Pros

It's a great place for a first job- they have been hiring many recent graduates and are eager to promote younger employees if you stay long enough. Some people have been able to jump up the chain very quickly, and many of the workforce is near retirement, so there are many opportunities for growth.

For the energy efficiency part of the company, it is a great place to get a grasp of how the energy efficiency programs work and work on large scale projects and macro level programs.

Cons

Much of the work tends to be administrative and entrenched in internal policies. The company is way behind the times when it comes to technological innovation. It also tends to be a lawyer-based company, where everything said to the public goes through endless reviews. Processes are very complex and slow in general.

They are currently making a lot of changes very quickly. Many employees are taking voluntary severance packages or in some cases there are layoffs. Change is happening so quickly that customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and knowledge transfer are not given the attention they need.

Promotions seem to be based on who has the best connections rather than people who have skills that would make them good supervisors / managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Find better ways to engage the new employees you hire. Many of them tend to get thrown into jobs where they are either entrenched in administrative work, or are quickly overloaded as everyone else hands things down to them. You have added a lot of young talent, but most of these people will leave if they are not given opportunities to make change and take leadership positions within the company.

There are a lot of changes going on right now, and a lack of confidence in the managers. Most of the managers and supervisors are very poor at leading strategic teams, planning, and employee development. Hire supervisors and managers who have leadership ability.

Pros

Relaxed environment
Very supportive coworkers
Competitive pay
Flexible on hours and can telecommute
Thriving company culture on safety and sustainability

Cons

Projects can be dull
Mentors were too busy with long overdue projects
San Ramon is not really the best place to work for college grads

Advice to Senior Management

There should be more attention given to employee's opinion regarding major changes in how the company does business, sometimes decisions are unpopular.

Pros

PG&E has great benefits. They offer 401k, a generous health benefits program, a pension plan, tuition reimbursement (up to $8000).

Cons

Morale is low. Upper management continues to make changes. I believe that the Managers are promoted due to political clout, their relationships with others and not necessarily their ability to get the job done.

Advice to Senior Management

Bill Morrow is no longer with PG&E. It is not Chris Johns.
I believe that too much change is happening at once. Employee Morale is at an all time LOW due to layoffs etc.

Pros

The benefits at PG&E are great. It is one of the few companies that still offer pensions. The health benefits are very generous as well. The company is also very accomodating to working mothers. It is also a lot more secured than other places. It is also very accepting of diversity and there are plenty of women represented in upper management. Opportunities for advancement are somewhat high due to the aging workforce.

Cons

I worked in the Finance Organization and these are some of the things I have heard from people in other departments regarding my department and their departments.

In the Controller's Organization, RDO was taken away and so was the option to work from home. Morale fell as a result since other departments retained this. The interesting thing is that many divisions in the Controller's Organization worked easy normal hours so it is unknown why this happened.

The Finance/Controller's Organization also kept cutting back on perks such as Christmas parties and other events. Furthermore, cubes were shrunk as PG&E decided to stop paying rent for some buildings and just move workers into the General Office. Morale fell as a result of the shrunken cubes. This organization was just a very very stingy and cheap organization.

Turnover was also quite high. There were often times in which I could not even recognize anyone in some divisions as everyone was new. This often happened in the span of a year. Often, many young employees left due to the low quality work they were given. Growth opportunities just weren't common at PG&E.

Salaries were also below market and raises were also below market. The training was also really really bad and so a lot of people lacked hard skills.

Layoffs were not uncommon at PG&E which is somewhat hard to believe for most people. A department was axed back in 2006 (a time of economic prosperity) and hiring freezes were frequently imposed.

Evaluations were quite unfair at PG&E. It followed a bell curve in which workers were compared. A coworker of mine once told me that he received a midyear evaluation that was almost the complete opposite of his end of the year evaluation. He was rated in the bottom bucket in certain categories but when he switched to a different supervisor, he was rated near the top in those categories. Suffice to say, evaluations didn't really follow a clear cut formula and were often very very very political.

The company also frequently restructured the company in a scheme called the "Service Delivery Model". Whole departments were renamed and moved around frequently. It was chaotic to say the least and morale fell. Supposedly these were common before I joined and left PG&E and all of these restructurings also supposedly ended in low morale and failure.

Departments differed when it came to RDOs and other perks. Previously, PG&E Corporation people qualified for PTOs while PG&E Utility people were given sick days and vacations instead. Sick days could only be used for sick days while PTOs can be used for either. PG&E Corporation people were not given discounts for utility bills while Utility people were. Suffice to say, this was quite confusing.

Politics was also quite a real phenomenon at PG&E. Advancement had more to do with politics than with merit. Also, upper management was also composed primarily of outsiders and this was often an issue at PG&E.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend PG&E. The opportunities for growth are there but only for certain divisions/departments. Supposedly, PG&E was a great company to work for but it seems as if the new upper management changed the whole culture. The morale was low when I left and I doubt that has changed at all.

Advice to Senior Management

You should step aside. Morale was low before I left and from talking to my friends who work there still quite low. There was a lot of drama during my time there and often times, upper management mistreated many employees there. If the issues that were mentioned above aren't fixed, don't expect to be the "Nation's leading utility". There is a reason why turnover was so high.

Pros

Base salary and benefits were competitive when I worked there. Bonuses are offered to all, even non-sales people.

Cons

Poor trading management; IT management fails to distinguish department as a competitive strategic resource

Advice to Senior Management

Get a real CIO; focus on quality not quantity of trades

Pros

Innovation can happen but it's difficult. Lots of recognition if you do a good job or are part of a team that does well. Benefits are reasonable and CAP payment is nice when the company does well rewarding everyone in the company, not just a select few.

Cons

Company is slow to innovate because it's so huge. When it does try it goes overboard and projects fail because they are massive in size instead of doing things in smaller chunks. Safety is important but taken a little overboard and cuts into work/life. Too many "required attendance meetings." Still a very silo-oriented organization despite attempts to remedy it.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't try things in such grand scales, projects never complete or one part that gets delayed has a dramatic cascading effect. Listen to the employees who work instead of high paid consultants.

Pros

PG&E is full of smart, hardworking, interesting co-workers, and the different age groups and folks from different backgrounds get along well. With evolving energy policies in both electric and natural gas areas, there are exciting and complex policy questions to work on.

Cons

It's a big company, and it is going through some rough times as new management tries to make a cultural shift to a faster pace of work. At times it seems like the newer officers want to wish away the complexities imposed by our regulators, our history, and the engineering realities of our business.

Advice to Senior Management

Spend the time to learn the business well and value all your diverse employees. Trust your more experienced employees while you encourage them to develop better business focus.

Pros

Great company to settle at to make a career. People are great to work with. With an aging workforce, opportunities to change the company and move up is here.

Cons

100 year values and culture is hard to break through when deep change is required. Progressive management styles is not received well by middle management and rank and file that have been around.

Advice to Senior Management

Change culture to welcome risk taking and change. Reward and recognize those that seek to make a difference rather than those who play it safe.

Pros

I briefly worked at PG&E and I was very impressed with their committment to environmental issues. I also felt that they offered very nice benefits for full-time employees.

Cons

Pay is not very high when compared to the cost of living in San Francisco.

Advice to Senior Management

More detailed feedback regarding performance reviews

Pros

You'll never get fired.

Very dedicated, competent, experience engineers.

Good benefits. It's a great place to be in a bad economy. It's not so great in a good economy.

Cons

cronyism, slackerism, nepotism, gross managerial incompetence.
If you are a star performer you will be judged no different for your successes, competence, and hard work than the sack of potatoes sitting in the cube next to you.

I don't think it looks so great to have PG&E on your resume if you're a software engineer. I believe the local community looks down upon PG&E for justifiable reasons.

Advice to Senior Management

All management in the ISTS dept. all need to get some technical experience. I've been in the business for 25 years & I've never seen a more incompetent bunch of managers than PG&E ISTS.
You need more HARD skills and less of those bs "soft" skills you're all so proud of.