Good benefits, OK Salary, But Not Worth It - Director BNSF Railway Employee Review

Poor culture. Salary feels great until you experience the demands of the job (especially, if a field employee) and/or the corporate politics if you are at the headquarters. They also do regular mass layoffs for what end up being superfluous reasons. Every Class I is looking at the others to determine what their next decision should be in terms of cutting costs. Here is the annual cycle at BNSF for financial performance and "forecasting": April-July: The company is doing awesome and either keeping up with financial goals or breaking revenue records. Expect financial records by end of year. Mid-July: The departments hold mid-year meetings where they acknowledge the positive trajectory but set the stage for a second half expected "underperformance." August-September: The company continues to do very well. October-November: C-Suite, Vice Presidents, and AVPs start to warn about concerns about financial struggles for the next year. December: Company has a strong financial year. Mostly likely breaks all revenue records and makes billions of dollars in profit; however at end of year meetings, leaders warn about the next year's likely financial woes. January: Leaders continue to paint concerns about this year's performance and need to be prudent with spending in the upcoming year. End of January: Employees get arbitrary annual bonuses based on fictitious performance formula that is manipulated each year and point to financial concerns for next year as a basis for being conservative (i.e. underpaying) annual bonuses. February: Everyone frustrated with manipulation of annual bonuses. March: Rinse and repeat. Also, this is not the job for you if you cannot handle high school/college dropouts making $100,000+ because they put in arbitrary labor claims that get paid for reasons that have nothing to do with actual work performance or whether the claims are actually valid under the collective bargaining agreements. (So I guess this counts as a pro if you are an individual that wants to make good money for doing nothing while sitting on a train.) To be clear, this is a fairly objective assessment from someone who took a pay cut to leave this company after having a lot of upward mobility success.