Employee's education, experience, and capabilities are not necessarily a component of speed of promotion; time "put in" at TVA is (but this depends on the group you are in). It will work to your advantage if you stay with the company long enough though, even if you are not a hard worker.
It is a power company when it benefits them to be one in corporate culture comparisons (HUGELY ridiculous compensation for CEO and upper management), and it is a federal agency when it benefits them in regulation requirement comparisons - the agency sort of chameleons between a profit-driven and a federal mentality instead of being a hybrid of the two (it is an independent federal agency).
Continual major reorganizations of the company - you will never have business cards that reflect your current organization's acronyms because it happens so often. Count on at least one re-org a year. Not uncommon to forget what the current name of your group is because it has been so many different things.
A huge gap in age between talent pools - those that are counting down the hours to retirement and
the college newbies that don't know how to apply their university training in the federal world yet - there will be a big knowledge vacuum when all of the veteran employees retire and there is not much foresight being had or training being done to anticipate this.
Way too many senior managers and not enough worker bees.
Extraordinarily high stress environment. Lots of blood pressure pill poppers working there.
Bad employees are not usually fired, they are "reorganized" out of a group and the game of hot potato continues ever onward instead of addressing the actual problem until the bad employee either leaves on their own or retires.
