The Twin Dinosaurs - Senior Consultant PowerPlan Employee Review

For starters - what you learn here has ZERO value outside from a career standpoint. The technology platform - PowerBuilder - is downright ugly and something the entire industry abandoned three decades back. And here we're talking about a company that believes it has the "startup" mindset. The founders were more functional Asset accounting experts than coders, and someone sold them on the idea of coding in this platform that was outdated before the first line of code was written for Powerplan. Fast forward to today, and these folks whose claim to fame is coding in PowerBuilder are in some of the most senior positions in the Organization and want to keep the code-centric emphasis because that's all they know and that's essential justification for them being well compensated. Most IT Organizations de-emphasize the coding aspect and spend less and less on it each year as they outsource it on the cheap....not here. Powerplan spends significantly on a skill that no one else values and it really cripples them from committing resources where they are critically needed (For example to overhaul the basic architecture). And the "Leadership" (i.e. Senior Coders with decision making authority) don't want to take that route because it puts their survival in jeopardy. Then comes the functional knowledge you could gain here by learning the ins and outs of Asset Accounting. A good skill to develop no doubt - except that the companies that really need these skills (Utilities) are among the lowest growth sectors and could be completely extinct in the next 20 years as alternative energy picks up. So that essentially is the summary of working at Powerplan. Lots of bright eyed young folks with no clue about what they signed up for, and then the so called "leadership" - that's basically bankrupt in the skills department outside of coding in PowerBuilder or functional asset accounting. The long hours expected and the endless travel would be all OK if this actually led to adding value and self development. But, unfortunately there's nothing useful to learn other than how to survive a few years of micro-management from a bunch of clueless coders in management positions.