Whoooooooo boy is this organization over-managed and under-led.
Pros
Dedicated staff. Perfect mission. Good variety of work.
Cons
I could write an entire novel on the negatives of working for this agency and the federal government as a whole, but I'll keep it short. The key points are 1) There is very little accountability for bad local office management. You may end up working for truly terrible bosses. 2) There is a lot of lip service paid to the importance of work-life balance, but very little action to ensure offices are staffed well enough to actually support this. 3) Mobility is lacking. You may end up in a location you'd prefer not to be for 5-10 years. 4) Conflicting guidance from different levels of management is common. 5) Budget woes cause important training to suffer. 6) Equipment, network, and facilities issues are common and often slow to be resolved. 7) The union has limited power to affect change, and limited power to enforce MOUs. 8) Communication is lacking from the top to the field. 9) "Leadership" programs are often exclusionary and can become "in groups". 10) Your promotion potential is much higher if you're a clean-cut, agreeable Eddie Hascal type that enjoys sucking up. 11) There's not a lot of consistency from office to office and region to region. This is true of both internal rules and regulations as well as external products and services. Employees will joke about "122 weather services" because that's often what it feels like.
