Pacific Gas and Electric Reviews

Pros

Job security, chances for advancement, relocation options in CA, benefits

Cons

Support organizations such as real estate and ISTS are very weak. Unwillingness of Sr. Management to address root cause problems or demote underperforming management employees. Too many union employees spend more time on union issues than actually doing any work.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire and promote talent over diversity and potlitcal correctness. Increase hiring from outside rather than promote marginally qualified employees.

Pros

low chance of getting fired for incompetence
still have a pension program

Cons

general incompetence of middle & upper management
promotion more based on favoritism rather than ability
hard decisions by management made more on avoiding personnel responsibility rather then providing correct solution

Advice to Senior Management

get awareness how a responsible utility should be run and reward those that contribute to successful operations rather than those that are favorites

Pros

Benes: Pension, Health, 401K
Ability to take time off, due to significant cross-training.

Cons

PG&E seems to have difficulty communicating to its employees, as well as customers. It really boils down to poor solution planning; that is, making employees and customers aware of what is being planned to be implemented and training employees on the new process. When un/mis-information exists, people have a tendency to fear the worst and start filling in the gaps in knowledge with their own perception of what might be the case, which is almost always not the facts surrounding the given situation.

This culture of fear leads to siloes. People are afraid of taking responsibility, or assuming risk by working with other groups, because they fear outcomes that reflect poorly on them. These siloes are natural outcomes of the culture of fear that is created by management not communicating effectively about what is happening in the future and what is planned to deal with it.

What is behind this fear is lack of trust. Get employees to trust each other and management, and the fear will begin to fade, which will lead to more engaged employees and better shareholder results.

Admittedly, this company has traditionally been an Engineering company, in the same vein as Bechtel. We are moving away from that and adding people with different skill sets. However, given that this is a place where people tend to stay a long time, how we operate continues to reflect a systems engineering mindset. That is fine, but we need to understand that most engineers are not good with communication and work toward improving this critical area that needs to be enhanced in the ranks of management - communication to employees, and customers.

Advice to Senior Management

I would suggest promoting open and honest communication and accountability and letting people know that we win and lose as a team. Yes, we will experience failures/set-backs, but we need to use them as learning experiences and people should not be penalized for taking prudent risks, with the aim of enhancing customer, shareholder, and employee outcomes.

Empower employees to work together with the hope of achieving better outcomes. Comprehensively review roles and responsibilities along-side processes to right-size their authority and resources, optimizing for what makes sense in the workflow, while fitting the budgeting, leveling, and headcount parameters to that framework. If you want to know how to motivate employees, it comes down to creating an environment where they are afforded the opportunity to experience achievement. That is how you will reach the goal of engaged employees and ultimately enhanced shareholder and customer outcomes.

Pros

good pay. large cmpany. lots of work locations. upward mobility.

Cons

poor management, unnecessary changes. clueless managemetn

Pros

Great benefits (health plans, pension, 401k), decent pay
Opportunities to learn and move within the company
Colleagues are wonderful
Flexible work schedule

Cons

1) Unnecessary politics make it impossible to get work done.
2) People at the director/manager level don't know what's going on (or are not interested) and seems to have gotten their positions by who they know and not what they know. They are not leaders.
3) "Friends and Family" of directors/managers are preferred over those that are more qualified for promotions. As a result, there is a lot of frustration that leads to very talented people leaving the company because of the perceived unfairness and lack of opportunity to move up.
4) IT is the biggest bureaucracy (I'm in IT and I live it everyday). Impossible for talented folks to succeed, too many approvals needed to get something very simple done, too much politics. PL2 and above really have no idea what's going on. A lot of unnecessary and complicated processes, as a result, supervisors are burdened with these administrative processes instead of focusing on core IT work. When we try to bring this issue up to managers and directors, we're basically told to shut up and follow the processes.
5) The IT department is top heavy with Sr directors, directors, managers, project managers, program managers, resource managers, etc and not enough people who actually do the work (developers). On a project, it's typical to have a project manager, program manager, and manager 'managing' one or two developers. The developers are overworked and under constant pressure to deliver.

Advice to Senior Management

1) Talk to your front line supervisors. Managers and directors only tell you what you want to hear, they don't tell you the whole story.
2) Get rid of the unnecessary layers of management.
3) Promote people who have talent.

Pros

PG&E has great benefits and retirement package and severance package if you were one of the unfortunate to be laid-off, as I was.

Cons

They seem to have lay-offs when you least expect it and on an ongoing basis. To trransfer seem a lot to be based on who you know and not what you know I notice.

Advice to Senior Management

Not only should they seem to notice the bad in an employee and be critical in what needs to be improved, they should make more apparent to those that do well or above expectations and compliment more, as well.

Pros

Flex work schedule. You can work 9/80's meaning 9 hr days with alternate 1 day off. Also, allowed to telecommute if there is BART disruption, doctor's appointment or if you just ask to.

Cons

San Bruno accident has had a detrimental effect\.

Advice to Senior Management

More transparency.

Pros

Great Benefits, opportunities for education.

Cons

Pay structure inflexible, HR dept is a horror story, IT is in the dark ages and over controlled. Red tape will slow you down on creating any innovated process. Office conditions prison-like.

Advice to Senior Management

quit trying to put everything into number metrics, listen to your employees and get someone in IT who operates in this decade not the last century.

Pros

Openess, Progress, People. These factors make it very enjoyable to learn and grow here. Management is very keen on getting people to be experts at what they do.

Cons

Bit of red tape here and there so getting things done may be challeging. There is a large focus on safty and risk mitigation.

Advice to Senior Management

It seems in certain areas of the organization, it would be helpful to implement complication reduction projects to make proceses simplier.

Pros

It allows me to work on important energy issues and have a good deal of responsibility. The location is also awesome.

Cons

It is a fairly stagnant company in terms of overall growth. Therefore, it is hard to get promoted quickly. There is also a feeling that just putting in time makes people more qualified.

Advice to Senior Management

I would encourage management to provide development opportunities for young employees. It is very easy to get stuck in a role and feel pigeon holed.