Social Security Administration reviews

Terrible pay, terrible dental/vision coverage. Other office teams were very supportive of helping newbies, but most were pretty jaded about our jobs/clients. It's a rough job that requires being jaded. Management was ultimately why I left. Hours wasted by my direct manager trapping me with complaints about her personal life, chronic over sharing to the point of sexual harassment. Constantly complained about the rest of the management team, criticizing their *personal* life. Any private conversations with her (ie, giving my manager info on what's up in my life) were turned to her and how crappy her life has been and how she's riding above it all AND SO CAN YOU. She had illusions of being a warm, empathetic personal therapist for her team. She's not. She spent my goal setting meeting taking about herself and her career path and how much she gave up for this job (to brush off my concerns about the pay scale). Long story short, I got another government job before I ended up diving into a Starbucks barista career. Anything to get out.

Rote work with few opportunities to advance other than into management. It’s difficult to stay engaged when not working toward something. Accounting for every minute of the day through signing in and out and leave requests for any time away is construed as infantilizing by some. For some positions, above-and-beyond work is rewarded very minimally, if at all. More typically, the hardest workers are given more work to cover for open positions or underperforming employees. Those with excellent performance reviews are given a nominal bonus a little over 1% of salary. Pay for attorneys is low compared to private sector and it is not keeping up with inflation. Many more employees are retiring or resigning than in prior years. If one is interested in career advancement and is not politically oriented or interested in management, they should consider using the time with SSA as a career step and move on to another agency or private sector to advance.