FLORIDA POWER & LIGHT

"We sell electricity and related services."
— Dennis Klinger, VP and CIO

• IBM mainframes • COBOL, DB2, PowerBuilder •
• Electric utility • Large shop •
 

With 3.5 million customers, Florida Power & Light is the third largest publicly-held utility company in the United States. Six percent of the company's customer base for electric power is commercial; four percent is industrial; the remainder is residential.

Founded in 1925, Florida Power & Light has more than 11,000 employees, including 2,500 at corporate headquarters in Juno Beach, Florida. Revenues in 1995 were $5.592 billion. Florida Power & Light won the Deming Prize in 1989 for total quality management.
 

Technology

Florida Power & Light has two IBM mainframes, which are used for accounting and trouble call management, among other core business functions. Applications are in CICS and DB2 under MVS. Three-hundred-fifty HP, AT&T, and IBM UNIX-based servers run in a Novell Netware environment, with 9,000 primarily Windows-based HP Pentium and 486 workstations. Software development is in Smalltalk, PowerBuilder, Visual Basic, and C using Sybase and Gemstone database management systems. Florida Power & Light has an 800-mile fiber-optic network backbone for its Wide Area Network (WAN) and a number of special-purpose telemetry devices to measure and balance the flow of electricity.

Job titles for the company's 700 computer professionals include Associate Systems Integrator, Systems Integrator II and I, Senior Systems Integrator, Systems Integration Specialist, Project Manager/Supervisor, Systems Manager, Director, and Vice President. Recent projects included reengineering the customer billing systems to include metered services (written in COBOL and DB2 on the IBM mainframe), implementation of a purchasing package for the supply chain (written in Smalltalk using Gemstone on distributed HPs), development of mobile applications to aid the sales force in performing energy audits at customer locations, and development of a geofacilities application that maps the company's electrical facilities throughout Florida.

Culture

Computer professionals work in cubicles and in semiprivate and private offices in a nonsmoking environment. Travel is limited to occasional trips within the company's service area and to educational seminars. Office dress is business casual for most professionals, business formal for managers, and casual Fridays for all. A modified flex-time arrangement is available, with standard office hours from 8 AM to 5 PM. A 40-hour to 45-hour workweek is common. Generally, overtime is not paid. Florida Power & Light offers its computer professionals the opportunity to work in a distributed computer environment with state-of-the-art network communications and in a geographic location of year-round subtropical weather with close proximity to beach activities.

Florida Power & Light offers nine fixed and two floating holidays and a vacation schedule that depends on length of service and includes the option of buying vacation days. The company pays for medical insurance and offers dental, life, and disability insurance through a flexible benefits plan. Pretax health care and dependent care accounts are available, as well as a group legal plan. There is a company-paid retirement plan, and a company-matched employee savings plan. Additional benefits include a wellness program, company fitness centers, prenatal education, and injury prevention classes.

Over the past four years, Florida Power & Light has had layoffs as part of the utility industry's preparation for deregulation.

Candidates

Candidates should have good academic credentials in business or technical disciplines, be able to communicate well, be good team players, and be enthusiastic about technology. Current staff members have an average of 10 to 15 years of experience. Education ranges from high school to graduate degrees, with an average of a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, MIS/CIS, or Computer Science. Florida Power & Light hires approximately 15 entry-level computer professionals annually. Candidates should have a balance of technical and business courses, good written and verbal communication skills, and a minimum of a Bachelor's degree in CIS, MIS, or Computer Science.

Contact

Letter, fax, or phone calls are accepted:

Mr. R. Allen Horner
Supervisor, Resource Planning
Information Management
Florida Power & Light Company
9250 West Flagler Street
Miami, Florida 33174
Phone: (305) 552-3101
Fax: (305) 552-3259
www.fpl.com

Copyright 1998. Carol L. Covin. Covin’s Southeast Computer Job Guide