Pros

There are incredible opportunities for training and further education.
Great work-life balance with lots of vacation time
Job satisfaction and a good mission
Easily work a diverse set of projects in one employer for an entire career

Cons

The compensation (ie salary) is not competitive with the defense contractors
There tend to be some 'unengaged' employees that are just showing up every-day until they retire in a few years (say 5 to 10).
Much of the technical/hands-on work is actually performed by contractors
Many of the most talented folks tend to work for the contractors, so there are fewer mentors
Some tendency for micro-management
Lots of bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

Make the compensation comparable to the private sector and give enough latitude to grow your employees skills through practice, not just training.

Pros

Job security is excellent. Hours are good and flexible. Benefits are good. There are a lot of technical people available for collaboration.

Cons

I really didn't enjoy working at NSA. I never felt like I was doing important work and I felt like communication with management was very poor. Work at NSA is very steady and secure, but it's a dull. Nobody I worked with there seemed excited about what they were doing. You can also feel very isolated since there's very little about your work that you can discuss outside of NSA.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure that all your employee's projects are adequately managed with regular communication about progress.

Pros

Exciting work! You are protecting the nation which is very fulfilling.

Job security is excellent. Great health benefits, retirement options.

Lots of opportunities to attend conferences and other kinds of training.

Work/life balance is terrific, as well. You can work just about any kind of schedule you want, ranging from 8 days every 2 weeks to 10 days every 2 weeks. You are unlikely to ever work over 80 hours every 2 weeks. If you are in such a position, you will be compensated accordingly, but moving throughout the agency is easy so you can really decide what you want to take on.

If you want to climb the chain, it used to be that seniority got you ahead. Now it is more based on performance, but we will see how the pay bands end up working out.

Cons

Pay could be better - with the new pay banding system, it is possible that employees may be paid less than in the past, but they also might be paid more. There are still the same caps that existed before, though, which means industry should pay you more.

Also, the educational opportunities are becoming more limited. There used to be a program that you could take a year off to study for a graduate degree which is now eliminated. There is still a program that allows you to spend half your time studying, though.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop contracting out all the work - more people would stay if they could get higher salaries here rather than having to go elsewhere.

Pros

1. Opportunities to broaden career by working in other offices.
2. Employees on a "technical track" are financially compensated on par, if not above, managers.

Cons

1. Middle management is sometimes pulled from the technical ranks but not effectively trained on how to manage their employees.
2. Speaking of management, some offices are still operating from a paradigm suited to an older generation, which is at odds with recent, younger college graduates.

Advice to Senior Management

1. Hire college graduates and experienced individuals with technical management backgrounds. Don't worry! They'll learn the government acronyms and technical matters.
2. Improve recruiting efforts to attract, but more importantly, to retain college graduates.

Pros

The flexibility in your work schedule was insane. Everyone enjoys having a good leave program and enjoys using it. The work is also something you could never do anywhere else. It is extremely exciting work and you do feel like the work you do matters.

Cons

It's a big beurocratic mess. As such, promotions can be a nightmare. In my instance, the person who was deciding if I should get a promotion was my bosses bosses boss and they were managing 200+ people and hardly knew my name. Salary also doesn't move up very fast. Although, if you can hold put until you get to the upper ranks; you will have a good salary for your level of responsibility.

Advice to Senior Management

The organization must become more flexible. Pay banding is a good start, but there also needs to be a way for employees who do not perform to be punished. I think the biggest complaint I heard was people frustrated with coworkers who didn't do anything, made more work for everyone else, and were never reprimanded.