An OK first job. Company is circling the drain.
Pros
Benefits are good, but as a young person you won't use them. They have a nice gym and cafeteria.
Cons
Salary is too low for development jobs and you are constantly looking to go elsewhere. If you are on a mission critical system, you are on call and the calls can be brutal. There are too many managers and people who are not bringing much value who are in constant useless meetings. They are sitting around waiting for their pension while they make the same or more as you. The pension is unsustainable and it is not worth taking a pay cut for 30 years to fund old people when it will be removed in the future. Information is not shared and the organization is slow, inept, and, hierarchical. No visionary leadership at the top—only an excessive fixation on operating ratio. Low employee morale in general—in the field and HQ. The Jim Young years were much better. There was an emphasis on training and people. That is going away and people are now treated like utterly replaceable numbers. Operating ratio can’t be the guiding goal of a company. The last round of voluntary and involuntary cuts will leave the company crippled. The worst decision I have ever seen at UP. Lots of smart young people voluntarily took the buyout. General feeling that the company is circling the drain. No funding for new capital projects or innovation. A few bloated IT projects that never get done bleed the company dry. No accountability at the top for AVPs who can’t make their deadlines. They should be FIRED and the money be used for new developers that are DESPERATELY needed in many places. How many times have these project’s deadlines been pushed back and these same AVPs still exist? Now they are cutting other projects to throw bodies at these failures. People who finish their projects on time and on budget get nothing. Disgustingly bad and bloated SOA implementation with clueless overpaid and worthless enterprise architects. A culture of only Java devs who shun newer and better technology. UP’s tech stack is being left in the dust. Even JCPenny uses React and Node.js. Even GreatClips can build a mobile app for external customers. UP can’t because of their terrible security and architecture decisions. Heavy use of offshore, although some are quite good with the right leadership and training—just expect a very high ratio of offshore devs to onsite. In my case I was the only onsite developer before I left.
