Great Mission but Employees and Their Talents Lost Among Risk-Adverse Bureaucracy
Pros
There are few missions that are more noble than ensuring the health and safety of your nation's food supply and agricultural infrastructure. At APHIS, you face many challenges and opportunities to make a difference by protecting production agriculture. Benefits are good: health care, paid leave and holidays. There are many talented and exceptional employees at APHIS who completely shatter the widely-held notion that government employees are ineffective or substandard.
Cons
•Bureaucratic, slow to make and implement decisions •Risk-adverse management •"Old boys club" •Agency-wide nepotism •Lack of opportunities for career advancement outside the Beltway •Lack of diversity among management •Ivory tower management and headquarters structure that lacks a clear understanding of the on-the- ground challenges of farmers and employees •Decisions which should be grounded purely on science are often governed by politics. •Management consistently ignores the old cliche "If it ain't broken, don't fix it." If something works, you can be sure that someone will waste a lot of time and resources to develop a new improved mousetrap that, once rolled out in two years, won't work at all.
