Pros
Generally, the people are good, hourly/field workers are always troopers with realistic attitudes and strong sense of comradery. You can learn a lot if you seek the knowledge yourself and actively branch out to other departments.
Cons
The higher ups (CEO and high ranking managers) are totally delusional. Hours are insane. Pay is unnecessarily and insultingly low. They have the money to pay you a decent wage, they just don't. I honestly don't know if it's because of accidental mismanagement of funds or corruption. The math doesn't add up. People are forced to take on extra roles and responsibilities and are deliberately not compensated for them. There are not really any bonuses except these $25gift certificates they give you for reporting safety issues (they usually end up not doing anything about those safety issues). The safety culture could be awesome but ends up being threatening, controlling and manipulative. For example: they aggressively monitor how you park your personal vehicle (you have to park it in reverse because the CEO thinks reversing in any other scenario is dangerous... It's first move forward to the extreme.) BUT if you need traffic control on an active highway when you're working in the shoulder or median etc somehow it's never in the budget. They advise you on how to jump out of the way of a swerving vehicle or tell you that if you wear a hardhat people will know you're working and be less likely to swerve etc and hit you. There are a lot of lesser or more extreme situations like that across the board. If you want training of any kind, you have to rely on your immediate coworkers- don't expect any official training, only on the job training often solo research on my days off or trial by fire or training from subcontracted workers in my experience. A big reason for this is that Terracon has many people who understand the theory behind a bunch of different things and maybe they know someone with real experience in something but they promise the services without really having a game plan. So you end up having to wing it a lot. The pre task planning is a joke. They waste a lot of time and money on things like locked gates to properties they have to drill on. Massive turn over rate, e.g. 50% of the drillers and drillers assistants leave within the first year. Bottom line: some people love it. Most of them don't know how much better you can be treated elsewhere. I, for one, pinch myself with gratitude everyday at my new job elsewhere because they follow federal rules and regulations for how workers should be treated and I am not shamed or guilt tripped for working 40 hour weeks nor am I congratulated for overtime. Among other things
