick and choose what you want to do from each project. - Workplace harassment and inappropriate behavior is pretty common and it is intentionally swept under the rug. A lot of bullying and threats by individuals like threatening to spread rumors about someone if they bring up an issue.. Some managers and directors will participate in inappropriate conversations about the individual in front of people to try to create an intimidating environment to bring up workplace issues and if a complaint is filed, a heads up is passed to all the individuals to get their stories straight before being interviewed by HR. The goal is to just say something was done but to never do anything and only pretend to do something when a complaint is filed. The cherry on top of the whole thing is that if you file a complaint and it is swept under the rug, management will then tell you that they found nothing and that they will severely punish people who file false complaints. You know the complaints elsewhere here on glassdoor about bad behavior and discrimination, they probably are true because there is a company culture that exist to sweep everything under the rug. - You'll get told we are trying to break into new markets and expand the offerings of the group and into markets outside of oil and gas. What you get is a group that has been shredded by perpetual high turnover and people who abuse the hands off approach by leadership to cut a few hours out of work everyday. Instead of doing everything to prepare for the eventual oil and gas dip there is just no impetus for anything. Presentation aren't given at working groups or conferences. Customers don't even know what we offer. - Groups are way too top heavy to make money even when oil and gas is doing well. 2 directors, 2 managers, 1 supervisor, 3 people in sales, and 4 project managers and coordinators support the work that is being done by 9 engineers and 3 designers. I don't what the plan was but we managed to find ways to lose money during the last oil and gas boom. The bids for jobs also play a role in that. Sales puts in wonky bids that are impossible to meet and they then go around tell people that engineer so and so doesn't know what they are doing. The bids set how many hours are allocated to a job and that is pressed on engineering as if engineer can just speed up to hit a magical number. A lot of stuff is not checked like it should be, people aren't running through the project with a highlighter and you come across mistakes and miss wirings in projects already deployed. - The pay is sometimes embarrassedly low. One of the better engineers in our group had been with Powell for over 7 years and was being paid less than fresh grads on average out of University of Texas - Austin or 'low paying' engineering jobs with the City of Houston. - Very little training. At a company like Schweitzer, you are provide hours and hours and class after class of training. The goal being they want to create industry experts. At Powell, there is little to no training in comparison. Not even lunch and learns. - 95% of the work is tied to oil and gas - If you ever have a manager that says something like "we just don't hire people that do xxxxx" or "I can't stand that so and so is always late" and never does anything, try to find another group to work in. You got a manager that can't or won't manage people.
