Pros
Benefits, salary, variety of opportunities. Caltrans offers employees a vary generous plate of benefits, including a great retirement package, to both the employee and the employee's family through the CALPERS retirement program (2% at 55 formula for Caltrans employees), one of the best in the country for public agencies. This alone makes working for Caltrans an advantage. When the total benefit package is added up in dollars, the private sector cannot compare. Caltrans salaries for engineering and surveying professionals are now pretty comparable to most public agencies and even private engineering firms; however, many private firms offer salary packages that are higher and/or include annual bonuses which Caltrans does not offer. The typical benefit package of a private engineering firm, however, does not have anywhere near the total value of the package offered by Caltrans. Caltrans also offers engineers and surveyors a variety of different career area where they can work. Caltrans has a rotation program for junior engineers so that they can get early experience in a variety of different areas over a two year period, such as design, construction, hydraulics, traffic, materials lab, etc.
Cons
Difficult to advance up career latter, size of organization causes difficulties, difficult to learn new skills and keep up with current trends in the industry. Promoting in Caltrans, depending upon the function and location, can be rather competititve. Often written tests and promotion ranking lists are required. Sometimes inner politics gets in the way of the selection of candidates (i.e., the best candidate does not always receive the promotion). Because Caltrans has over 13,000 employees, many times it is very difficult for needed changes to be made in the organization. The large size of the organization also makes it easy for "dead weight", or employees who do minimum work contribution, to hide and essentially "get away doing little or no work." It is hard to fire employees after the probation period because of the Civil Service rules. Obtaining salary raises can be difficult for some classifications that do not have as strong of a union. Also, it is rather easy for an employee to get caught in a niche or sole skill/function unless they make an active effort to transfer to other job functions (be a specialist in one particular field or function with no real overall general experience). This can make it difficult to qualify for jobs outside of the organziation, where more general knowledge and skills sets are often desired of candidates.