Associate Project Engineer (IT) - Associate Project Engineer Union Pacific Employee Review

2.0
Aug 30, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent work/life balance. Excellent technology stack: SOA, JMS, Spring. Automated deployment/provisioning system means no late-night manual deployment processess. Dev->Test->Production turnaround time is less than three days. Pay was pretty good for someone coming out of academia in 2012.

Cons

UP is a transportation company. You will be made very aware of this fact, repeatedly. IT is a second-class citizen; if you're dealing with an internal customer that's involved in the process of moving trains around, you're expected to do exactly what they want, even if they can't effectively communicate what that actually is. The needs of the business may shift while you're being hired and while you're in training. I was originally hired for a specialized role, but when I came out of training, I was tasked with mundane intern-level work...for 2.5 years. This was very detrimental to my career. Compensation was somewhat arbitrary. An MSCS with 4.5 years of experience can make 4-5% less than a BSCS with 3 years of experience, if the BSCS has been assigned to more impressive or important tasks. It's generally accepted that the newer you are, the more you get paid. Team norms and management styles are extremely inconsistent. Some teams are extremely Agile, others are extremely ad-hoc. Emphasis on refactoring and code quality varies wildly between individual teams. Backstabbing is rewarded. You can become a tech lead in two years and get a promotion every year if you're willing to take credit for others' ideas and blame others for your mistakes. Attempting to improve processes is punished. My decision to leave was finalized when I questioned the fact that we are permitted to close our own QA tickets without any oversight, and was told "you're paid too much to have a babysitter."

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Pros

Solid company Good people Valuable role in economy

Cons

Goals are moving targets Disconnect between leadership and boots on the ground.

4.0
Jul 16, 2026
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CEO approval
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Pros

There are several pros working for Union Pacific. Pros are the pay, union membership, and opportunities to travel

Cons

Cons are also Travel. The shift I am on you are supposed to be gone for eight d ays and home for six. But it actually translates into gone for 9 1/2 days by the time you include your travel days which put you only home for 4 to 4 1/2 days every 14 days.

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