Stable, political, bad software practices - Software Developer FirstEnergy Employee Review

2.0
23 Jul 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good salary. Medical insurance with high deductible + FSA is fully paid for by the company. Full 6% 401k match. Up to 90% compensation for higher education. Chance to work on interesting projects. Real projects for interns. A lot of "job security" (if that's your thing) due to complicated processes and people retiring.

Cons

Strong culture of following the spreadsheet and never questioning anything. Reports must be "green" at any cost. Apathetic attitude toward software quality on all levels, from management to some developers. Management lacks technical knowledge and is not willing to learn or listen to developers. Miles of red tape for the smallest of production issues and one-line fixes. In-house applications have decades' worth of technical debt that is never cleaned up (due to all of the above). Favoritism bordering on racism and misogyny. Skilled developers and experienced analysts excluded from a project altogether while management's favorites with no relevant knowledge are assigned to leadership roles on the same project. Management doublethink: - Modernize an in-house application by creating a new UI, yet do not fix a broken 20+ years old database - Make in-house developers prove their changes are not malicious, yet allow a project to use 10,000+ third-party NPM packages. - Claim to be agile, yet set deadlines and release all of the application at once

Explore other reviews about FirstEnergy

5.0
3 Dec 2025
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

FirstEnergy is a big company with a lot of growth that I've seen firsthand. Employees are helpful and all have the shared goals of keeping reliability of the electric grid. The pay is decent and stays competitive with the market rates as they do reviews consistently and evaluate. Its a great company that is trying to do better after misguided leads hip in the past

Cons

Some executive leadership vision is not shared with lower level employees. The recent transition from WFH back to the office has left employees such as myself wondering why its not role based WFH.

1.0
10 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Only pro anymore are the benefits

Cons

No longer work from home, constant turnover, no decision makers

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