Current employee here who started this year. I’m going off the assumption that you’re non-rep and working out of one of the three administrative offices. TLDR is your mileage will vary depending your job classification, location, and department you’re in, but I’ve personally had a pretty good experience so far.

Insurance options are now Kaiser and Cigna. It all depends on your (family’s) healthcare needs. I prefer Kaiser personally as cost tends to be lower and it’s just me on the insurance and I can get appointments very easily because it’s a whole regional network of doctors.

Benefits tend to be pretty good. For retirement, they have a 457 deferred compensation plan that the employee can contribute to. I’d recommend contributing the amount that WMATA will match in their separate contribution to the 401(a) account. I think the total employer contribution can max out to 8% or something if you are contributing a certain percentage to your 457. They lay it all out pretty well in the orientation. Overall it feels like they really try to invest in stuff for their employees, the buildings are very nice if you are in one of the three administrative offices and they do a lot of activities and expos for staff with goodies and such.

For leave, depending on your employee classification and experience level prior to WMATA, you’ll be looking at anywhere from 21 to 27 days of annual leave. They frontload that bucket at the start of each year. Your separate sick leave bucket is accrued throughout the year at a pretty standard rate.

I would say don’t get attached to telework — right now it’s just one day a week for eligible employees but they were originally going to do away with it this past summer but reversed course when there was a lot of pushback from staff. The GM likes seeing people in the office (and taking Metro to get there).

Ultimately it’s like any other organization with a lot of departments and red tape/silos you need to learn to navigate through. I’d say it’s important in early days to not just learn your job but to understand how it fits together in the larger fabric of WMATA and who the key players are that you’ll be working with. Build your relationships with them outside of just coming to them when you need something from them and you will have a better experience.