Austin Energy Reviews

Pros

Excellent, visionary utility. Can work on some very cool projects and programs.

Cons

Below market pay and low agility from being a city department.

Pros

Benefits and pay were quite good. Upper management was open to hearing ideas for improvement. Level of responsibility given was far higher than what was expected at this level of employment (supervisory).

Cons

General incompetence of middle and upper management. Corruption in hiring in management positions. Wasteful, unproductive employees made everyone look bad.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the ideas coming from lower management level, they are your brightest people. Clean up your hiring practices and promote more internally.

Pros

Job security, benefits (and specifically, retirement); people are nice; Austin Energy is making a recent push to hire from within since a lot of the upper management is eligible for retirement in the next few years; the city is a big place and job opportunities can be transparent, so once you get your foot in the door, you may have options available that would be harder to transition to outside the city; the city doesn't like to fire people, so chances are good that you'll be able to work there until you retire or until you want to leave

Cons

Few opportunities for advancement outside of engineering field; people stay here forever so stagnant environment (same old players = old ideas); longtimers hog top positions; seems to be a good ole' boy club at the top; the pay is supposedly so small because the benefits are so good; not a lot of young people at Austin Energy; the environment (and most of the people) isn't "cool" or cutting edge – some dress like they are receiving welfare; you have to be extra conscious of public image because the funding comes from the citizens of Austin; there are some questionable people in leadership roles – it leads you to think that they were promoted because they brown nosed one important person, not because they were the best person for the job; the city doesn't like to fire people, so incompetent employees usually just get transferred (often leading to a better job) and bad managers are hardly ever demoted

Advice to Senior Management

Really take a look at what makes a good manager/leader and consider this before hiring for a leadership position. More often than not, I see people at the city who fill leadership roles but who are not leaders.

Pros

City owned utility, most decisions are made by politicians on City Council and are heavily biased towards green energy initiatives that can win popular votes during elections. Austin Energy has total disregard to its long term economic bottom lines with its huge portion of the money losing renewable generation (mainly wind, bio-fuel and wood chip burning) in its portfolio. Extremely uncompetitive in the market place and the only thing keeps it going is its monopoly power over Austin service area as a community owned utility. Customers are bearing increasing amount of costs and the base rate is projected to go up dramatically (in stages) over the next decade just to keep Austin Energy from bankruptcy.

Cons

A corporate utility that is being run as a City department.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn how to say no to City council.

Pros

The company allows for flexible scheduling and is more laid back than a lot of customer service positions because it is a government entity

Cons

Very bureaucratic in practice. A lot of information is loss and it is hard to get ahead because of people who have worked there forever.

Advice to Senior Management

Please look at a person's whole body of work for promotion and hiring. More time at a company doesn't necessarily equal competence.

Pros

stable place to work
Rarely any layoffs
excellent retirement package if you stay long enough

Cons

slow paced
I often found myself taking 1 week to do something that takes 1 hour to do

Advice to Senior Management

Management does a good job on creating programs

Pros

profesionalism at it finest with quality empolyee

Cons

long hours after a storm

Advice to Senior Management

lighting-up