Consistently steps over a dollar to pick up a dime!
Pros
It's such a vast organization that there's a little something to interest pretty much anyone! There's manual labor, managerial work, individual contributor work, technical or non-technical, talking with lots of people or heads-down, indoor or outdoor, more railroad-specific or generic. It's a great place to explore what you like and get any kind of work experience you want. Even if you settle into a department, there's always something new coming at you. The problems to solve are incredibly interesting and unique. There are pockets of Tech that are doing very cool stuff with artificial intelligence and really low-level Web component stuff. Nearly everyone under the director-level management are great people that love the work they do. Many directors too. Execs are usually good about knowing what to say. They *TALK* about how the company should operate (and they speak true statements).
Cons
The same execs apply EXTREME pressure to complete ad hoc wishlists as "MVP" software. Employees that will cave to the pressure and produce software they know is bad because they are covered by "the exec told me to". There's no target product defined that any "MVP" will move us toward. Only a malleable list of features to churn out by a preconceived and hard deadline. The only way for Tech to keep its head above water is to be a feature factory. Many people have tried to build up Tech operationally to be more efficient in the long run, but cuts, delays, and "headwinds" always stomp those plans. Another example of the company's shortsightedness. When I first started at UP, one of the pros was how stable it was. Investor-pleasing execs have really ruined that and have lost sight of doing what's best for the company in the long term. UP often doesn't do proper hardware and software research before spending ungodly amounts of money. Shortsightedly buys bad hardware, tries to address the problem with accessories (over and over) or haphazard software work arounds instead of accepting the bad choice of the past and moving on to better hardware more suited for the task. UP gets involved in politics unrelated to railroading. Work from home policy was OK until recently, when it became a joke. Now, only one day WFH for the office folks. Not surprising considering how horribly they treat the field folks.
