Pros
The pay is very competitive or better than most other companies in Chicago. I've never heard of another company with benefits this good. The health and dental insurance is excellent coverage and is 100% paid for by the company. The employees pay nothing. The 401K and railroad retirement plan are very good. There is a nice, large lunch room with a ping pong table, vending machines, and windows with a beautiful view. There is a free on-site fitness center. They do lots of fun corporate outings and social activities. The building is located in a nice area on the west side of The Loop. They are in the process of remodeling the office space on all of our floors. The floors they have finished so far look great. The new space looks modern, bright, with nice new cubes and offices with plenty of desk space and storage space and access to windows. There are plenty of good size meeting rooms with nice media equipment. The computer equipment is all relatively new. The work hours are reasonable and flexible. You get to work from home one day per week. I really appreciate all of those things. Those things are why I've stayed at TTX.
Cons
It is possible that the experience in other departments could be totally different. My experience has been in the IT department. This IT department is the most stressful, frustrating, and demoralizing work environment I have ever experienced. Any new critical business systems work gets outsourced to consultants and offshore teams. Then once it's declared done, it gets handed off to the internal employees to try clean up the mess and support it and the consultants or offshore team then move on to the next new project. It is slow and painful to get anything done. The systems are a mess and extremely difficult to work on and test. Documentation of these complicated systems is either nonexistent or outdated to the point of being misleading or completely wrong. The process and system for handling tickets, change orders, reviews, and approvals is slow, clunky, buggy, and infuriating. There is constant crisis, unrealistic deadlines, poor planning, terrible communication, and many house of cards type situations. There are always several #1 priorities from multiple managers, which keeps you spinning in circles and losing time to constantly stopping and restarting different complicated tasks. My co-workers and I are spread way too thin and are overwhelmed. There are multiple managers who have no problem with being condescending and publicly criticizing their subordinates both verbally and by group email. There is a mentality of get it done or we'll find someone else who will. Employee morale is abysmal. Before I worked at TTX, I enjoyed my job most days, felt like I was exceptionally good at my job, and that gave me a great deal of pride and satisfaction. But at TTX, I hate my job, feel like a failure, like I'm accomplishing very little or nothing, and that has been terribly demoralizing and demotivating. I've tried to stick it out for the money and benefits and hope that things would eventually get better, but I've waited several years now and it's not getting better. The constant stress is causing me multiple unpleasant health problems and I've begun to wonder how much longer I can keep doing this.