police officer

division manager

intern

natural resource technician

system engineer

City of Tacoma

The City of Tacoma is constantly trying to reinvent themselves. They are continually finding new initiatives that always sound good on paper, yet they are never attempted wholeheartedly. New management and talented staff leave the City because of the inability to manage their objectives. The politics of working in this kind of environment make the compensation more of a punishment than a blessing.

The use of outside vendors cost the tax payers considerably more in an effort to drain the hired staff of the ability to obtain needed skills to effectively support their environment. Thus there is the attitude to just wait out the new management until it is replaced. At the end of the day, it's about your own emotional health that's key to a good position.

If you are considering employment here do your homework and ask about the turnover rate and who you'll be reporting to. You'll find talented staff there that want to do a great job but the issue is that the management is steeped in politics and self promotion.

As an intern web assistant, my duties were to mainly edit metadata for the city's webpage, and to check for grammar, spelling, text overflows, etc. I was not very familiar with any of these tasks before interning there, but I am very tech savvy, and with the guidance of the lead web developer, I quickly learned how to accomplish the tasks I needed to.

My co-workers were all very nice and accommodating, though I did feel a bit out of place, since there was a bit of an age gap. Most of my co-workers were older than I, so common interests were few and far between.

The hardest part about my job was trying to coordinate meetings and speak with individuals who wanted their web sections a certain way. I'm not the best speaker in a large group, so it was pretty unnerving. Still, I managed.

The most enjoyable part of the job was how relaxed the environment felt, having an office job, and the amazing view of the sound.

The City of Tacoma offers much on salaries and opportunities for advancement. The City as a whole values diversity and is working  hard on issues of race, inclusion and leveling the playing field. The benefits ae great with a chance to reduce employee payment of health benefits by half through participation in health related activities. There are plenty of holidays off plus paid vacation, sick leave, and floating holidays. Nothing is perfect and there are still supervisors and managers that are stuck in punitive mind-sets. This is challenging but changing. They will find themselves the odd men out in time. Overall a great place to work that is making important improvements.

Clock in 
Wait for dispatch 
Grab notes and do your route 
Have pointless meeting where they talk about feelings and management just belittles and treats you like your worthless. I learned a lot got a lot of trainings and when it came time to for promotion the just pass you up an say your over qualified and give the job to an underqualified candidate. Management doesn't know what's going on or how to run the operation by trying to reinvent the wheel every month. The work place culture is toxic employees or overlooked on insight and management waste tax payers money on equipment that won't work with our current duties. The job isn't hard at all it's just the communication and the scope of work doesn't make sense. The best part of the job is just working with you co workers on the crew and have a good time. There is a lot of incompetence.

Project management of large CIP projects (Airport, FHWA/WSDOT road projects) for 2 years. In-house Project Design for sidewalk, ADA sidewalk ramp and large street projects using ACAD- Civil 3D, writing specifications and bid proposals. Assisted in grant writing, construction engineering and ROW acquisition for street and other CIP projects. Managed Civil Engineering Technicians involved in street design projects. I enjoyed the collaborative team effort in project design and construction. The most enjoyable part of the job was to witness the completion of a project and learn about how to more efficiently accomplish this.

It is the City's mission to provide cost-effective municipal services to its citizens, but that mission is simply not reflected in the business operations of the organization.

Ingenuity is actively discouraged, as the City seeks to settle for precedent at every opportunity.  Despite Tacoma's status as a city on the rise, its government is unwilling to address critical issues or actively engage citizens.

Do not step into a role with the City thinking that you will easily make an impact on the organization's operations.

I work in the utility division and have a very nice workspace which is not cramped like other places I have worked. The pay affords me a comfortable living and I really like my coworkers and my direct boss. The office is not loud like horrible places I've worked in the past. You get to take all your breaks and lunches are an employee's right (not a privilege like they were treated when I worked at Opti Staffing). I come to work, do my job, and then get to go home to my family where I don't have to think about work anymore. I love working for the city and have made a lot of friends out of coworkers.

The work I do is fairly detailed and depending on the time of the year can be extremely busy.  The problem I see is sometimes management put managers/supervisors in places they shouldn't be in (i.e. know their job but not enough about supervising people or management people).  There also tends to be not what you know but who you know in order to get a job in my opinion.  Also if you work in a union job, no matter how well you do the job, it tends to be underrated in my opinion and glossed over.

As a lead man I was in charge of a 3-person crew.   Although my particular job was monotonous, our crew always got along great and always got things done.  They stress people skills here and are always sending you to training to improve on them.  They seem to only hire folks that have a certain level of emotional intelligence which really makes it pleasant to work around the other employees.  I miss this company.  It was a family.

Due to being hired during the pandemic, I was onboarded virtually. Managers did not seem to be tech savvy at all and 75% of your day is spent in meetings. Then they schedule more meeting when deadlines are missed, asking why that happened, when you aren’t given the time to do the work. The work itself was fine and doable and could probably be completed in 20hrs per week, but it’s hard to get things done when 30hrs are spent in meetings unrelated to your job.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Police officer 17 salaries reported	$51.96 per hour
Division manager 6 salaries reported	$86.18 per hour
Intern 9 salaries reported	$19.02 per hour
Natural resource technician 5 salaries reported	$19.08 per hour
System engineer 7 salaries reported	$64.62 per hour

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