Bonneville Power Reviews

Pros

Bonneville provides a great deal of training and support for career growth. The benefits are top notch and the work environment is pleasant.

Cons

The organization tends to move at a slow pace and the work is not very exciting. It is highly bureaucratic and hierarchical.

Advice to Senior Management

It would be very beneficial to the organization to create more opportunities for community building and a more events that enliven employees.

Pros

They manage the power grid and do those core functions very well. In IT, the work is not that technically challenging, in general, but the business problems are often interesting and solving them can be rewarding. People here balance work and life as a matter of course. There is a nice fitness center on site.

Cons

It is often bureaucratic and siloed, meaning that the enterprise is fragmented into different business areas that -- in some cases -- rarely talk to each other.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management really needs to consider managing their information as an agency asset, meaning that they need to adopt a long-range, enterprise view, as difficult as that may be.

Pros

- Except for a few bad apples, other contractors are great to work with. There are a few, and I stress "few", full timers that care about their jobs.
- A huge amount of work for people - there is always something broke.
- Due to all of the systems, there is always something to learn on or play with.
....uh, yea, that's about it. This review is going to be long...

Cons

- SOME of the full timers (aka: FTE's) are competent, but the majority should be tossed out.
- Management is just useless at BPA. I could list all kinds of reasons, but please trust me that management here is terrible. They refuse to allow good things to happen due to multiple points that could span a book. Most major projects (like upgrading desktops) fail, then are renamed, fail again, renamed - see a pattern here? That was a real example...
- The contracting companies control all aspects of life for a contractor. BPA is not allowed to provide feedback, most pay a crappy amount of the actual contract amount (negotiate VERY hard for a rate) and most of the companies are "body farms". Use Glassdoor for the company you're working with and ensure to use ALL their names to locate all the reviews on them.
- Some groups go out of their way to make life miserable for everyone, including the janitors. It seems that groups that are almost completely FTE's seem to have this issue. This can be everything from people complaining about stupid stuff to "Shh people working here" signs ALL OVER the place.
- LAYOFFS - That's right folks, a government agency is laying contractors off left and right while the President claims things are getting better. Yet another failed DOE "investment". If you're not working on a project that is not O&M, be afraid for your job.
- Too much work. As another contractor pointed out, there are more IT depts than there should be, about 300 more IT employees than there should be and nearly 1 server (VM and Physical) per employee at this place. Again - always something broke, which you will no doubt re-fix again later.
- Small cubes where you can touch both walls at the same time.
- The FTE's are walled in with Unions and extra rules and regs. As a contractor, you have absolutely no rights.
- 2 IT directors because things are so bad, people are worried (and partially because the current one was seen packing his office up).
- I hope you like silo's because we're all walled off and there are turf wars over whom does what on each type of server.
- 3 internal business units run this one company. Transmission, Power and Energy Efficiency are all depts that act like spoiled brats when they want something. Having all the money, everyone bends over backwards to make those groups happy. All do what they want, when they want, to include going outside the company for the same services that are provided internally.

Advice to Senior Management

First, I am a current contractor, not someone that is upset due to the recent layoffs. As with most of the competent contractors at BPA, I'm looking for jobs elsewhere.

For "Sr Management", I don't think there's a hope for you or this place. Knowing your pay structure and how things work, things will not change unless BPA gets privatized.

We wouldn't have as many budget issues if we started acting like other companies our size and perform the following:

- STOP all internal development. There are far too many internal custom-coded applications that are worthless or are coded for 1-time use. Buy shrink-wrapped software and be done with it. You will not please everyone.
- You have full teams that do almost nothing but muck things up, but yet they're allowed to continue to exist. Most of these teams
- Learn to say NO to internal clients.
- We've got more servers than any company our size needs unless we were in the hosting industry. A data center on almost every floor!? Start cutting down on the VM's! This would cut down on stuff like 1 FTE owning about 1/4 of an environment in VM's (Yet another real example).
- Start utilizing a cross-billing system. Certain orgs are asked to provide all kinds of support with no internal billing mechanism to bill another dept for their use (abuse?) of services.
- You're paying millions for contractors, why don't you use those qualities? We provide more knowledge and experience than almost any FTE. Start using us to FIX your environment instead of limping it along before we get tired and leave.

Even the honest FTE's will state that this is the most silo'd and messed up that BPA has been in history. Something is dreadfully wrong in the land of Oz.

Pros

this used to be a good place to work.it has continued in a down hill slide for the last 10 years.it is still a workplace where you can make a fair wage with job security.the work is still important enough to make it interesting.if left alone to do your job it can be a great place to work.

Cons

lower and middle managers are severly untrained and unwilling to do their job.for the most part the only people willing to apply for lower management positions are the employees that can not do their jobs in the field.the politics in this company are detroying the moral of the work force.

Advice to Senior Management

steve wright is ultimately responsible for what is going on at bpa.he doesn't appear to have the courage to correct the mess inside this company.no other leader previous to steve wright allowed what is going on at all levels of management.this was & could be a great place to work.every employee in the field that i met just wanted to do their job to the best of their ability & go home at the end of the day.no one gets paid for being harassed,bullied,whatever else the managers seem to think is appropiate to get desired results.hopefully someone will step up in the future and fix this federal agency.if not then it should be sold to the highest bidder.

Pros

There are some great people and groups within BPA. It has amenities such as a gym, day care, and the work can be challenging. You are also located in Portland Oregon which is a great place to enjoy the outdoors.

Cons

Keep in mind that this is a big place, and as the head union person said there are some and bad neighborhoods. Another human resource specialist said some groups do not even talk to each other. Advice to potential employees, you are taking a gamble.

Here are the trouble spots:

Management (all levels) use physiological harassment or bulling to go after troublesome employees. They have a physiologist on staff, so they are good. What happened to the Hippocratic oath, I do not know, also is this what tax payers really want from the federal government.

Managers delve into people's personal lives. When I left a senior manager was talking with an employee about who was dating another employee in an open cubicle. I heard many things that were best left unsaid by managers.

The ability to deal with complexity is poor, they make efforts but fail due to a lack of vision and push to tackle the problem. Too many older employees who benefit from the status quo. The downside of not dealing with complexity is that it takes years for a new employee to get up to speed, the problems get shaded because too few employees really understand what is going on, and have a tendency to wing it and hope for the best.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to get a grip on the problems and not believe a few employees based on their incorrect perception of reality.

Steve needs to address workplace bullying that occurs at BPA.

Stop monitoring employees after hours, they notice and do not like it.

I entered a 1 on Steve's rating, to raise a red flag.

Pros

There are lots of systems to work on (too many, in fact), lots of cool IT projects to work with, support and setup as well. BPA also feels Ok purchasing just about anything you need to do your job.

Cons

Management just doesn't get it. Most of the company's management spends 90% of their day in meetings. Some managers are great, others are as bad as it gets, throwing their own employees under the proverbial "bus". Most managers promise a lot, but back down and fall flat on their faces when it's time to set their foot down. Some will completely fail to make the proper decision because they lack a backbone. Company has a huge issue with trodding ahead even though things are broke. The company is heavily into Politics and ownership of certain things, this is why there are 3 different IT divisions for the same company. Lastly, the permanent employees know what they've got, so they coast along. The company doesn't try very hard to keep talent that counts, which accounts for high turnover in certain areas.

Advice to Senior Management

I may sound a little harsh on my review, but management has got to get their act together. Innovation isn't happening due to poor planning, bad attitudes and the amount of Politics and Bureaucracy anyone must go through (this relates to backbone comment above). Lastly, stop promising the world without going through every planning stage of a project. With a huge amount of projects going on this summer to meet an Oct deadline, Employees are literally tripping over everything in their path due to failures to plan ahead.

Pros

There is a high degree of autonomy,varied work locations with some of the best scenery, has very good advancement opportunities.

Cons

Management doesn't promote personnel that have people skills. They tend to deal with problems by focusing on the person that brought the problem to thier attention.

Advice to Senior Management

Sample at least 6 people that have worked with the person asking to be promoted to see what kind of opinions coworkers have before selection.

Pros

Great leadership and professional staff, can do shop,
when in the green light, great inventions for industry.

Cons

A shift from leader to follower occurred,
loss of future vision, focused too near-term.
lack of invention.

Advice to Senior Management

hang some wire, put people to work, get some pride,
be a Grand World Leader again not a follower.

Pros

Good people at the working level and very competent. Very family friendly company. Decent benefits, pay is good, holidays and vacation time are typical federal government and better that what most companies offer.

Cons

Seems to be a disconnect between upper management and employees. Over regulation and governance prohibits getting anything done in a reasonable time frame. Difficult for anyone to make a decision without a committee. Used to be a leader in the industry but management that is more political than technically competent has failed to retain or replace vital technical talent sufficiently to retain that leadership.

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the halls of your working staff and get to know what they do. Try building relationships within your organization instead of constantly managing up.

Pros

A very challenging industry in a very challenging time; BPA's work for the citizens of the Pacific Northwest to support both a sustainable environment and economically advantageous electricity costs, sets a benchmark for other utilities to emulate. Electric utilities face climate change, new and changing technologies, conflicting policy direction, and stakeholders who don't see eye to eye. The industry has to keep the lights on and cross some pretty turbulent issues. BPA does that with aplomb.

Cons

Decisions are complex and full of paradox because balancing sustainability and economic viability are full of potential conflict. Don't come to BPA for black & white answers.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't stop talking to all of us. We don't always agree with what you say, but we always appreciate that you took the time to tell us, listen to us, and help both you and all employees hear each other.