Pros
Full disclaimer. I worked here about six years ago. My previous review reflected a fairly negative outlook of the company. After years of reflection and comparison with working at other places I would like to change my outlook to somewhat positive to mixed. Maybe slightly negative. Definitely an improved outlook. SPP is a great company where you wont get hassled much. You can just collect a paycheck. Its so easy going compared to the other FOR PROFIT companies I've worked for. For some other companies I have personally tested 100s of transformer bushings before the large scale deployment of a significant number of distribution assets. I've climbed into manholes full of toxic water and gas to inspect leaking lead joints. I've even gotten inside transformers to look for root causes! Walking around 69KV yards was no big deal. SPP never made me do those things. My job at SPP was cushy and the people mostly chill and friendly. I showed up for my hours and did what was told and I didn't get into trouble. Although I left and still have a slightly negative opinion of the company now that I have grown in many different ways I would admit I would totally come back to SPP or a similar company to finish my career. Believe me storm duty at a IOU is hell compared to SPP. Final paragraph for what I miss most: The commanderie. The people I was hanging out with made everything worth it. Especially for an introverted person like me. SPP was the coolest because of the water cooler talk, going to lunch and coming up with interesting idea, etc. Never had such a cool group of people to work with. Probably never will again.
Cons
The cons were that SPP didn't invest in me. They didn't send me to working groups, IEEE conferences, training, or other meetings. SPP didn't push me to grow or offer me any opportunities. I felt like I had no where to go. Going to admit that being self motivated should be on you and maybe I didn't knock on the door loud enough. But I didn't get any mentorship from leadership either. They looked past me like I wasn't there. I remember one time I tried to cross train with another department and I felt like the guy who would have been training me just ignored me and I gave up. Someone was eventually hired and he trained that guy though. While I was at SPP I completely reinvented and automated my job. I changed every process. I wrote procedures and worked with IT (such a rigid department!). Nothing was the same. Invented modeling scripts to solve tons of issues and increase performance. They are still used today. I even documented my job. Never heard a positive word about any of that for ANY manager I had. Higher leadership probably has no idea. Practically got a swift kick out the door when I gave my notice. Any performance review I got from SPP could have been a rubber stamp from someone that knew me for 5 minutes. There was no push from leadership to get me promote to help envision the future for me. I used the dismissiveness to encourage myself to move somewhere else where I could grow. Working at other places showed me all the crazy things an engineer could do. Much of it isn't behind a desk! I can't say if this is still true because its been some years since I left but I was very under compensated by SPP out of the gate. Towards the end it got much better but it was still not great. That and ZERO remote work is actually one of the biggest reasons I left. There is a huge market for staff augmentation if you have familiarity with Alstom/GE products.