In the last decade, SSA went from one of the best Federal agencies in government to a bottomfeeder. Hiring policies were changes to be facially equitable but really just enabled management to put acquaintances a few cases short of a caseload into Federal jobs. Workloads are rigged in such a way that you can be a complete moron and still get a five on your PACs. Just tell management you have a mental problem that prohibits you from working and they will find someone else in the office they don't like to do all of your hard cases or those that don't yield easy, good stats. Branch chiefs do nothing other than rig. They don't answer texts about employees needing to call out for hours - if. They also don't deeply evaluate work - just slap some numbers into a canned narrative. SES and office management are bottomfeeders who feel the need to overshare and tell you at all-hands meetings that they grew up in a car or are dying from genetic diseases. If you went to college, you probably want to hide that you have a degree. Being learned is not cool at SSA anymore. Agency gets weird self esteem boost from making the worst out of the worst. They currently have the SES touring talking about how they lead with compassion - only to go into an office and laugh about treating employees like crap. Because the component has such a bad reputation and can't hire qualified people, current employees are harassed into not taking the time that they need - no matter how long they have been with the agency. If you are hard up for work, the best DQB offices are in San Francisco (Oakland) and Dallas. Avoid the offices in Seattle, Boston, and anything else on the East Coast - inexperienced, abusive management in all of these cities. Boston and Atlanta are real zoos these days.
