Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time

Pros – travel, work with top experts in fields, flexible working hours, interesting topics, good compensation/benefits

Cons – older group, struggle developing young talent, slow to adopt change

Advice to Senior Management – work on developing younger talent

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Good place to start your career.

Cons – Budget cuts have led the company to be frugal on research symposiums, corporate benefits, and ERP implementation, while upper management receives quiet bonuses. Promotions and salary awarded on seniority, not on accomplishments.

Advice to Senior Management – Outdated principles and policies do little to compete with other Silicon Valley opportunities.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as an intern for more than a year

Pros – The work is meaningful and directly applicable to the industry

Cons – Challenging to get technical work.

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time for less than a year

Pros – Strong network built. Was given project that I could truly be a part of in such a short period of time. Management put me in a position to succeed.

Cons – Moves slow. As it is a research institution, projects move in the year time frame. For younger members of EPRI, there is a limited cohort as most employees are technical experts in the field.

Advice to Senior Management – Increased employment of non-managerial level employees. Project/Senior project engineers would be very beneficial in completing tasks that the managers are not able to accomplish, speeding up work.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as an intern for less than a year

Pros – - The ability to witness and work on projects that tackle various problems in the PDU industry.
 - Great for undergraduate of graduate research experience
 - Great for helping to lead you in the right direction in your PDU career
 - Very busy as an intern as opposed

Cons – - Since EPRI is more of a "subject matter expert" and "industry leading" company the opportunities for an intern to move to full time are slim. They would like you to gain experience which makes sense.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as an intern for less than a year

Pros – -Amazing and friendly people work here. The experience you get as an intern is great since you are exposed to all sectors of the company (Nuclear, Finance, Accounting, Environmental, Legal etc.). You get to work as a team and have total visibility of how your work contributes to the company.

Cons – -Responsibilities tend to be monotonous.
-Can be slow at times
-Definitely a ceiling on what you can learn but that is with many big companys as you just specialize in your department.

Advice to Senior Management – -Management needs to listen more to their employees and really take a look at what is needed in the organization. Majority of the company is made up of interns and some departments are getting less support financially as opposed to others making it overwhelming at times.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) as a contractor for more than 10 years

Pros – Great benefits, flex-time, peer respect.

Cons – no clear paths to promotion.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – -- Focus by most staff on research and benefit to the industry
-- Great people willing to help when you need it
-- Generous salary and benefits
-- Nice offices; good facilities

Cons – -- New senior managers are convinced they are the smartest guys in the room, but pet projects have run WAY over budget and they are now cutting loose critical talent to balance the budget
-- Overall intellectual arrogance is part of corporate culture
-- Too much focus on selling R&D to funders disillusions researchers, who must spend time selling instead of R&D
-- Most career paths are dead ends with no opportunity for advancement
-- Management favorites can go years without producing significant results while award-winning researchers are laid off due to budget overruns
-- Senior staff assumes good researchers are good project and people managers and don't need training for these critical skills. The results have been some spectacular and expensive project failures
-- Senior VP in charge of current ERP project is determined it will launch on deadline despite systems development far behind schedule. Result is staff is being trained on systems that will change before they ever get to use them.

Advice to Senior Management – Slow down, take a breath. Quit trying to show everyone how smart you are by gutting improvements made by predecessors and setting unrealistic deadlines. Stop getting rid of key people you don't like in the name of budgets. Stop demanding time-consuming consistency in the many, many cases where it gains the organization nothing and actually creates more work. Don't make people managers unless/until they have demonstrated management skills.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – This company was founded to provide research and direction to USA utilities. They have been on the forefront of project management in research and development of power delivery in the USA. They are well respected within the utility industry and is a great place to work for engineers and scientists who want to be valued for their input and provide valuable input and discovery into the utility industry of the USA and the world.

Cons – Management doesn't care for non-engineer staff. If you are not a member of the engineering staff, you are not valuable. Seems to be a constant struggle for upper management and budget dollars.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen when administrative staff informs you of issues. You have lost many good employees by listening to the wrong people who had motives other than what was best for the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Excellent and overly generous compensation, including bonus and retirement
Beautiful campus
Good Work-Life balance
Some very smart people
Fun events

Cons – The worst of academia and civil service combined;
Very political; lots of drama behind the scenes at Senior Management Level
Lots of game playing and backstabbing at peer level; many of your peers have never worked anywhere else or they are related to another employee;
Operationally, science aside, in another century; don't work here for more than a few years if you want to be employable afterwards

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend