CIA Reviews

I have been working at CIA full-time for more than a year

Pros – Stable pay, easily the most fascinating work content in the world, proximity to key decision-makers, relevance to substantive academic/extra-professional interests, emphasis on training and professional development.

Cons – Restrictive information environment, clear hierarchy of professional promotion and advancement, limited exposure to relevant extra-professional opportunities, due to security restrictions. Additionally, up-front expectation of long-term career commitment limits exposure/motivation to pursue professional opportunities in distinct sectors.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at CIA full-time

Pros – Travel, training,opportunity to see intelligence work from the inside

Cons – Limited opportunities for advancement for minorities, discrimination in recruitment, playing politics in order to get the cushy assignments,

Advice to Senior Management – Many employees are not performing to standards yet they are appointed team leads and supervisors. Higher level employees abuse their government credit cards and they get to keep their jobs while the lower level employees are forced to resigned instead of being offered financial counseling and being put on a repayment plan through payroll deduction. Its idiotic that you spend thousands of dollars to clear these employees yet instead of working with them you boot them out the door but keep your higher level employees who are not the ones actually doing the work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at CIA full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – great opportunities for travel; smart people

Cons – Everyone is overly suspicous about everything and everyone--even coworkers, friends and family. Disturbing. By the same token, very incestuous. encouraged to marry each other and bring in family members. Too much religious references in the work place, which is totally inappropriate.

Advice to Senior Management – Managers need more training, especially former Analysts who are not extroverts, nor are they naturally good working with people.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at CIA

Pros – At the CIA, you feel like you do work that actually makes a difference. They have a structured training program and hold different classes and seminars at least once a week, usually at the main headquarters. Because there are so many employees, there are groups and clubs within the organization for special interests such as Mandarin practice. Their salary is competitive and you are surrounded by hard-working, good people.

Cons – You have to lie to almost everyone about what you do for a living or how your day was at work. You cannot have friends from certain countries. If you will be staying in the same house/room with a non-US citizen, you must report it and have it approved in advanced.

Advice to Senior Management – Organize the recruitment stage better and communicate more with those you're recruiting. Develop more social programs for the interns. Hold more events in offices other than headquarters.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at CIA

Pros – Serving your country.
Relative job security.
Good stepping stone for international relations majors to other analyst jobs.
D.C. Area is a great place to work and network

Cons – Most intelligence is open source( newspapers) so it's not as glamorous as its made out to be
Office politics
No one will read what you compile

Advice to Senior Management – Improve intelligence sharing protocol.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at CIA

Pros – Meaningful mission.
Rewards if one works hard, does well, and is a little lucky.
Meeting phenomenal people who put mission and country before self and money.

Cons – Poor management at senior levels is not recognized and corrected.
Constant reorganization and movement of people.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the work force - ask questions of the work force.

I have been working at CIA

Pros – challenging, interesting, motivating work with chances to transfer internally over a career to try whatever you're interested in. lots of enthusiastic young people make for an invigorating team in most areas. management officially supports flexible schedules, professional growth through academic or personal research or language training, some chances to travel depending on your work. pay seems good at the starting levels for recent college/graduate school hires, but promises of rapid advancement are contingent on long hours and taking on high-profile but limited projects in many offices.

Cons – Hiring overload of the past decade means lots of talented young people fighting for management recognition to gain promotion to higher grades, limited number of experienced "senior" mentors to teach all the new people. Senior members of teams and offices have their pick of projects, travel, and high-level rotations. Management overwhelmed by their workload makes it a tough career path although offers better chances of promotion. Short-term they support balance and flexibility but long-term being in the office less hours or at "off" hours means less recognition, like most places.

Advice to Senior Management – More consistent recognition of staff's efforts, knowledge building, an long-term goals would help make them feel they're not hired only to get the job done today with little interest in next year.

I have been working at CIA

Pros – --Job security, especially in an uncertain economy
--Great benefits, including pension with employer contributions
--Good work/life balance
--Opportunities to do different jobs and kinds of work, including living and working overseas
--Training and travel opportunities
--Well-educated and smart colleagues

Cons – --Mediocre and unprofessional management
--Bureaucratic mindset among analysts and managers
--Obsession with "chasing the news" and little focus on real analysis
--Satisfied with mediocre written products
--Closed-minded and unwilling to consider new and different ideas
--A good ten years behind the times in utilizing new technologies and processes for the general workforce

Advice to Senior Management – --Stop rewarding and promoting managers who only care about looking good to their seniors and reward and promote managers who strive to develop their analysts
--Train analysts to be generalists first and specialists second; too many analysts are so focused on the trees that they don't see the forest, which probably will result in another big intelligence failure

I worked at CIA

Pros – Absolutely a sense of mission with some really motivated people. Some very cool jobs available. You feel your job is very important, and that you're really doing something that matters. Absolutely no chance of getting fired unless you do something horrible like racially or sexually harass someone. If you want a 30-year employers with many different types of jobs, CIA is great.

Cons – Many levels of management are almost uniformly awful. All levels of employees are constantly sent to BS training courses. Managers seem to spend half their time in management training courses which are clearly counter productive. Bureaucracy as expected of any federal government agency.

The absolute worst thing for me was that the best and the worst employees were treated exactly the same in many cases. Same salary, same job titles, same seniority. Need a way to weed out horrible employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Learn how to WEED OUT bad managers (and bad employees). Since nobody is ever, EVER fired, it seems as if the employees who suck at their jobs become managers. Upper management in my experience was mostly professional and competent. Team level and middle managers were very mixed--some good, some REALLY bad. Management is not the place for passive aggressive introverts with poor people skills.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at CIA

Pros – Stable job. Great sense of mission. Get to know some cool stuff. Some great opportunities to do exciting things. Stable salary increases with annual COLA.

Cons – Giant bureaucracy. Bad middle management. Career sometimes driven by external events (world affairs). Can miss opportunities to do cool stuff because of bureaucratic obstacles.

Advice to Senior Management – Promote people and dispense opportunities more on merit rather than time served to improve morale.