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Social Security Administration

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Social Security Administration reviews

3.0

36% would recommend to a friend

(2,784 total reviews)

Carolyn W. Colvin

34% approve of CEO

23% positive business outlook

Social Security Administration has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 2,784 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The Social Security Administration employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Government & Public Administration industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
2.0
Jan 4, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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 The computer systems are way out of date and patched up when they should have been completely replaced years ago.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.

1.0
Oct 7, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

benefits leave overtime overtime overtime

Cons

managers are VERY passive agressive. They have high expectations for production but not enough time to do quality work. Workload is boring and constant. Management is not personable and the work environment is stressful. Training is horrible but they expect you to work accurately. Everyone processes everything differently. Teamwork is basically non-existent. Nobody is friendly and the work culture will cause your mental health to decline.

1.0
Aug 20, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Everyone says telework but I wasn’t a fan. I left so insufficient pros.

Cons

Not for serious careers, especially on the disability side. The disability program has a much lower career ceiling because the agency treats the former field office workers like they can oversee both the retirement and disability programs. Disability people can’t manage retirement workloads though. Bad work environment with lazy managers, no director to oversee them and a lot of crazy workers who need medication to function. No one really took the work seriously except for Patrick (good man!) Just because you’re hired to do quality assurance work doesn’t mean you will. Was essentially demoted to developing and determining cases when they didn’t have enough people to do it. The decision wasn’t based on the quality of my work but purely on seniority with newer people reassigned to the DDS case management work. Office is management heavy. There were 3 branch chiefs, multiple “program quality analysts” (pleasant but often clueless souls for GS-13s), and quite a few program leaders. Other DQBs with more employees operate well with less supervisors and managers. Not a good sign when you need so much for one location. The managers were a mess – didn’t really manage and generally showed no concern other than for themselves when it came to most employees. Managers often decide to distribute overtime funds among themselves instead of offering OT hours to employees. Often got the feeling that they were at home on telework days playing with themselves most of the time instead of working. My annual evals were always generic and seemed like 90 seconds of consideration went into writing them. Lacked good critiques of my work with solid pros and cons. They were borderline fictitious due to the low effort put into analyzing my work and stats. The effort was likely consistent with their intellect levels. Annual reviews aside, zero feedback from management most of the time because that would mean they would actually have to manage – aka work and something they avoid. Management looked the other way when certain people committed very serious infractions and nailed others to the cross for small ones. You can stay under the radar and maintain a meager paycheck but this is not an office where hard work will actually get you noticed, awarded or promoted.

Viewing 112 - 114 of 2,784 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,928 Social Security Administration reviews submitted anonymously by Social Security Administration employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Social Security Administration is right for you.