Poorly Run Organization, Great for the Resume - Anonymous employee Ercot Employee Review

In 2015 ERCOT made the Austin Business Journal’s top places to work list and still toot their horn about it. Should be a great place to work, right? Well, you make that list by submitting your company for review and rankings are based on employees filling out a survey. They got feedback prior to 2015 that ERCOT was not a great place to work so they added a gym, and random little perks, which are nice but pretty much standard anywhere you go now. Then they force fed employees this survey and hounded them to fill it out. Which was anonymous, but of course not really anonymous because it was filled out on your company computer thru a link sent in your company email. I finally filled it out after half a dozen notifications that I had not filled out the survey. And of course, I wasn’t honest since it wasn’t really anonymous. Fast forward to 2016 and 2017. Did ERCOT make the same list? No, ERCOT made the list in 2015 so who cares about even keeping up the appearance of sustainability? When ERCOT HR and management bring up this survey from 2 years ago, ask them why they weren’t able to stay on the list more than 1 year. Or you can keep reading and I’ll tell you why. No real leadership, accountability, or ability to manage people or processes. Obvious favoritism, gender bias, good-ole' boy mentality, and dare I say racism when it comes to promotions for supervisor and management positions. It's amazing this place hasn't been reported to the EEOC. Seriously. Take a look at this place’s organization chart. Supervisor positions and up are absolutely dominated by white males while ~1/3 to 1/2 the workers are minorities. Constantly watching minorities and women that apply for supervisor jobs that they are sooooo much more qualified for than the white male that gets picked is beyond frustrating. They’ve actually started a new process where they don’t even post many of these jobs internally, they’ll just create a “new” position and give it directly to someone, typically a white male with way less experience and ability than his counterparts. Does management actually think this is okay with the rest of the employees? – WOW! I had female coworkers come up to me to tell me how uncomfortable they were in a room with a director who was jokingly making inappropriate cultural impersonations and laughing with other men in the room. I get a little humor every now and then, but it was to the point where she actually had to leave and complain about it to me. The saddest thing is she wasn’t comfortable enough with ERCOT as an employer to go to HR. I’ve also experienced employees make homophobic and racist remarks in a completely derogatory manner while their supervisor listened and didn’t say anything, multiple times! I also felt I couldn’t go to HR as I’d probably be the one losing my job for causing trouble. Pay is lower than industry average (unless you’re in the good-ole’ boy club, of course). but HR will continually tell you that they are at industry average. A few years ago, ERCOT hired a consulting company to see where they were in regards to pay compared to the industry, but wound up firing the consulting company and had HR do their own market rate investigation. The results were, of course, that they were right on target with the industry average - surprise! Then they adjusted the pay scales up after saying they were paying competitive with the industry – but didn’t adjust the underling’s compensation. I asked about it and the HR response was/is, “this gives you more room to grow in your position.” So now for some reason people were lower in their pay band than before with no real explanation as to why that happened. I am willing to bet the good ole’ boys club had their pay adjusted up with the new pay scales. So now you have room to grow - great! Guess what…in the meetings where they tell supervisors and managers how to handle merit increases, they explain that if an employee is low in their pay band then they are, by definition, still learning their job and should only get the standard 2% cost of living increase…or maybe nothing at all. There aren’t any job metrics or ranking system. They did away with that the last few years. So now your raise is entirely based on what your boss thinks about you. Annnnnnd you know what your boss is doing the whole year? Pretty much ignoring what you’re doing and ingratiating himself (and the rare herself) to his manager. Your boss probably has zero clue what you’ve actually contributed to the organization other than anything he’s asked you for to make him look good to his boss. And guess who’s getting credit for that work? Probably not you… Current employees – do yourselves a favor and do a search for ERCOT's 990 returns. Not-for-profit companies have to file a 990 tax form every year which is PUBLIC! Your Directors and VPs are making ~300k with their “extra compensation.” They tell the underlings you can’t get a bonus but somehow get 60k in “extra” money themselves. Not to mention you could probably remove 75% of those positions and see zero change in how ERCOT is operating. No value added is coming from these guys for the majority of ERCOT’s groups. Oh, and the board of directors are soaking up a nice 100k per year per person to go to quarterly meetings and listen to your directors and VPs take credit for any work you did that they probably had zero hand in. Managers and up habitually take credit for other people's work and build their careers this way. Constant additions to middle management for no reason other than to promote their buddies. Vertical org chart going straight down, sometimes with managers who have a single or even ZERO direct reports. Do you really need Senior VPs, VPs, Senior Directors, Directors, Senior Managers, and Managers for an organization of 700-800 people? News flash, you don’t. Stop finding ways to pat yourselves on the back and give yourselves huge raises that you don’t deserve while you give the underlings 2% each year. It’s sickening. One way they add middle management is constant re-orgs. They will shift personnel around from one group to another, or create completely new groups with new names that do the exact same work that was being done under an existing group except now there is an additional management chain. There already isn’t enough work to keep everyone busy. You could cut the workforce in half and get the same output without increasing workload per person too much, since most of the real work that needs to get done is done by a handful of people anyway. Most of the employee time at ERCOT is spent on projects and tasks that were made up by managers who needed to show their group is doing something and is completely unnecessary, inefficient, and/or a waste of resources. I can’t tell you how many times I was asked to work on something that was not useful, never used for anything, nor made sense to do in the first place. Managers will then take this “work” and request extra full-time employees because they don’t have enough staff. It’s insane. Constantly bleeding good talent. Lots of young folks show up here, do their 1 - 3 years for the experience then move on to greener pastures. No objective guidelines for advancing in your career path. HR has a description of where you should be in the pay/job structure on paper based on qualifications but management and HR don’t even come close to following it. You could meet or exceed their descriptions but still not be placed in that box. Some managers will promote after a certain amount of time, some promote based on brown-nosing, some promote based merit, some won’t promote unless you’re doing all 3. Hopefully you win the manager lottery when hiring in! You have to jump groups when you're ready to learn something new otherwise you'll stagnate and do the same repetitive thing over and over and over. The latest policy is they won’t give you a promotion or raise when you change groups because so many people were doing it so they could get more than just a cost of living bump each year. Not sure what people are supposed to do when management tells workers there is a certain % increase they can give each worker each year and if they increase it for one person they have to decrease it for another person by the same %. This makes zero sense since a 1% increase for one employee does not equal a 1% decrease for another employee unless they’re making the exact same amount of money. Oh yeah, HR and management will completely make up seemingly fictitious rules based on whatever circumstance they’re dealing with. Huge inequity in compensation. They don't mind hiring people in above you who are way less capable of doing the same job you're already doing at a higher pay because they claimed to be experts and have a couple more years of experience than you. When it's obvious after a year they aren't doing near the quality of work you're doing (or you're even outright doing their work for them) they won't adjust your pay or title to match the new hire's. Sadly, many of the managers making the hiring decisions are completely unable to weed these people out during interviews because they don’t have the background or knowledge to ask technical questions to see if the candidate knows anything about what they put on their resume. I thought it was really strange when I interviewed and had ZERO technical questions thrown my way. I figured out later it was because my manager didn’t know anything about how the department he was managing did their work, just that work happened and he reported the results in meetings. No substantive goals, plans, or focus for departments nor individuals. They’ll put something down on paper but it rarely makes sense for where the department or individual should actually be going. What really happens is the manager decides the direction of the group in a vacuum with no guidance and the only goal of trying to make himself look good to the people above him. The only thing ERCOT really has to do is make the PUC believe they're doing a good job and pander to the electric market participants. Most of the managers here wouldn't survive more than a couple of quarters at a company that had to function in any type of competitive environment. The medical benefits are drying up for some people. The company told the employees a couple years ago that the claims they were paying out were too high. So, they switched insurance and now some people’s medications and treatments that were covered are not anymore. HR says they switched plans because it “benefited the majority of the employees” and costs went down overall. Pretty heartless and no one believes it. Bottom line, if you're a high performer you will probably have a large sense of inequity after working here for a year or so. If you just want to sit back and relax, do the minimum, and collect an okay-ish paycheck, this is your Nirvana. Much of what happens at ERCOT is very relatable to The Office TV show (American version). You watch it, laugh, and think that’s crazy – how could that happen at work? Then you’re at ERCOT and you’re like, seriously – there is an episode of The Office where they made fun of this situation. Obviously, it’s more extreme on the TV show but the events, themes, and situations are spot on. I would love to regale you with instances but then this review wouldn’t be very anonymous anymore.