Pacific Gas and Electric Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The people on my team are great to work with
Great benefits--you pay only 7 percent of benefit costs and they have a pension

Cons – Not much recognition
My department is not staffed to up with the work
You make one mistake and you can never overcome it

Advice to Senior Management – Open and honest communication is not valued
Leaders need to do a better job of setting expectations and giving feedback

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – Nice people if you are an employee. Great if you are a minority. Promote from within.

Cons – Heavy use of but yet distrust of contractors built into culture. Disorganized. In their quest to hire minorities, they've left quality behind to some degree. Some bad management not managing to top notch corperate standards.

Advice to Senior Management – Focus on integrity and adhereance to corperate standards and norms.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good pay, excellent benefits and that's pretty much it.

Cons – IT senior directors and middle management are completely dysfunctional. 1) No sense of accountability especially in the ISTS department where trouble tickets would sit for days and only worked on by a few dedicated employees. 2) IT Projects are never planned correctly and ends up being descoped due to lack of funding 3) Codependent relationship between Business and IT with most IT managers being pushed around by Business to meet unreasonable deadlines. 4) Contractors are King with some working for PG&E for years. Employees are expected to work unreasonable overtime and being on-call without being compensated accordingly. 5) Thinking outside the box and showing any initiative are always met with indifference and definitely no recognition.

Advice to Senior Management – Need major rethinking around accountability, developing a healthy relationship with Business and especially employee retention -- the pay and the benefits are not enough.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time

Pros – Good salary, good benefits, worked with great, talented folks until I left.

Cons – Where do I begin. From late 2011 until somewhat recently, the Information Security department hemorrhaged employees. It started with a *mass* lay off in late 2011, and then attrition took over as dismal moral followed suit. One only needs to do a casual search on LinkedIn to see the exodus of folks from the organization since late 2011 with IT security credentials. The drama began when the old CIO left and a new CIO came in - with no energy sector experience. While seemingly ambitious and pleasant, she began to fire people almost as quickly as she started. Many people got laid off in the process, to include the CISO at the time. The CISO was replaced by an internal candidate who was also a seemingly pleasant guy, but would also have rally prep talks and then proceed to sign folks termination papers. While I no doubt believe he was following orders from above, he is every bit as responsible for the slow demise of the department.

The feeling of mistrust is pervasive in much of IT and especially Information Security. It's disappointing because it didn't have to be that way. This is a symptom of the regressive steps taken to create a more "lean, agile" department. While this goal was and is worthwhile, core staff was alienated in the process of doing so that were with the department for a long time. As a company with a laundry list of information security concerns, this would seem rather counter productive.

Bottom line: there have been a lot of job postings for PG&E this year, looking for "CISSPs" and that is because a ton of people left. If you want a stable job, if you want to be able to actually trust management, if you do not want to deal with corporate cuts, stay away from this organization.

Advice to Senior Management – What has taken place over the past year would be fitting for an MBA program case study in how "not to eviscerate your IT security organization". While there were a lot of dinosaurs that found their way to the door, there were a lot of neat, innovative programs that were axed as well. Don't fool yourself thinking the right decisions were made because clearly you see an organization with the vast majority of people that were there a year ago - gone. And all that knowledge and talent with it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for more than a year

Pros – Worked at PG&E during the Smart Meter, San Bruno, and Prop 46 debacles. Encountered a corporation that was hamstrung at the headquarters, but the employees in the field are some of the best and hardest working people I've ever worked with.

Cons – Management restructures constantly. Company issues talking points then revises them weeks or months later, making representatives lose credibility. Pay and bonus structure is not that great, they only give substantial increases if you're about to leave.

Advice to Senior Management – Stop restructuring. Improve pay for frontline representatives. Argue against policies in Sacramento and San Francisco that hurt consumers.

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

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Decent pay.
Flexible work schedule.
Um ...

Cons – Do your job too well and you'll get voted off the island. Top heavy organization with entrenched culture of nepotism, favoritism, and mediocrity. Back door politics determine longevity and advancement potential.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good pay, cannot complain about the wages as it was a comfortable living as long as you are not in a peon job.

Cons – Beware of certain bosses, they talk about you to your co-workers behind your back then give you a lousy review as if you did something wrong!

Advice to Senior Management – Don't buddy up with the co-workers and discriminate against certain people for being white. You are setting yourself up for a lawsuit.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for less than a year

Pros – Telecommuting; salaries are good for starers or those without a degree - not so good if you are already high in the pay scale and coming in; benefits are better than some private sector, pension plan. If you are focused - good work/life balance.

Cons – Managers and up are jumping around with demands out of fear - not a good mid-management set up. The demands shift all over the place and take up too much of the day. Generally weak middle management. Low-balling the salaries for new hires and managers. Hard to hear you came in at top step when you didn't. Work is too focused on meeting odd measures of productivity - all for the bonus.

Advice to Senior Management – Change the metrics of bonus measurements - ie: injury reporting and numeric scales that only measure a small aspect of work that employees really have no control over. The daily work gets driven by these poor scales. Pay well from the start. Too insular and averse to new ideas.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Pacific Gas and Electric as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – You don't have to actually do any work. I suppose that's good

Cons – You don't get to do any work, just paperwork.

Advice to Senior Management – Less paperwork

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Pacific Gas and Electric full-time for less than a year

Pros – Great benefits, great pay, work life balance - far better than most private companies. Very culturally diverse and a clear focus on promoting women.

Cons – Back door politics, constant lay-offs and re-hiring (except those laid off), poor public image, constant leadership change, nepotism, favoritism, poor management/leadership and motivated entirely by profits. Senior management is "Untouchable" and so very unapproachable.

Advice to Senior Management – Take a continuous look at your leadership and get rid of the poor performing managers. Position the company as the "employer of choice". Hire a top PR firm to clean up your public image. Begin lay offs from the top down and practice Change Management.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend