Vantaggi
Background - before joing ProU I had spent a little over 2 years in downstream oil refining. My bread and butter here at ProU is upstream oil production. The senior engineers see me as a junior/entry level engineer because I didn't have much experience with upstream. They take the time to explain things to me and are very helpful and concerned about my growth in the company. The vibe I get from ProU is that once you've passed the probation period you're family and they'll try to work with you to keep you on board. Meaning, if you mess up and don’t mesh well, they are gracious and try to move you around to where you're productive and a good fit. (I'm speaking as a third party observer.)
Svantaggi
Sometimes they don't have enough work for all disciplines and too much work for some. Process/Project engineers always seem busy, they can work 50+ hours a week if they wanted. Mechanical and administrative not show much. I saw a mechanical/project engineer get cut after about 3 months, a project assistant was cut hours because they didn't have enough work for her to do. Pay is a big area I feel like they need improvement. When you first come on as a temp your hourly rate is around market value, maybe a little lower. But when they offer you full-time status with benefits they'll cut your rate, their initial offer was a $5 rate cut for me. That’s 10,400 a year! They offer the usual benefits, 401k matching, vacation and holiday pay. Two differences are that they do pay for a large portion of your health premium and offer quarterly project performance bonuses (based on project metrics). A 10,400 a year rate cut was kind of shocking because I was offered a higher rate WITH benefits fresh out of college. Now I can understand the argument that cost of living is lower, hence the lower rate. But one can also make the argument that the reason for the lower cost of living is because it is not that great of a place to live, so to make up for that you pay a higher rate or at least be at market value. (I read an article by CNN that ranked Bakersfield as the No. 1 polluted city in the US.) Think of the increased rate as hazard pay. (People get paid crazy amounts of money to work in the frozen tundra, this is the same, although on a much smaller scale.)