An Agency in Freefall - Still Searching for Bottom
Pros
Good pay, good benefits, flexible schedule, interesting work / mission.
Cons
Management at this agency is embarassingly poor. There is no consistent direction or even consistent communication amongst management, let alone from management to the employees. The performance rating system has been perverted by nepotism, complete laziness and disconnect from the actual work being performed, and fear of EEO complaints. Internally, the agency is unable to make simple business decisions and is currently paralyzed to the point of absurdity. This is both due to the neutering of the regions by Central Office (DC), and due to the fact that top regional management demonstrates zero leadership - and often advanced just due to their proclivity for brown-nosing and covering their behinds. As such, decisions are avoided as management operates out of fear of being blamed for anything whatsoever. With everyone hiding their heads in the sand, seemingly simple issues often linger and fester until they become full-blown crises, and then managers attempt to punt both the crisis and the blame internally amongst the various divisions. It'd be comical if it weren't so sad. The culture is rotten and morale is abysmal. Employees and managers alike telework excessively to avoid being in the office, but often abuse the system and treat telework days as paid time-off. Workload is distributed unevenly. Hard-workers are rewarded with more work and little support, while lazy, dis-engaged workers are rewarded with high performance ratings in a perverse effort to manage their levels of discontent. Re-organizations occur on a seemingly seasonal basis, which are as effective as re-organizing the deck chairs on the Titanic. Those who know the least about the actual business of managing public real estate, buildings, and construction projects are promoted the fastest. For every employee actually doing work, negotiating a lease, managing a project, or managing a building, there are two-to-three higher-level know-nothings and made-up bureaucratic positions - like Regional Account Manager, Workplace Plus Executive, Sustainability Officer - standing on the employees' shoulders and burdening them with reporting requirements, jargon, or whatever current initiative the ADHD Central Office rolls out. The IT is abysmal; information is disjointed and organized into dozens of archaic portals which are often down, or so esoteric as to be useless for anyone who didn't learn how to use them when they were first introduced - in the mid 1990s. If information isn't in the portal, it's in a shared network drive, or a Google Drive, or on Chatter, or on whatever other boondoogle system someone in Central Office signed GSA up for so that they can sit on that company's board upon retiring from civil service. The procurement system and budget system are still completely non-compatible, and countless (and I mean countless) hours are spent rectifying penny differences between the two ancient systems. Taxpayers deserve better.
