energy advisor

engineer

territory representative

project manager

field sales representative

American Electric Power

In a workday at the plant, I was responsible for the maintenance, installation, calibration, troubleshooting and repair of a huge variety of electrical, electronic, computer, and pneumatic systems.  Every day was different from the last because the work scope is so enourmous for a power plant instrumentation and controls technician.  I could go from the middle of an installation project of, for example, pH analyzers for the control of the makeup pumps in the scrubber for efficiency to troubleshooting an electrical ground somewhere on an ac or dc system to calibrating a Ramsey conveyor belt scale integrator for moving coal to the units.  I was the technician responsible for the belt scale maintenance on unit 5.  The co-workers were great for the most part, but there were a few who liked to play pranks on everyone.  This is ok until it crosses the small scale fun "line".  As far as management goes, the people were mostly great, but communication and organization was almost completely absent.  Many hrs of good wrench time were lost due to improper job assigning, lack of communication from the management level to the tech level, and I attribute some dysfunction to the lack of pertinent knowledge by members of management over my department- people who should have been gurus.  Overall, some of this could have been in relation to techs being promoted to supervisor level and constant moving around so a lot of management did not even have a background that correlated to the department they were leading.  The most enjoyable thing about the job was the respect and freedom we had,  This is one of the most difficult jobs in a plant- and the ICE Techs are heavily relied upon to keep everything fully operational.  We are the "McGuyvers" of the plant.  The hardest part of the job was becoming proficient at a very large number of concepts, fundamentals, safety and site specific practices.  We were required to complete hundreds of demos and have then signed off as we became familiar enough to present them, and those instances don't all pop up every day.  So needless to say I have learned much about the operation and processes of a coal-fired power station.  A big chunk of my acquired knowledge was just how to go about troubleshooting a problem that wasn't obvious or maybe intermittent, and also the DCS (distributed control system, which in our case was Emerson's Ovation DCS).  Logging into a DCS computer was a useful tool in troubleshooting air-operated valves, motor-operated valves (limittorques), solenoid valves, and electric motors because I could simply look at logic sheets to see what inputs/outputs were true/false to determine what component or what section of a circuit needed attention.  This position really changed me as both a technician and a person outside of work.  It has been a very positive part of my life, but I would like to find a position closer to home which is around Parkersburg, WV.

A typical day at work involves deciphering which of the 10–20 project meetings you’ve been invited to—most of which have nothing to do with your actual responsibilities. Then it’s on to routinely emailing, texting, and scouring scattered sources for non-standard drawings. You’ll wait minutes for the logistics enterprise software to load, then guess which of three inconsistent platforms might show your active work order.

You’ll follow up with highly paid individuals to ask whether they plan on completing the tasks assigned to them three months ago. Then you’ll probably reship material to the correct location—again—because it was sent wrong. Or beg for parts from a laydown yard five states away because the engineer forgot to order them—again. Or burn time calling everyone (and their mother) because the engineer bought the wrong SFP for a turn-up. Meanwhile, the email security team is flooding your inbox with gotcha phishing tests like it’s your first week on the internet.

You’ll pretend it’s still 2004, navigating a janky file share—because, despite having enterprise licenses for SharePoint and Confluence, AEP doesn’t actually use or promote them. If you need to do anything in ServiceNow, set aside your afternoon—its hosting infrastructure is so bad you’re lucky to click through a page every 5–6 seconds. But hey, at least project managers can’t edit anything. Instead, you’ll submit it to the SNOW SME and hope their Temu-tier data center 
I’ve learned to spot the doers and avoid the talkers.

Management is incredibly slow and indecisive. A few are complete terds, about 5% are all-stars, and the rest are just coasting to retirement, actively refusing to lead.

Workplace culture took a nosedive after “DEI Julie” and the February bloodbath, followed by the “voluntary” retirement of the people who actually got things done. That was then followed by the not-so-voluntary push to shove out the high-earning veterans. But don’t worry—“RTO Bill” is still out there trumpeting ESG nonsense for the institutional investors.

The hardest part of the job? Having to constantly do other people’s work—despite communicating, reporting, escalating, and even outright refusing—only to be told to do it “for the team.”

The best part of the job is the group of people who still show up and give it their all every day, even though they keep getting passed over for promotions, bonuses, training—you name it.


AEP, a great company to work for once you are hired on full time. However for the call center they use a third party temp agency by the name of Innosource, for the position of customer service representative.   There have been a lot of mixed reviews with this process.   I personally have over 30 years of customer service along with collections experience.  I was hired in October 2019. I was in the first training class, that was rolling out through “knowledge “.  The training process was very confusing, after 6 week you are placed out in the floor for a nesting period.  During that time you work 8am to 4:30 pm.  No weekends.  After 2 months you placed on a schedule according to your status.  You are required on new orders to offer “Allconnect”, they offer various services a new order would need.  There is a button where the call can be directly transferred. However, if you have to go out of the account for whatever reason, you are not able to transfer.  Because of this, it will effect your Allconnect requirements.  If you do not met the requirements, you will be let go.  You also earn non paid time off.  Meaning you are provided with vacation time however there is no pay, there is no sick time.  AEP wants you to do a one and done call, however complain you were on a call too long.  Payment arrangements are suppose to followed by standard policies however they are not.  It depends on the customer service representative the customer gets, and what kind of day they are having.   
Working for a utility company is intense and very stressful.  It can get overwhelming in working an account when the customer is about to loose service.  This can effect someone’s life more than just having the services turned off.  It can change a whole family structure, especially when children are involved in the home.
The customer service call center needs to update managers and the director to  more diversified individuals, we cannot be in 2022, and run things like 1972.

I was a customer service agent. I really liked the people I worked with, my supervisor was an amazing friend and boss, my pay increased pretty significantly for me over about a year and half which it made it really hard to decide to leave as the benefits were great. Please know that this work is not for the faint of heart nor is it for people who can't handle stress. It's a constant revolving door of not only coworkers, but customers. I was great at my job, but this job was so stressful it gave me anxiety attacks when I thought I was otherwise fine. There are customers that treat you perfectly fine, people who are frustrated but understanding, and then there is a strong majority of literally insane people that'll cost you your own sanity trying to help them. You will get praise for accomplishments if you get a good supervisor, but the training is hyper focused on things you do wrong, so get ready to feel like you're not doing great. The majority of times you'll see your supervisor face to face will be on things you're doing wrong unless you talk to them on a personal level. Unless you're great at your job, you won't be able to pick your shift. Shifts are completely based on your stats and attendance. You miss one day, you probably just lost a lot of shift choices with it. Lots of overtime or call ins during storms, etc. You have to be flexible as policies change constantly as there are 11 states and 11 different states making their own rules. I'm not saying everyone will have the same experience, but it was very stressful for me personally and you better think it as a career for your future and not take things personally during training. If you don't you won't last a month. 

The company does not have a great culture overall despite what some of these reviews say. Each year they put the responsibility of improving the culture on the shoulders of the employees by making each team come up with some fluff culture action plan. I say fluff because everyone is too scared to actually call out the issues so they pick the softball issue that doesn't ruffle their leaders feathers just to check the box. It's an absolute waste of time.

The way leaders are selected is an absolute joke, this is a company where you can fail up if you know the right people. They claim to have a leadership development program, but how would one get into such a thing? Depends on who you know.

Professional development is completely on the employee with no real direction from the untrained leaders. The annual performance plan is just another box to check. My group's leadership didn't even know what quantitative goals the team should have and made their direct reports write their own plans because they didn't know how. When challenged on how little sense it made for the employee to tell the leader what they needed to work on they only said that their leader made them write their own so that is how it goes.

Meetings, good grief it's like some weird flex people join meetings late apologizing for the previous one running over and explaining that they're in back to back calls all day long. They treat it like the more meetings you have the more important you are, but the people actually doing the work can see that these meeting warriors are either not doing any actual work or working outside of their regular working hours to get it done and they clearly cannot manage their time effectively.

This company has no respect for software developers. They have a toxic work environment such as job favoritism, clueless managers out of touch with current modern day software development methodologies, and technical skills. They buy software instead of developimg it in house. The software they buy is usually vaporware that they spend millions on and that doesnt work. 

Ive seen AEP spend millons on software that doesnt work. The reason they spend that much money on useless software is because they want to fill the IT budget so that they can get more money for the next fiscal year and waste even more money. 

AEP preaches transparancy but will try every effort to outsource your job to India. They have had numerous CIOs leave the company because they have no respect for their IT staff. To my knowledge they have not had a CIO for the past few years because nobody wants the job. How can IT fuction if their is no true leader for thier IT efforts. 

Their business staff is full of IT haters, it is an extremely toxic work environment for IT employees. The only way to get promoted at this company is to not do your job and go around schmoozing the managers. Ive seen this done many times. It is an extremely toxic work environment. This ia the type of company that does not reward employees that are highly technical and proficient at thier job. 

At one point, Ive seen them tell all of their IT staff that they might not have a job because they want to outsource everyone to India. Ive had to train IT staff in india on how to do my job because they outsourced all their software support overseas, India. It is a humilaying place for IT staff.

The people are AMAZING.  A lot of experienced people in the industry.  I have learned so much about the industry.

Right now the workplace culture is low due to new CEO.  We have had two new CEO's over the past two years.  We have NO IDEA what is the strategic goal of the company.  The new CEO made the business return to the office.  It tanked the morale.  Folks were made to come in the office ONLY to sit on Teams calls ALL DAY.  This was the last straw after dealing with yearly lay-offs over the last three years.  People have MORE work because of lay-offs and now you take work from home away which adds commuting time to their day.

There has been a hidden HALT on promotions.  Very  little movement on internal promotions.  Yet folks are doing MORE work and in MOST cases work that is above their current level and rightfully should be getting promotions.  Managers backs are against the wall because they are NOT receiving funding for higher level positions.  As a reslut in I.T. we are now seeing folks leave.  I.T. has been hit the hardest and it is LITERALLY a skelton crew.

AEP is a SOLID company financially.  The benefits are great.  There are great people who have been at the company a long time who really care about the work that they do and are dedicated.  The constant Upper Level Management Change and the unknown is really dragging down morale.  Not to mention you can't keep your employees working in a deficient mode.  Literally EVERY Year over the past three years there is a major shake up.  It gets tiresome.

System Operators have a well paying and secure job with great benefits at AEP.  Unfortunately System Operators are more and more becoming employees that aren't expected to have a deeper understanding of electricity and how equipment and relaying functions,  and many nonsensical "policies and procedures" have been introduced in an attempt to dumb down the job that often times makes things more confusing. If you come into this job expecting to learn the ins and outs of electricity and equipment you'll be disappointed, one example that sticks with me, one night we had high voltage on a transmission line with overvoltage relay protection and an in series reactor was in service increasing impedance. I recommended removing the reactor to increase loading and decrease voltage and was told by a senior employee that increasing loading doesn't impact voltage at all. Unfortunately if you try to explain these concepts to folks the general reaction ranges from apathy to perceiving it as a personal attack, so I quickly learned to keep things like that to myself. Many individuals are extremely resistant to change or new ideas. To sum up its a solid job with great benefits however the knowledge of electrical systems is very surface level and there isn't any impact on system innovation in this role.

I will write a realistic job description for American Electric Power for an engineering position:

Job: Professional Waste of Time

Pay: Very Good but do not expect a pay increase

Reports to manager who does not stay in touch

Degree is required despite all the knowledge need to complete duties being entirely learned on the job

Proficiency in 4th grade level Powerpoint Presentations

Must be able to sit and wait for a computer for two weeks and expected to shadow another new employee in the meantime

Will be expected to have minimal work assigned but must be in the office 

You will not be properly trained

Experienced in finding a way to waste time

Must be to be an expert in the field with limited training

Encouraged to ask questions but criticized when asking questions because you will be expected to know already

Expected to not receive more assignments when work is completed, after asking

Disciplinary action for not doing the non existent work

Great job for someone who can sit at a desk and do nothing, with the occasional batch of work, but you are not supposed to be doing nothing

Willing to comply with leadership making decisions nobody likes but everyone will put up with

Weak-minded, suck up, cubicle fillers wanted.

Do you love pretending like you are a professional and are doing important work? Then apply today!!!

DISCLAIMER: YOU WILL HAVE TO WORK SOMETIMES)




I loved my job and people I worked with directly. The leads and my manager had my best interest at heart; they were always willing to help. My specific location was wonderful to work with and truly cared about “me.” There is clear understanding of what is expected and needed, as well, resources to complete. There is a strong focus on metrics associated with position. These metrics/expectations recently seemed to come from those who may have never taken calls back to back for an entire shift. I think this focus should be reevaluated to some extent. Each call taken has many elements that sometimes make what is being asked not achievable. Some calls are short and to the point, yet some have many tail spins that affect call metrics and overall satisfaction with customers. I strongly believe this needs to be taken into account. Goals/expectations  are attainable, but many calls don’t fit into a box or check list of what’s expected: length  of a call, customer understanding of what can be done, satisfaction during an outage event, etc. High rated and “green”  calls should be reviewed as hard as lower rated “yellow/red” calls. If an employee is willing to put in the time and self-perseverance, the opportunity for growth is high and available. Overall, great place to work and grow with.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Energy advisor 38 salaries reported	$16.74 per hour
Engineer 3 salaries reported	$102,667 per year
Territory representative 63 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour
Project manager 11 salaries reported	$113,545 per year
Field sales representative 20 salaries reported	$15.00 per hour

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