Poor workplace environment with low pay and rigid policies - Anonymous employee Sound Transit Employee Review

So many. 1/ RTO but there is not enough office space (leaders admit that they estimate new leases will run over a million a year conservatively to bring people back in, and the initial phase of set up will be something like 12 million). There are no offices except for a select few positions, so everyone, including those who are working with confidential information like HR, finance, contract procurements as examples, are seated in half open cubicle bullpins where the noise of multiple Teams meetings and people just hanging out being social at their teammates cube makes it a highly distracting environment where it is hard to focus or be productive. There are not nearly enough spaces for every employee, and they do not have a plan. The RTO policy is rigid and does not have flexibility. When pressed as to why RTO we were literally told that "as County employees we have an obligation and responsibility to revitalize downtown and support small businesses with our dollars" by shopping & eating before, during, and after work. That is so insultingly tone deaf I instantly lost respect for leadership. Executive Leadership doesn't give two cents that this is upending peoples lives and costing additional money in costs for commuting, not everyone can take light rail like they push you to especially if you have young kids or are not near light rail, plus additional childcare costs, gas, etc. while they themselves are NOT in the office following their own mandate. They don't care about the fact that a high % of employees now have an hour plus commute each way and how that affects their well being or health. They don't care that the pay does not keep up with inflation or COL and that this will be an added cost burden for many. They don't care that employees are sitting in open half wall cubes where the noise and the distraction tanks productivity because they as Exec's all have offices - which they don't come in to. But hey, the collaboration and culture are important, and they are working on finding more "collaboration" space, which are currently large tables a la cafeteria style that they want us all to sit at to do our very confidential work. 2/ RTO is mandated days, no choosing what works best for you or your department. And while they have mandated us all in the office ST does not even provide basic coffee, tea, creamer or sugar. You either have to bring in all of your own coffee/tea set up, or go and "support small businesses" to buy overpriced beverages. When I asked about why no coffee, I was told that it would be considered a "mis-use of tax payer funds." Look up Dow's contracted bonus schedule and then ask how providing coffee for your employees is a waste of tax funds. 3/ Salaries are not as high as people think or competitive with the private sector despite leaders insisting ST is competitive. I have 20 years experience and was offered what I was making five years ago. They refused to negotiate and they lowball their own salary bands. 4/ There is no social security at ST as they are part of the Railroad so no SS taxes taken out of your paycheck, which means your SS bank does not grow while you are employed here, which will effect your monthly retirement payment. They do mandate and automatically take out 10% of your pay for a 401a. Currently, this is a very bad thing, as the money that has been taken out of my check for the mandated 401a has already lost value due to the current market. They do "match" 12% to the fund, but their portion is on a vesting schedule and to get the full 100 of matching funds, you need to be here for a full four years (meaning you are not technically fully vested until you've completed your full 4th year, aka your 5th year anniversary date). 5/ The Performance Evaluations are stack ranked with leaders being told that they have so many slots for each rating. So a team could have 3 exceptional employees but may have only one exceptional allocation. Calibration meetings are with every head of the department within your division, so your ranking will be a collective discussion and will be evaluated by leaders who you may not have interaction with within the scope of your work. It's very Amazon / Microsoft coded. Your merit increase will be tied to your ranking. All new employees the first year get an automatic "developing" ranking, regardless of how well you do, so the stingy raises will be even lower for you, because merit is tied to ranking. Additionally, you could be an outstanding employee past your first year, but because of stack ranking slots, will most likely get rated "satisfactory", which is the standard rating for 80% of employees by design. How this motivates and encourages employees is beyond me. There is no COL increase and merit is not tied to inflation in any way. You will not grow your salary in any meaningful way here despite how well you perform or deliver. 7/ Career progression is pretty non existent. 8/ They don't disclose during any part of the interview process or offer that you are required to work "Ambassador" shifts on light rail. Every employee despite position, because they don't have enough Ambassadors and instead of hiring, they make people fill those shifts and then tie it to your merit. They also aggressively push during orientation that as a County employee you should be out in the community championing ST and sharing how great ST is. "We encourage you to talk to and share with your community all the great things Sound Transit is doing." 9/ This is an extrodinarily meeting heavy organization. Everything is a meeting. Things that should be an email or a Teams chat is a meeting. This is explained away as because ST is a govt agency everything is subject to information requests, so email and Teams chats are discouraged. Fun fact that legal lets you know during orientation, if you use your personal laptop or phone for anything business related, even downloading Teams to your cell to stay connected on the go or if you even take a call your cell, your personal devices can be swept up and subject to information requests. So before you think about doing anything work related on a personal device, think about if you would want to hand over that personal device in discovery. According to Legal this includes if you forward something to or from your personal email because we are a govt agency.