Pros
Decent pension if you maintain employment for 20 years or more. Coworkers are generally very respectful and are willing to work with you. Good place to learn on the job as the electric utility is always on the cutting edge of technology.
Cons
management and city council has taken an anti-employee stance on all issues relating to employee compensation and benefits. They have made it well known during council meetings and workshops that the employees are not taken into consideration when making big decisions. Some of the council members comments during recent council meetings prove they have no idea how to run a utility that depends on having a qualified technical staff (hiring anyone cheap because of the economys current state is a disastrous way to run a electric utility) Benefits are being slashed regularly. Compensation is well below industry standards especially in the electric department. As a result the talented employees are routinely being poached by competitors like GE and other municipalities like City of St. Charles and Batavia. In the past year and a half there has been a massive turnover of the best engineers leaving voluntarily to competitors as Naperville's new policies have angered the entire staff. Employee turnover has led to no defined roles as the remaining staff is constantly picking up the slack for a departed employee from a totally different area of expertise (employee is often not trained on new duties, again hard to do with engineers as they take several years to be trained properly). Morale is the worst i have seen in my many years working for several different companies in different industries. Very few growth opportunities, the most qualified person is not always the one promoted. Stagnant salaries, one 2% raise in three years for employees who are rated well during evaluations is an obscenely bad policy for retaining a qualified technical staff. As a result employees are joining the city and leaving for the next best offer. All training budgets have been cut so employees do not have the opportunities to advance their skill set. Job security is no longer a guarantee as layoffs in recent years have rattled even the most secure and tenured staff members.