Pros

Open co-workers ready to mentor and interact/discuss with you.
Gave me multiple opportunities to learn and grow.
Very friendly manager and events for employees make me feel appreciated.
Excellent work environment.

Cons

Cons may depend on your own personal career needs.
For many this may be the ideal job. I am unsure how many design engineers are employed at this location but I believe those who are enjoy their work

Advice to Senior Management

Thank you so much for the experience.

Pros

Before Actaris acquisition, Itron was an extraordinary Company, respect and honesty towards the employees were the cause of motivation and innovation.

Cons

Since Itron Inc. gave the full control to Actaris, betrayal and blows twisted between employees become something normal. Consequently no motivation.

Advice to Senior Management

The situation in the International become out of control, It is time that people from Itron Inc., which not come from Actaris, take over control to rectify this situation.

Pros

This corporation is one of the only large technology employers left in the region. Hewlett-Packard has a skeleton crew running their cellular test equipment operation and General Dynamics (Itronix) laid off hundreds. So Itron is about it for large tech employers in eastern WA and north ID.

Cons

A large amount of time and effort is applied towards planning and strategies by middle management and the rank and file. Much of this effort is wasted. In general and more often than not, plans and strategies are overturned when inexperienced and politically motivated employees and managers torpedo the company due to chicken little outlooks and short term, fire fighting goals. Itron is a loose amalgamation of many small mergers and acquisitions in the energy marketplace with no truly coherent integration strategy company wide (it has been several years since the M&A aspects settled out). Looks good on paper. Works poorly in the real world in this corporation. With a P/E of around 250, fireworks are due by Independence day 2010.

Advice to Senior Management

Get acquired by a larger company with capable operations structures in the 2B$+ business arena to operate effectively. Its either that or continue to rudder this ship of fools constructed of lifeboats from cast offs under Captain Blye (with a bad Austin Powers English accent at that). Shagadelic at best.

Pros

good use of technology, complicated industry with lots of opportunity to apply technology, steady company that is growing through acquisition

Cons

your peers can be cut throat, political charged environment, who you know can either help you or hurt you, aggressive deadlines

Advice to Senior Management

put in more competent managers for career development, put structure and process to how departments are run with clear boundaries of who is responsible for what but allow better collaboration

Pros

If you are a SC, GA or NC native and attended Clemson or Tri-County, it is one of the better places to work: very laid back, Southern politeness, access to the mountains and coast. Salaried employees accomodated well: okay for occasional long lunches & flexible work time, especially if pursuing MBA or engineering degree at the University Center in Greenville (75 minutes away). Most of the employees are residents of Oconee County who create a feeling of work-as-community: everyone knows everyone. Company is doing well since utilities and energy is a hot topic for the economy.

Cons

Typical mill-town atmosphere: cheap labor supported by under-prepared technical personnel.

Hourly: people who do not want to move because they have family- and property-ties. Relative to bigger cities like Anderson, Greenville or Atlanta, hourly employees paid better than average, but management uses this as leverage since there are no other large employers nearby. All hourly employees had high school degrees, but little-to-no technical training other than from Itron.

Salaried, Technical Support: local college graduates who are either married to a local or like being near Clemson. Either way, Itron typically was only employer they interviewed with or only employer that extended a reasonable salary.

Salaried, Upper Management: good work experience building older generation electromechanical J5 meter, but had very little technical strength when transitioning to current solid-state technology. Rather than infusing ranks with task-specific talent, upper management decided to remain intact. Thus, problems in circuit board manufacturing and corrosion; ultrasonic vibration welding; measurement fidelity and tolerances; battery life; material selection; insulative powder coating; metal plating; etc., were (are?) problems that never seemed to be resolved.

Salaried, Mid-Level Management: ill-prepared workforce stocked with sycophants of Upper Management. They were docile housewives who were intimidated into results, rather than trained to lead; or men who climbed the company ladder through social connections like golfing (in the fall, it was not uncommon to see mid-level and upper management gone at 1 o'clock to meet tee times).

Design: team meetings with R&D manager and assistant were unproductive: theoretical expertise in Hall Cell technology with little practical knowledge to execute; discussing manufacturing issues with them only led to "wild goose" projects.

Advice to Senior Management

To the "Itron" side of the business: If you have visited Oconee or have met any of the people from Oconee (and many are in Spokane now), you know that this is a very clear portrayal of what you have absorbed as part of the acquisition.

Pros

It's a job with a steady income. I have many friends at Itron and I enjoy their company, and they are part of the only reason why I have not yet moved on. Benefits appear to be good but its hard to compare now-a-days.

Cons

Lack of future growth. Under compensated. They claim that they can't compare with other companies less than 30 miles away. Expectations are generally higher than can be acheived in a year's time and managment usually sets very vague goals and little management to see them through.

Advice to Senior Management

You need to wake up and start sharing the wealth with your entire work staff.

Pros

Great consulting and analysis group if you're in the energy efficiency field. They are leaders in the field, with great knowlege, and are a collegial group. The good parts of Management are *really good* and most of the executive staff truly means well.

Cons

Track record of purchasing companies and failing to integrate them fully. Lack of communication from HQ to Field Offices in some divisions. Future technologies (software, energy consulting) are often given short shrift in favor of hardware/solutions that emphasize the current reliance on fossil fuels.

Advice to Senior Management

Bring salaries up to market rate in the Bay Area; focus on post-peak energy solutions