Bart Reviews

Pros

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants are not discriminated against because of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, religion, national origin, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition (cancer-related), genetic information or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws. The BART Human Resources Department will make reasonable efforts in the examination process to accommodate persons with disabilities or for religious reasons.

Cons

Positions represented by certain unions have priority consideration for certain positions. There aren't many opportunities for training within the company for advancement.

Advice to Senior Management

Manager's should always value their employees, remember others look to them for leadership, guidance, or advice. They may also rely on you for career direction and job security.

Pros

If you are approaching retirement age (45+) BART's benefits are hard to beat. Retire at 50 with 5 years of service

Cons

Difficult to advance or more to another dept (unless you know the right person)

Advice to Senior Management

Review the recruitment and career advancement process. HR processes are messy as well.

Pros

BART gives you a lot of time off and the benefits are good. Some departments are very short-staffed so the people there don't actually get to take the time, but in most you can.

Cons

BART has structural problems in terms of compensation. People are hired at a decent rate, but raises are only 0-2% per year, so if you stay a long time, you fall far behind the market and new people coming in and doing the same job as you will make $10K-$30K more, In some departments, people actually quit, then get rehired to the same job, just to get a raise. Also, the pay is inverse of what you would expect, i.e. the highest skilled people with Master's degrees make less than station agents and janitors (on paper they make more, but thanks to their contracts station agents get all kinds of various bonus pay for miscellaneous things that boosts their income).

BART management is also *extremely* secretive. No one knows what is going on.

There's no formal training or career development, but you do get $1K a year education allowance to take outside classes if you want.

Morale is pretty poor overall and when things go wrong the common response is "well, this is BART" as if it's to be expected. Everything takes about 3x as long to do at BART as it would at a private company, partly because there's very little project management or planning, partly because of ridiculous union rules, and partly because the equipment is so old and there's no money for things. For example, in my department, we have to share one copy of Adobe Acrobat between more than 20 people so if someone else is using the "Acrobat computer" and you need it for your job, you're out of luck.

To be fair, not all of this is management's fault. If you work at BART you pretty much will have to join a union and each union has different rules about who can do what, etc. There's a lot of resentment when, for example, people in one union can come in an hour late (or more) every day while people in another are docked pay if they do the same. Managers are some of the worse offenders. They take time off, but don't put it down then get "perfect attendance rewards" which everyone in the rank and file knows is a scam.

Advice to Senior Management

Start requiring people to submit PLANS for their projects. Tell employees what is going on. Upper management--walk around various departments on a Friday afternoon and see for yourself how many managers have skipped out early.

Pros

Good benefits.
High pay.
Comraderie.
Free train rides

Cons

Some bad attitudes from station agents and supervisors.
Typical government attitude toward problems which means nothing gets fixed unless there is a huge problem.

Advice to Senior Management

Help front line station agents to improve their ability to deal with the public.
Reward front line people for receiveing positive remarks from the public.

Pros

Lots of time off, if you get to take it. The health plan is good if you have a large family because everyone pays the same regardless of how many kids they have. You can retire at 55 at half salary if you can stand to work there 25 years.

Cons

Everyone at BART pretty much makes the same money whether they do a good job or a bad job. Then, there are the "whiners" who file complaints at the drop of a hat. Instead of fighting them, though, BART gives in and pays them settlement money. We've had at least 4 people who've gone on "paid administrative leave" which means they get paid to stay home while everyone else gets stuck doing their work. Management is terrible--managers come in 1-2 hours late EVERY DAY and disappear for hours on end. No one is ever disciplined. There is little project planning of any kind. Consultants have run amuck. The work is all dumped on the dozen or so people who work hard. This means the lazy people can take 4 weeks off in the summer, while the hard workers are lucky to get a week. Both the lazy people and the hard workers make the exact same money. There are no raises for five years--HALF A DECADE!

Advice to Senior Management

You need to make the work rules more fair between different groups of people.

Pros

The benefits package is still good, though not as good as it used to be.

Cons

They track everything down to the millisecond. If your train is late and you're 10 minutes late to work, they dock your pay (though if you miss your breaks or work through lunch they don't pay you for it). Competent people aren't promoted. Most of the jobs posted as "open" have already been earmarked for a few select friends of the managers. Managers and very high-paid consultants fraternize together outside of work, then, surprise surprise, their contracts are renewed. Consultants make 3-5x what employees make. Managers always push the blame down as far as they can.

Advice to Senior Management

Morale is rock bottom. If the next contract isn't decent, you're going to lose a ton of good people to early retirement. The people who judge whether a consulting project is a success or failure should not be the same people who run that project. You need to get the pay scales more in line with the private sector. Some people make way too much money for jobs that pay much less on the outside, while others make way too little for jobs that pay much more on the outside.

Pros

The benefits are very good. In some departments, you can achieve work-life balance with things like 9-80 workweeks and 4-10 workweeks, but check carefully since not all groups allow this. If you can work here as a *consultant* it's a very sweet deal.

Cons

The management style is right out of the 1950's. You must punch in and be at your desk exactly on time or your pay is docked, while managers come in 1-2 hours late, some every day. Career advancement here is far more political than most places. When internal jobs are posted, everyone pretty much knows right away who is going to get those jobs. Pay is 80-90% of market when you start, but contractually mandated raises of only 0-2% mean that the longer you stay the further behind you fall. There are no rewards for doing a good job, and no penalties for doing a poor one.

Advice to Senior Management

Over the past three years, you have destroyed morale in a lot of groups. Nickel and diming people is not going to motivate them to go above and beyond the call of duty. The Executive Management decision to not let professional employees leave two hours early on Christmas Eve was cold--this was a small gesture to employees who worked really hard on lots of large projects. What point does it serve to keep people here until 5 on a slow day when they really should be with their families? It would also improve morale if the hiring/promotion process were more fair and objective.