Pros
The Federal Government has a very generous benefit package and a very generous leave policy. The pay scale is good for the difficulty level of the job.
Cons
The bureaucracy is so many levels deep that many decisions are made at the upper levels of management that are actually detrimental to providing the actual services at the local office level, making the job harder rather than easier for those actually providing the services. The computer systems are way out of date and patched up when they should have been completely replaced years ago. While the training used to be decent, it has continually gone downhill over the past 20 years to the point that it is currently horrible and totally inadequate. Management at all levels is poor. Too many people have been promoted for political reasons and are not competent in their present positions. The agency is currently operating under hiring authority restrictions that make no sense. They only hire for political reasons and do not even consider applicants who are fully capable of doing the work. As a result, the majority of the people hired in the past ten years are less than fully qualified to do the jobs for which they were hired. Put that together with the fact that the agency is loathe to fire any but the most grossly incompetent and you have a generally poor level of public service and an environment where the capable employees are forced to do more than their fair share of the work.