cad technician

estimator

field technician

technologist

engineer

Pike-Corporation

NOTE: The following represents a position within Nashville, TN office of UC Synergetic, also listed as Pike Engineering and Pike Corporation 

A short summary would be: there are plenty of other fields in which to practice CAD that are more stable and pay better. If one really wants to break into Outside Plant Engineering there are no doubt better managed opportunities as well.  

CAD Technician in this context entails preparing 2D construction plans based on field notes and research of existing facilities records in the field of Outside Plant Engineering e.g utility poles, anchor / guying, and aerial / buried telecommunications cables. 

The typical work pipeline consists of: 

-Being assigned a job from remote SPOCs ("single points of contact") via email with supporting documents and target deadlines 

-Conducting research based on the scope of work and conferring with field surveyors who visit the area

-Preparing drawings via BSTCAD, AT&T's proprietary version of Microstation v8i, hosted on a remote server. No formal civil drafting standards are implemented vs ad hoc adjudication by internal and external quality checkers for clarity.

-Submitting these drawings to an internal quality inspection for any corrections, then AT&T for approval and a grade that must meet contractual service level agreements targets with consequential fines for missed targets. 

All in all, the work is highly detail oriented, requiring the digestion of a large body of technical standards and practices that morph often, and requires diligent task management where turnaround time is very tightly budgeted. It is visual and textual technical communication with virtually zero creative input involved. 

Like many subcontracting shops, this role exists to produce work product as as accurately, quickly, and as profitably for all the stakeholders involved, which manifests in a number of unsurprising pressures on the employees.  

You are paid by charging time to jobs that are assigned to you, meaning you need enough assigned work to achieve 40 hours while meeting the expectation to keep the hours per job as minimal as possible. How your time is spent is highly scrutinized by remote supervisors and it is necessary to scrupulously document it in order to be able to justify time spent and satisfy the pervasive suspicion that anyone is exploiting the company and carefully avoid exposure to liability for uncompensated work in light of outstanding lawsuits. 

This office predominantly sources it’s workforce from staffing agencies under typical contract to hire arrangements and veteran AT&T linemen / engineers. When available work tightens seasonally, the bulk of these employees are laid off. This appears to be a built-in part of the business model and strategy, often justified as being “the nature of the contracting world”. Staffing agency hires are brought in ~$10-14 / hr. Cross training does entail marginal raises with title changes, but opportunities for increased responsibilities typically do not come with further compensation.

Strategic leadership seems reactionary or it’s agenda doesn’t just doesn't align with that of employees looking for stable long term employment with low turnover. 

On office atmosphere, the typical open floor cubicle farm is usually very quiet and empty between regular turn over and field work and everyone leaving around 3. Aside from a solid office supervisor, the rest of management is virtually never present or only makes superficial visits.  There is a clique of employees with a great deal of loyalty to management who regularly relay the coming and goings and conversations of the office.

Pike, at least in the the Lakewood/Johnstown locations, is a poorly managed company to say the least, which is sad to say since the co-workers you will work with are actually good people. However, good people doesn’t excuse the absolutely atrocious management practices. It seems as if the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing at Pike, and it’s causing everyone to suffer. The turnover rate is insanely high. It seemed like every month or so someone was leaving the company, and most of those who remained only stayed until a better opportunity came their way, or they had enough with the company’s poor standards. It seemed like management’s solution to solving the company’s issues was either putting a bandaid on the wound until it will reopen again, or just spitballing ideas until something hopefully stuck after so many woeful attempts. Management would constantly try to implement their poorly thought out ideas without seemingly much thought or care, which would tank performance, and cause mass confusion amongst the masses. If the managers don’t even know what’s going on, how do they expect their subordinates to figure out to their job?
Which leads me to my next point.
The company’s training is frankly a big joke. It’s two solid weeks of sitting in a room watching slide presentations with dated information. There’s no hands on experience with the software employees are supposed use their day to day. When “training” is finally over with, newbies are just thrusted onto their desks without much guidance, and are often forced to fly by the seat of their pants their first few months as those with experience are swamped with an insane workload of their own. To put the Cherry on the top, management will freak out at the end of the month when production numbers aren’t being met. Maybe some proper training can help with that in the future? Just a thought?
Honestly, if the people you work with weren’t so caring and friendly, then there would be nothing redeeming about working with Pike. Perhaps if you’re just setting your foot into the utilities/engineering process industry, then Pike might seem like an enticing deal to work with, but I would strongly encourage seeking employment elsewhere. If this is your only option, then I suggest getting as much experience needed to jump ship and work somewhere else. If you have prior experience or a degree, I wouldn’t suggest even giving Pike a glancing look. 

P.S. during your first two weeks of training, new employees are expected to drive down to Lakewood (Denver) without any sort of compensation for milage or fuel. Bare in mind that people working in Johnstown live at least an hour and a half drive from Lakewood. 

If I was willing to practically sabotage another position that was directly relevant to my field of study for Pike’s offer, relocate, and make some pretty big financial decisions for the role, I feel like the least Pike could’ve done is given me more than twelve business days (with only FOUR of them being spent on my own doing my first project) to prove that that a good and capable worker that could’ve gotten the hang of both their software and the relevant design standards.

I didn’t just dilly dally during training, and my first project I took dozens of pages of notes and asked regular questions to both my trainers and fellow trainees. And if you ask  the people I trained with, both of them would tell you that I worked super hard during training, took great notes, and was doing good work. 

The whole time there, i was getting mixed messages on what they’re expecting me to be capable of. They go on and on about how to talk to them if you have any issue, that it’s about quality over quantity, that we need to maintain a strict output, that we weren’t expected to be “fully trained” after training. They take one look at the first project I did, and didn’t even give me a chance to do the QC revisions because I was missing “basic” stuff, but I consider revising a project like that an ESSENTIAL step in LEARNING both the rules and the software’s mechanics. Not to mention AEP’s prescribed database did not match what I was seeing in the field at ALL, so I felt like I was asking so many different people questions and getting so many non confident answers.

During the meeting when they let me go, they literally said “your project was bad. We are really confident in how we do our training, so today’s your last day”. We just sat around taking turns with different pole designs while someone watched, it wasn’t exactly the MasterClass they think it was. ONE OF THE TRAINERS COULDN’T FIGURE SOMETHING OUT AND ALMOST STARTED CRYING BEFORE DISMISSING US FOR THE WEEKEND. They said “nothing personal” of course it wasn’t personal, because they didn’t even bother trying to learn about my personality, work style, or learning style. Maybe this is their process of how they find a very specific person right out the gate, but if that’s the case, it’s very dehumanizing. The way they escorted me out of that office, I felt like a criminal, but I didn’t steal proprietary information or show up to work intoxicated or do anything remotely like what you’d expect someone to get fired after only 12 days for. My only crime was not being fluent in a terabyte worth of information right away. It’s all about numbers to Pike. Very dehumanizing.

Work-life balance
Pretty standard for companies in town

Pay & benefits
The salary is lower than what other competitor companies offer for most jobs. Benefits are well below average.

Job security and advancement
If you aren't in the inner circles you won't be promoted. Some of the "executives" have diploma mill degrees and minimal management skills. The company is fairly devoid of leadership and will never be the organization it can be.

Management
CEO and senior execs are in way over their heads. Very little innovative thinking, and reorg efforts have been poorly done. Huge degree of favoritism causes low morale and limited promotion potential. Good people are cast aside by myopic and mentally deficient managers. The org is full of business cliche users who attempt to hide their ignorance behind overused business jargon. Narcissism reigns.

Culture
Behind the glossy facade lies a very toxic culture. Some people were relieved to be riffed instead of staying there, even during the pandemic. Salaries and benefits are just enough to make people reluctant to leave.

Overall
Pike is too dependent on one large customer, yet lacks the innovation or strategic bearing to diversify. The organization has based change strategy on outlandish and unobtainable financial goals. Survival of pandemic conditions is questionable under the current leadership, from the board of directors down to junior execs. Execs, especially junior execs, lack the experience or skill to hold their current positions, and are largely in place because of relationship building with more senior execs. Efforts to boost morale before the pandemic lacked sincerity which has worsened employee outlook now. Employees have little trust in leadership. Contractors should be lined up to compete with them for the next contract, if Pike even exists then. -

Very cool job duties.  I loved the work as a distribution designer.  There is so much to learn.  

Management will tell you there is room for career advancement.  Unfortunately, there are no development plans, performance evaluations, trainings for employees.  The company is constantly trying to hire workers due to low wages, morale, lacky of empathy.  Five employees just put in their resignation notice within one week (no counter offers or attempts to save them.)  Management is now scrambling more than ever.  They are out of touch when it comes to workplace culture, employee appreciation, and overall regard for their workforce.  One of the top managers says inappropriate things to employees all the time.    Most people are afraid to approach him.  It's definitely an "iron-fist", intimidation based atmosphere.

The company vehicles are not maintained and some have tire tread that is borderline illegal in the mountains.  The first line of the Pike Engineering Chairman's statement talks about safety being paramount.  Young employees fresh out of college are sent up to drive on icy, 4WD roads with bald tires, no first aid kits or navigation systems (you can be suspended immediately for looking at the map on your phone).  Nothing to get yourself unstuck from snow, no jumper cables, etc...

The hardest part of the job is managing customer expectations for construction timelines.  They expect things to be done very quickly when that's just not the reality.

The best part of the job is doing site visits, designing, helping the customer get services to their home or business.  The whole job is really cool actually.  I loved it.  I'm sad to leave.  If the culture and current management team weren't so toxic, this would have been an ideal job.

To give an overview, I worked at Pike Engineering as a Power Technologist 1. My daily duties consist of making utility design packets, contacting customers, and meeting client/construction onsite. I learned about utility, how to behave in a workplace, phone etiquette, and how to use computer programs. The management is some of the worst I've had the misfortune to work with. Everyone of them are self-serving and will not help you. You can beg for help and they will tell you to figure out by yourself. There also no professionalism or confidentiality. If you have an issue, don't worry, managers won't help and then air out your issues with everyone. The workplace culture is really interesting. Since management is so bad, most employees have a lot frustrations. So you get along with your direct coworkers (as long as you don't QC and find out that everyone on your team is incompetent) and you usually complain. There isn't a part is difficult besides the extremely heavy work load and there being zero resources. They will request you to work overtime within a month of you being hired. They are also giving higher difficulty work to new hires. You will never see the light at the end of the tunnel because the each end has been blocked by the amount of projects that must be completed. They will also blame you for everything (even things that are not your problem/in your 20SQFT. There wasn't really any joy with my work at the end of time at Pike. I will say it's really fun to learn everything because it was all so new to me. 

My time there was pretty good until i was a year in a half in and realized they seem to personalize alot of communication. Most of the communications are done in the dark with no real explanation. Leadership seems to not promote within and when they do promote its out of convenience than actual planning. Most of the leadership only care if their personal job is a stake, other than that its no real push to cultivate the seasoned people who are for the team than their own personal goals. I enjoyed the job and the work even though my pay didn't reflect the output of my production and service. The problem i have is the lack of maturity within the office environment and team, leadership tends to hold personal grudges against others without a clear explanation which can lead to mistrust within the culture. As long as you kept your head down and work while talking to co-workers for three hours, you will fit in. I think with me, i tend to put the personal secondary and the work/tasks first. 

I would rate my training experience a 2/10—not because the trainer was ineffective, but because there was an expectation that we already knew most of the details before starting the job. I was initially told the training would last three weeks, which was fair. During my time there, it was shortened to one to two weeks, which I was still okay with. However, we didn’t receive proper equipment—such as badges, computers, and system credentials—until the last day of the first week.

Because of this, my coworker and I were expected to learn everything within a single week, with guidance that felt rushed due to the circumstances. We were essentially thrown into the work without the training fully applying to the tasks we were assigned, which made the job significantly more difficult.

Over time, when I needed help, there were moments where asking questions—especially about new projects I had never worked on or been trained for—was met with a negative response. It often felt as though I was expected to already know everything about MicroStation, despite not having been properly trained on it.

What is the best part of working at the company?
safety’s first and it like a big family, a bunch of good guys from the top to the bottom and a steady work environment, they were always willing to work with you, and teach you 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
i would say just being on the road away from your family but that’s what you sign up for so but far as the work i’ve always enjoyed and valued my time and work spent with pike

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
i’ve only worked on the Transmission side, maintenance mostly and some construction i have to say i have worked with a few other companies and pike by far has the best Intentions for you from supervisors to General Forman to lead lineman’s they have always showed me respect and loyalty and they teach you the right way to work safe so you can go home to your family 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
start off in the morning driving to the show up where you continue a morning job job, briefing of the steps and who’s going to do. What for the day and try to reach all goals before end of workday in a safe work area

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