National Park Service reviews

Too much to summarize, but many of their policies are outdated and needlessly authoritative. There is a culture of permanents abusing seasonal staff (because they were at one time in the same position). I never felt the propagandistic loyalty to the institution so why would I stay for low pay, micro-management, bad working conditions in fire-ridden California, all to cater to hordes of brainless tourists who storm National Parks in search of stickers for their sprinter vans. Obviously there are some positive experiences, you meet a lot of cool people, but more importantly there is the dissonance of working for an institution that is so focused on tourism and “customer satisfaction” they are unable to decolonize their history or react in a meaningful way to climate change. Plus, they know every year there will be thousands more people on USA Jobs who want to be “Rangers” so they don’t care about your happiness or satisfaction. All the permanents at my second park were leaving. Follow their lead...

Cult like zeal from some employees bordering on devotion to the NPS. Supervisors are administrative paper pushers and know little to nothing outside of their field. The NPS is under funded, so get ready to do at least two to three peoples worth of work for no added pay or benefit. The federal government seems to rate you based on how lazy you are, if you're extra lazy get ready for a management position so you can push your job duties down onto your subordinates. Micromanagement from supervisors to all sub-fields, the problem is that the micromanagement if anything gets in your way because some former admin clerk is trying to manage HR, or IT and has little to no understanding on prioritizing tasks. You often run into an issue where you might have a decade experience in your job, and some dude who barely knows how to change the resolution on his monitor is trying to task you with what he deems important for the IT realm.