Caltrans Reviews

I worked at Caltrans full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Excellent experience, diverse and interesting work force. Chance to work on projects that affect thousands of people. Friendly work environment.

Cons – New hired will not receive the same pension benefits as existing staff. No geographic pay increment, so in expensive areas of the state, wages are low compared to other public agencies.

Advice to Senior Management – In most of the non-engineering fields, its difficult to make a good living if you live in the Bay Area, or even LA. But, working in some of the other districts where the cost of living is considerably less, you can make a good living. I would recommend paying wages based on geography. We lost many of our best staff (engineers, managers, you name it) to local agencies due to pay discrepancy.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – 40 hours a week.Steady.Rain or shine.

Cons – Incompetence in senior management.Prevalent.Lazy .

Advice to Senior Management – Retire and let the more competent men promote.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – You can come in any time you want. No restrictions on how long you stay or commit to the program. Very flexible. Nice coworkers and supervisors. Opportunity to be exposed to various day to day operations of Caltrans engineers. Casual environment. Frequent potlucks.

Cons – Not enough work sometimes. Sit around a lot of the time. Sometimes work given is very basic and does not benefit you in reaching your career goals. A lot of administrative duties given (depends where you work). Volunteer program needs more coordination and organization.

Advice to Senior Management – Set up an official volunteer program curriculum to expose unpaid volunteers to Caltrans operations in all the departments.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – good projects and lots of information

Cons – too much politics and perosnality conflicts

Advice to Senior Management – more indians and less chiefs

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – Work-life balance
reasonable salary
great benefits
pay for PE

Cons – Little room for advancement
Bureaucratic system

Advice to Senior Management – Need better way to incentivize employees to achieve

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Caltrans

Pros – Once you get into Caltrans, there is a lot of opportunity to grow based on how hard you work and how much you learn.

Cons – The state doesn't give them hazard pay.

Advice to Senior Management – Hazard pay.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – Secure, Little stress, Family friendly

Cons – Little motivation, Bureaucracy, No compensation for advanced degrees

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – It's probably like working at other IT shops, but being that they're the state, they don't get to innovate too much, just follow.

Cons – Though they do have an open source policy, they still go with the big names (MS, Oracle) even though other open source options exist, but this is more a statewide standards policy than anything else.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop being so beholden to the direction of the OCIO, and listen to your more technical staff. The direction the state is headed technologically is backwards from the rest of the industry

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – Benefits, salary, variety of opportunities. Caltrans offers employees a vary generous plate of benefits, including a great retirement package, to both the employee and the employee's family through the CALPERS retirement program (2% at 55 formula for Caltrans employees), one of the best in the country for public agencies. This alone makes working for Caltrans an advantage. When the total benefit package is added up in dollars, the private sector cannot compare. Caltrans salaries for engineering and surveying professionals are now pretty comparable to most public agencies and even private engineering firms; however, many private firms offer salary packages that are higher and/or include annual bonuses which Caltrans does not offer. The typical benefit package of a private engineering firm, however, does not have anywhere near the total value of the package offered by Caltrans. Caltrans also offers engineers and surveyors a variety of different career area where they can work. Caltrans has a rotation program for junior engineers so that they can get early experience in a variety of different areas over a two year period, such as design, construction, hydraulics, traffic, materials lab, etc.

Cons – Difficult to advance up career latter, size of organization causes difficulties, difficult to learn new skills and keep up with current trends in the industry. Promoting in Caltrans, depending upon the function and location, can be rather competititve. Often written tests and promotion ranking lists are required. Sometimes inner politics gets in the way of the selection of candidates (i.e., the best candidate does not always receive the promotion). Because Caltrans has over 13,000 employees, many times it is very difficult for needed changes to be made in the organization. The large size of the organization also makes it easy for "dead weight", or employees who do minimum work contribution, to hide and essentially "get away doing little or no work." It is hard to fire employees after the probation period because of the Civil Service rules. Obtaining salary raises can be difficult for some classifications that do not have as strong of a union. Also, it is rather easy for an employee to get caught in a niche or sole skill/function unless they make an active effort to transfer to other job functions (be a specialist in one particular field or function with no real overall general experience). This can make it difficult to qualify for jobs outside of the organziation, where more general knowledge and skills sets are often desired of candidates.

Advice to Senior Management – Encourgage rank and file workers to bring new ideas to save resources to management and be open to adopt the good ideas. Upper Management, particularly in headquarters, often gets caught into its own world and does not understand what works best at the rank and file level. They need to obtain more input from rank and file and then have the openness to seriously consider implementing the ideas that come from that level. The disconnect between the lower level staff member and Upper Management needs to be bridged.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Caltrans

Pros – Exciting projects to work on. Many different challenges. Lots of things to learn about all different aspects of road, bridge, building and drainage construction.

Cons – Dealing with stifling and complex environmental regulations. Dodging inattentive and ungrateful drivers. Having to work at night due to heavy traffic and the highway system being outdated and too few lanes.

Advice to Senior Management – Promote and sustain the employees that produce good work. Get rid of the employees that are incompetent or lazy.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend