Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
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At New Albany the top glass is opaque. If you are taller than 3 apples high you can see over the top. There is like a 5' wide opening so it is not like the glass really matters anyway. They are pretty much the standard cube I have seen across AEP at service centers too.
The top panel, about 12" is glass in the cubicle at 1RP, the other 4-5' was solid. There were some folks on 14 that had desks that faced each other with a small glass panel between them but that was for the traders I believe.Get yourself a large white board and put it up over the glass panel, problem solved.
Cubicles? That's posh. There are floors with nothing but rows of workspaces. No partitions. It's impossible to have a productive Teams meeting. It's like Whack-a-Mole with the mute button. No place to retreat for privacy if needed (even for management, 1on1s, etc.). It's a bullpen set up a la IBM 1975. Or picture a 1950s typing pool. I'm eager to see the turnover rates come June.
Can you tell us more about the see through cubicles? For example, the location where this occurred. Is it certain panels that were replaced? For what supposed purpose? I work in New Albany and they are starting to make changes to cubes but I haven't seen anything like that.
Supplementing the RTO punishment with new see-through cubicles was really a stroke of genius, Bill. The sensation of constantly being watched is great for my concentration.
As a former AEP employee, the only thing I miss is my coworkers, nothing else. Not the pay, the benefits, the work, nothing but the people I worked with. The work, pay, and benefits can all be replaced but replacing years of friendships cannot be replaced overnight.
Do you guys ever read an old AEP News article and click on the names in the comments? Every single time it's "former or inactive employee"
Quite spooky.
I sure hope the 1RP cafe gets its act together soon. They’re out of everything (turkey, sweet potato fries, lettuce). The staff is put out of you go down there after 1pm and the wait is at least 10 minutes. The staff is yelling at each other and complaining about how hard they have to work and why it matters between Coke Zero and Diet Coke. It really makes you not want to go there and give sodexho my money. I’ll just bring my lunch or walk up the street.
My VP was talking about hiring new employees in cohorts and sending them to some training seminar. I've worked at other companies that do this. The capstone presentation could be Bill making a surprise guest appearance and giving a talk about the tremendous opportunity of RTO. Imagine how inspiring that would be. Makes me want to quit and try to get rehired just to experience that.
I recently hired a new employee and assumed (my fault) the new employee onboarding was what it was when I joined several years back. It’s not!! It’s very bare bones and a basic sharepoint site that we share with the employer. There’s no discussion guide for the leader and the information about the company vision and core principles is new. Apparently this was all unveiled at an executive meeting earlier this year, but it never made its way to me. Unfortunately, I feel like this is another example of the degradation of AEP. There’s no pride in things. I’m happy to onboard my own employee, but prepare me to do it well. So embarrassing!
On top of the poignant last name, Shane’s aura is vaguely threatening and unsettling. I think he’s a great selection for any executive leadership position! Congrats to him!
Shane Lies named to board of directors of EPRI. Once you make it to the top the six-figure cushy no-show jobs just roll in I guess.
It feels like choosing Sauvage means that there will be more equity issuances in the future. With that huge capital plan and Trump’s tariffs pushing inflation up, interest rates will be too high to fund a lot of the plan with debt.
The new board member previously was vice chairman at Lehman Brothers yikes
To the comments about the blackout of the Iberian peninsula: It will likely be some time before enough is known about the actual triggering events and contributing factors (it's rarely just one thing) to explain this blackout. The FERC final report of the August 2003 Northeast blackout wasn't issued until April 2004. The initial reports of "induced atmospheric vibration." appear (at best) to be an attempt to translate a complicated technical event into language more widely understood. The result is unintelligible. While it's way too simplistic to just blame it on renewables, with the subsequent reports that the Iberian grid experienced a sudden loss of 15GW of generation, it is possible that the characteristics of the generation mix operating at the time played a role in the event. A previous event in the US may be relevant: https://www.nerc.com/pa/rrm/ea/Documents/1200_MW_Fault_Induced_Solar_Photovoltaic_Resource_Interruption_Final.pdf
To the person blaming of the generation source for Spain's outage,
The investigation so far looks more like a massive backbone delivery failure or sabotage from within.
That whole story sounds way too much like the Northeast Blackout of 2003 over here, and ours was not caused by renewables, just bad equipment and a quite a bit of stupidity.
new guy named to the board of directors. not sure if that means anything to anyone here.
It can depend on OEC and Opco. Some OpCos have higher standards for quality. AEP Ohio for example has not very high standards for quality compared to say I&M. I've been told by AEP Ohio linemen that a lot of the internal work is trash compared to some of the contractors. As far as the OECs go, they each have reputation, some are good, some are bad. Some have a lot of very experienced people and some are staffed by mostly fresh college grads.
I wonder if AEP will learn from the mistakes in Spain yesterday. It appears that renewables were providing 60+% of the load and not enough of the base load from traditional sources. They had very little dispatchable load and the systems triggered an automated shedding of power. Within minutes, it was lights out.
Give me a coal plant any day over wind and solar.
As far as farming the “large, difficult, major distribution engineering projects out to OECs” statement, I can say first hand that most OEC’s (contractors) will have someone with less than a year or two of industry experience writing those jobs up. As an OEC, your main focus is maintaining a 100% billable rate. There is 0 incentive to get the jobs written quickly. I have yet to meet anyone down stream, work flow wise, that believe OEC’s turn out quality work.
It's all easy if you are a super genius, which the average AEP engineer is.
Yeah, customer design stuff is fairly easy, AEP does that all internally, they generally farm a lot of the large, difficult, major distribution engineering projects out to OECs. I guess it depends on perspective, someone I knew who was in the business for 30 some years did transmission, distribution, and substation engineering over the course of his career. He said that Distribution was the biggest pain in the butt and Transmission was the easiest in his opinion. All three are different and probably have their pros and cons
Distribution customer design “engineers” jobs can be done by most any one half way competent. They don’t deserve or need to make as much as any engineers doing very intricate work. I hate to say that but it’s true. Their job is valuable, just anyone could do it almost.
Internally at AEP, most of the Distribution Engineers fall under the title of Technician, they do design engineering(deciding the layout of a project and loading of poles, size of distribution transformers etc...)ranging from small customer projects to Major Projects that are miles long complex Reconductors. There is a job posting for it right now in Three Rivers, MI on Glassdoor. I'd say that posting is the simplest and easiest Technician role at AEP and it's a role for Customer Design projects. There are other Distribution Engineers who decide the scope of work and primary wire size of a project. They are mostly under the title of "Engineering Technologists" or "Engineer". There are “Engineers” involved in UG Networking. There maybe slight variations of this across OpCos
I don't know what distribution is doing but over in transmission (where the big dawgs are) we don't mix and match designers and engineers. They are completely different jobs with different responsibilities.
Quallifications dont matter at AEP. If you have a connection with the uppers, they will remove the qualification.
Well I know "Technicians" and "Designers" who do a better job than many "Engineers". Technically they are all engineers if they are doing engineering work like Design etc... If the high school guys are better than the "Engineer" at the job I don't see why not use them, most knowledge that is used is learned on the job anyway.
It's always the people with this weird chip on their shoulder about engineers who have the most misconceptions about what an engineer does. You seem to be making the case that our engineers are unnecessary and can be replaced by designers. I'd go one step further, why not replace the designers too and just hire bright high school graduates who took a CAD class? It's all just a job title anyways right? Let's see what the regulators think about that. You should email Bill about this great cost-saving idea you have. It would be a great way to slash salaries. I mean what is an "engineer" anyways? They aren't doing REAL engineering.
People here don't understand that an engineer in most circumstances is just a job title, unless you have a Professional Engineer license. Lot of "Engineer" positions can be done by "non-engineers". Now most people with "engineer" in their job title at AEP and its OECs have a degree in one of a few select engineering disciplines. Though there are people at AEP mostly in Distribution, who have engineering degrees whose job title is still one of Technician. But AEP and its OEC's employ people in the exact same engineering roles who don't have degrees in engineering and call them "Technicians" or "Designers". Those people make about 10k less than those who have a degree doing the exact same job. For example a person with the title "Distribution Designer" may make 80 thousand per year while a person with the title "Distribution Engineer" may make 90 thousand per year even though they do the exact same thing.
The real problem in attracting talent, what happened to the old talent? AEP has been around for 100 plus years, there should br a pipeline of talented employees.
The problem is, employees dint have a shared value in the company. Leaders do not value their employees and it shows. Every company requires a team, how that team feels about their employer matters in execution of mission, retention, and on boarding.
I've said from the start that Bill is a complete mo--n and that the hybrid schedule was an extremely valuable tool in AEP's toolbox to attract talent. He threw that away for no discernable reason.
Bill wants top shelf engineers to sit in Columbus traffic for 2 hours a day all for that sweet $61k a year salary.
Are these job listings relics from 2015? It’s almost laughable how outdated they seem—both in terms of requirements and compensation. With AEP touting its $54 billion capital plan and ambitions to modernize the energy grid, you’d expect their job postings to reflect the urgency and competitive edge needed to meet today’s standards.
Skilled engineers are incredibly sought after, yet these postings come across as disconnected and uninspired. If AEP genuinely wants to recruit skilled engineers, they need to rethink their strategy. These postings fail to communicate a forward-looking vision or competitive appeal—traits essential to recruit top talent.
It's clear that AEP’s leadership, particularly Bill, the CEO, is struggling to adapt to the realities of today’s energy market. His approach seems rooted in outdated thinking, which is reflected in these job listings. If he wants AEP to be at the forefront of grid modernization, aligning the salaries and requirements with current industry expectations should be a priority. Right now, the disconnect sends a message that the company—and its leadership—is not in tune with the demands of the modern workforce.
Saw that on LinkedIn today. Give them credit for trying.
We are seeking skilled engineers to join our team across various locations. AEP is committed to a $54 billion capital plan to meet increasing energy demand. Your expertise is essential to help us build the energy grid of the future.
📍 CENTRAL OHIO
Project Engineer: Bachelor's degree in engineering and six years of experience, or a master’s degree and four years of experience. Based in Columbus, OH. $96,110-124,940 https://lnkd.in/eJRgRuNg
Station Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in engineering and eight years of experience, or a master’s degree and six years of experience. Engineering work to support substation projects. Based in New Albany, OH. $112,869-146,730 https://lnkd.in/eprkDVqq
Geotechnical Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in engineering and eight years of experience, or a master’s degree and six years of experience. This role is focused on coal combustion residual compliance and supporting new projects. Based in Columbus, OH. $112,869-146,730 https://lnkd.in/epuHWftb
Environmental Engineer: Bachelor’s degree in engineering and eight years of experience, or a master’s degree and six years of experience. Based in Columbus, OH. $112,869-146,730 https://lnkd.in/en64_qhc
📍 OKLAHOMA
Engineer Associate: This is an entry level position for new graduates with a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering. Based in McAlester, OK, RELOCATION AVAILABLE. $61,647-77,057 https://lnkd.in/eT-cjiPy
📍 MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
Transmission Planning Short Circuit Modeling Engineer: Based in Columbus, OH, or Tulsa, OK. This role is open as a range between entry level Grade 5 ($61,647-92,468) and Grade 9 ($112,869-180,592) to be determined by experience. https://lnkd.in/eriGfdhT
Station Engineering Design Standards Engineer: Based in New Albany, OH, Roanoke, VA, or Tulsa, OK. This role will work with a team creating and maintaining substation standards supporting designs from 12kV through hashtag#765kV. $112,869-146,730 https://lnkd.in/ejWFFa56
You're right. In fact when you look at it like that, we might be making too much. I could definitely take less and do without a few things if it helps the shareholders.
$65,000 a year in the Columbus area is not serf status. Median income of an individual living in a typical Columbus suburb is like $60,0000. Median Household income is 100k. I agree that 65K is kind of low for new engineers in certain fields, but median pay nationwide for engineers of all types and experience is only 90K
That is awesome - good for you all and hope it works out!
Billiam and Bobert have been pretty open with Transmission that they were looking into salary adjustments for us. Of course they made it sound very wishy-washy and that they were "conducting market research" but it isn't a secret that engineers at AEP are underpaid at the lower levels. Earning $65k a year in the Columbus area is serf status, good luck ever owning a home on that.
That probably means they are going to bump up the salary of people that they can't afford to lose. In hopes that it will stop or slow the bleeding. Can't hurt to try.
Postings on LinkedIn daily for full time remote engineering positions are not helping AEP. I was contacted twice this week and I am not even looking. I left several months ago.
lol what does “mid cycle adjustment” mean?