Department of National Defense Reviews

Pros

Fast paced work environment, great benefits, good people, interesting work, high-level exposure, meaningful work that provides value to Canadians, "sexy"

Cons

Pay is OK, long hours, going through cuts is difficult on moral

Pros

Minimal amount of work-related stress
Lots of travel, including international
Great pay, awesome benefits and overtime for every extra 15 minutes worked (I know, it's a union leader's dream come true)

Cons

I actually feel as though the taxpayer isn't receiving a valuable service for the investment.
Rhetoric is the order of the day.
Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Let's have a meeting to organize our meetings for next week.
Life as a Dilbert cartoon.
Promotion seems based on the number of years you've shown up for work, regardless of the quality of that work.

Advice to Senior Management

Let's quit talking about doing work and actually DO some.

Pros

Excellent leadership opporutnities. Excellent pay and benefits. An opporunity to serve others. Great people (reliable, largely drug-free. action-oriented.)

Cons

Challenging family life (at times.) Bureaucracy. Needing to move where your services are required, which can be difficult on families. Time away from home, especially when posted to field units.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to promote charismatic officers to senior leadership appointments. Soldiers want to be proud of their leaders, and want them to be people they would follow into battle, as opposed to seeing them as simple bureaucrats.

Pros

Higher than average salary, more time off (4+ weeks) than private companies, and once you are in you are in for life if you want to stay.

Cons

Postings. Many postings are made with your input, but are largely based on seniority and whether or not your boss wants to keep you/fight for you.
Courses. Some courses can be very difficult, you may spend a year waiting to be loaded on a course only to fail the course and then wait another year to retake it or have to remuster. But at least this makes sure there is a minimum requirement to get in certain trades.

Pros

The projects are fairly open ended and scientists are somewhat free to explore tangents if they feel like it. Everyone there was very friendly and encouraging. The campus had outdoor playing fields, a gym, showers, etc. which was a nice bonus. Supervisors were more than interested in getting the interns involved with work related travel.

Cons

Despite the best efforts of very hard working and smart scientists, the projects that were selected for further study were not usually high-risk, high-reward type endeavors, which tend to produce the most cutting-edge, exciting science. Military captains were given more authority than experienced scientists on many decisions. This resulted in many scientists being disgruntled and far less productive than they would be if they were free to choose their own projects.

Advice to Senior Management

Give scientists more authority to decide the nature and goals of their research projects.

Pros

good benefits, vacation and salary

Cons

no overtime and no job advancement

Advice to Senior Management

better wages

Pros

Flexible work schedule. Able to telework. Good for family life style.

Cons

Arrogant management style. Lack of transparency in promotion.

Advice to Senior Management

Build a better communcation channel, promotion transparency.

Pros

benefits and compensation
ability to advance
education/training
new experiences
unique work environment

Cons

inflexible hours/dates
relocation is frequent

Advice to Senior Management

mission, men, equipment, self