Pros
The schedule is the most flexible I’ve ever had. The shifts are 12 hours, so you work 3-5 days (or nights) in a row and get the next 3-5 off. The best part is, you get to pick the shifts. For example, John and Jane both work nights at the west coast office. John and Jane divide up all the night shifts for the month. As long as weekend nights (Friday/Saturday nights are weekend rate) and holiday nights are relatively evenly distributed, management doesn’t care who is working. So if you want to go on a vacation, you can theoretically get 5 days off without using any vacation time. The pay is pretty decent for a recent graduate. If you take overtime shifts, you can really put up some good numbers. The overtime rate can kill you in taxes if you’re not careful, so you have to figure out exactly what the “sweet spot” is. If you’re a news junkie, it can be interesting work that can lead to a great opportunity down the road.
Cons
The feedback system. Your quarterly bonus is calculated, in large part, by a fundamentally flawed points system. If you make a spelling error during a busy time because you needed to crank out 5 or 6 alerts, you get a few points deducted. If a customer complains about an alert that went out late because you were triaging incidents and you want to proofread before you send, you get points deducted. If a manager decides to randomly pull an incident that nobody wrote in about, and you forgot a period, you get points deduced. All of this adds up and you lose money. It’s a terrible system that encourages laziness, because eventually you realize that by only reporting the minimum required details of an incident, you limit your chances of making a mistake. On top of that, there's no way to earn extra points for positive feedback for going above and beyond. That's not how an incentive program works. A workforce isn't going to be successful if they are constantly working in fear of the customer, they have to be motivated to go the extra mile for the customer. Some of the managers I worked with had no experience working in a crisis environment. When it was busy, or a major incident happened, they would be unable to make decisions or delegate responsibilities effectively. They also don’t make any attempt to predict busy times, despite having easily available data on historically busy days. For example. the 4th of July is busy every year, why not add extra staffing that night? It can be incredibly stressful during busy periods when managers don't have any idea what to do. As I mentioned, the pay is good, but the system they use is confusing. You work a 12-hour shift. On a weekday, the first 8 hours are straight time, the last for are paid at a 1.5x rate as overtime. On weekends, the first 8 hours are 1.5x rate, the last four are double time. This sounds really great when you apply, but in reality two things happen: 1. You get absolutely crushed in taxes. 2. When you go to another job (particularly a government job, which most people who would work at a place like NIMC would want), they sometimes won’t factor in “overtime” pay, even though it was part of your regularly scheduled tour of duty. If they simply raised the hourly rate and only gave overtime for weekends/holidays, it would be better for everyone in the long run. International analyst is viewed as a “promotion”, despite the fact that international and domestic are really two separate skill sets. As a result, advancement opportunities for someone who only wants to work domestic are limited. The “support” analyst position is really just the secondary international analyst, so if you don’t enjoy copying and pasting foreign news articles into Google Translate for 12 hours at a time, that position isn't very interesting either. Also, corporate makes it as difficult as possible to get the tuition reimbursements.