student intern

instrument technician

serviceman

support specialist

journeyperson lineperson

TUCSON ELECTRIC POWER

There was always some levity, constant joking around with some mean humor thrown in before we got in our trucks and started our daily routes. It was fun, good for morale and broke up the drudgery. 

Depending on the work load and which part of town, or the surrounding area we serviced. It was commonplace to make service stops at 30 to a 100 addresses a day. Most of the time, unless it was for credit reasons, the businesses, the houses and the apartments were vacant. It was either the customer had moved out or not moved in. There was hardly any human contact, unless we had to collect delinquent payments or disconnect a customer that had not made a timely payment. If there was human interaction it was negative or confrontational.

There was a lot overtime and despite the compensation for working it. It became exhausting. The hardest part is the anxiousness that comes not knowing when your shift will be over. I spent many late nights and early mornings doing service orders.

The best part of the job was the money I made. It was adequate enough to buy a house, several cars, furniture, clothes and the ability to take extensive vacations to different parts of the country and three excursions to Europe. It contributed to my self esteem and sense of accomplishment.

Pros

TEP has nice headquarters facilities, especially by Tucson standards. HQ is downtown, very conveniently located to many places to have lunch. Plus they offer free indoor parking to employees.

Cons

While TEP could be a good place to work, I cannot attest to that. The group I work in has corrupt management, and that trumps anything "good" about working there. We call it "The Old Boys Club" because the Club seems well-established with close ties. 

Management can be brutal if you question their motives or reasoning - they will come down on you FAST and they will come down on you HARD! Don't ever question why you are required to use certain vendors or contractors - even when these people may charge 2 or 3 times the going rates - just smile and approve the invoice, and everything will be fine. 

My job was not at all challenging. While my type of work usually requires independent and critical thought and problem-solving abilities, I find none of that is necessary at TEP. It's more task-related - just do what you're told and shut up, and everything will be fine. 

To be successful at TEP, you've really got to dumb-down - otherwise you're viewed as a threat. Overall a terrible place to work. I would not recommend TEP to anyone.

The only pro I would have to say about the job is that there are great benefits and the pay is pretty good for living in Tucson. However, I would steer clear of the call center at all cost. If you really want to be an employee at TEP I would go to any other department. It’s a typical call center job. Your going to be micromanaged on everything you do. You have to make sure your saying the same thing every call every time because you never know which call will get pulled for review. On top of that you’ll even be micromanaged on how long you break is, even if your 20 seconds coming back late from a break they’ll pull you aside about being late. To top it all off the customers are horrible. You’ll be yelled at and cursed out pretty much every day. Some customers call in with the most ridiculous situations and you’ll have to somehow solve their issue. During the cutting season you’ll be taking calls from the time you sign on til the time you sign off. Customers will come up with any excuse to not pay their bill and then threaten to speak to a supervisor. Honestly don’t recommend and don’t ever work in a call center. This is your warning.

TEP has great people who work below the supervisory level. People are great to work with. I've been here for years and interacted with a ton of departments outside of my own, and the non-supervisory people I've met have no egos or bad attitudes. Good people who just want to do their work efficiently, keep things running, and are nice to work with.

The supervisors are hit or miss. Some don't seem to have much confidence in themselves. All of them are brown nosers for senior management.

The senior management is a cabal of boomers who want to tell you that this company is a big family, while at the same time cutting benefits and making stupid mandates. They will absolutely lie to your face and tell you policy changes they are making are in response to engagement surveys that never said anything close to the policy decisions they make. It's not that all older people have outdated ways of thinking, but this lot absolutely does. They all make money than they know what to do with, and they have nothing better to do than make it harder to do your job.

Train new electric utility substation design engineers by using real projects.  Spend the day training new engineers, reviewing quality of work and developing lesson plans.

I've learned how to work in a class room environment in transferring knowledge in protection and design.

TEP does a great job in developing well rounded teams of people who work well with each other.

The most difficult part of the job is finding ways to keep the engineers motivated after repeating similar projects.  They aways want to move onto something new.  Maintaining the challenge takes some effort when the individual becomes bored and wants to move on to something new.

The most enjoyable is when you teach someone how to create something new and seeing the excitement in there eyes.

I have worked for other companies here in Tucson, as well as in California and Las Vegas, and Tucson Electric Power is truly the best company I have ever worked for. The company truly cares about their employees and their wellbeing. Amazing (and very affordable) health benefits, a pension, 401K match at 4.5%, wellness programs including a gym and health coach, flexible work schedules which is ideal having young children at home, and the growth is endless here. I learn something new every single day, and everyone truly values your opinion here. TEP is heavily involved in the community, and management treats you like a professional, not just a number. 

There is a lot of politics and internal grudges between departments based on situations that occurred over a decade ago. In many instances, the wrong people are hired for the job, merely because they knew someone in management. This seems to be more rampant in the transmission and distribution leg of the company. Within IS, the culture is changing, but it is changing slowly. 

Also, the company moves very slow when it comes to making decisions about anything. To me, it's due to the amount of people in management as opposed to the staff that actually perform the day-to-day work. It feels like management has meetings about scheduling meetings.

A typical day would be handling escalated calls, coaching supervisors and service representatives, sometimes intervening in union issues.

Ensuring the we were providing the best phone coverage for live answer and virtual hold.

Hardest part of the job is releasing staff.  The other challenge is how to maintain high morale and make the jobs in the call center fun and reinforcing the value the staff adds to the company.

I learned electric utilities have so much in common yet their processes even those with the Corporation Commission varied enormously.

I learned how to work with union issues versus non union issues.

Hard working people in most positions. This review is supposed to be more encompassing. The company is good place to work if you are lucky to be a regular TEP FTE, but as a contractor you are left out of meetings and your input is limited.

Tucson Electric Power was a great job to start out at. They have a very professional team and care about the development of their employees. While I worked there I learned a lot about corporate structure and culture. My primary function there was desktop deployments. I would image new machines and install extra software depending on the need. I also installed encryption on all the laptops as well. I enjoyed this job immensely and had a lot of fun doing it. The hardest part of this job was the workload would sometimes too much since I was the only desktop deployment agent and I was scheduled only 30 hours a week.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Student intern 5 salaries reported	$21.80 per hour
Instrument technician 1 salary reported	$56.72 per hour
Serviceman 1 salary reported	$23.31 per hour
Support specialist 2 salaries reported	$25.42 per hour
Journeyperson lineperson 1 salary reported	$56.77 per hour

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