Social Security Administration Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – Job security- it's considered an essential position- in case of a govt shutdown, you will still get paid, though it may get delayed.

Cons – Terrible training program, unprofessional, deceiving in the hiring process as far as what expectations and responsibilites of job are, the moral is very low, employees are "stuck" at SSA.

Advice to Senior Management – Restructure the entire classroom training, hire more professional workers, fire or retire workers who don't produce.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – 12 paid Holidays
12 sick days

Cons – Very high stress
No respect or concern from upper management
Poor review methods
Extremely high attrition rate

Advice to Senior Management – Make the environment better for examiners. Stage cases.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – Flexible schedule to start anytime between 7:00am to 9:00am and leave 8 hours later
Lots of annual leave and unlimited sick leave
Great health and retirement benefits
Commuter benefits

Cons – All new hires complete a training class before they start taking disability claims from the public. After they leave the training class, they are left to figure out how to do things on their own without timely feedback, which results in mistakes. The management, mentors and colleagues always say they are too busy to help the trainees. The colleagues first point out mistakes made by the trainees to the management. The management tells the trainees their quality of work is poor without providing the resources to do the job well. It is a very negative work environment for new hires.

Advice to Senior Management – Please show more compassion towards the new hires and do more to help them succeed. You should be providing both negative and positive feedback to help the new hires instead of just focusing on the negatives. If you keep doing this, you will lose the new employees and the more senior employees will retire leaves no one left working in the office anymore.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – The money and leave, provided they let you use the leave.

Cons – Some jobs are dead ends like teleservice reps. Management is usually poorly trained and afraid of their higher ups. Unfortunately where I am is controlled by vindictive female management. As a woman I am dissappointed in how they undermine and discredit those who offer opinions and new ideas.

Advice to Senior Management – Take advantage of available training. Accept new ideas. Treat employees as valued members of the team rather than adversaries.

Former Employee – worked at Social Security Administration

Pros – Fair amount of sick and vacation leave annually

Cons – Rewards based on relationships with management, not merit.
Management is completely incompetent with over-inflated egos stemming from the prestige of working at the least prestigious government agency in the country.
Unreasonable amount of control freaks who request that you obtain permission for the most minimal requests. Co-workers joked that they may need to ask is it okay to use the bathroom.
The experience gained here is not marketable. Unless you want to work with SSA your entire life, other employees will frown at your lack of experience.
If you are an attorney, definitely steer clear of SSA. SSA claims that you will write legal "documents" but in reality, a monkey could be trained to prepare an SSA brief.

Advice to Senior Management – Be aware and actually concerned with the extremely low morale.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – Benefits are compensated time in the form of Credit Hours, Annual Leave, Sick Leave, Comp Leave, Overtime. 401K. Public Transportation subsidies.

Cons – Suggestions for ways to improve office & procedures are ignored. Promotion potential hits a ceiling unless the individual is willing to move across the country. Knowledge & information is kept at management level and filtered down as seen appropriate by managers. In many instances the individual must protect themselves from the threat of senior officials attempting to soil employees reputation. Unrealistic goals making fewer employees maintain high output performing multiple employees jobs "as management sees fit." Thousands of hours in overtime, yet it is handed out sparingly on a case by case basis. Multitude of LAZY employees looking to retire that because of managment's lack of discipline other individuals have to carry the workload; i.e. the producing employees are rewarded with MORE work while the non-producing employees are rewarded with less work and less responsibility in a 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil' give up attitude Policy.

Advice to Senior Management – Nothing, I don't really care, I'm leaving ASAP.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration

Pros – Schedule flexibility. I can bail when I want. As an IT Specialist, I get to work with some leading edge technologies. I've made some good friends there.

Cons – Management and lifers. Each are a drain on the workplace in their own way. Most high-level managers have never worked outside of SSA, so it's all they know. The lifers feel that their employment is an entitlement, so they do little work. Most are just toughing it out until they can retire.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't hire technical managers. Hire people who know how to surround themselves with talent, and then let them do the work.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Co-workers are friendly and helpful

Cons – Depends on your branch chief.

Advice to Senior Management – promote based on quality of work, not quantity.

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

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Depending where you're placed there can be a good family atmosphere within the office

Cons – Administering Federal benefits is mentally draining

Advice to Senior Management – Do your best to make your offices work together

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Social Security Administration full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – -federal pension
-past military time counts toward retirement
-good pay
-generous leave and credit hours are usually available

Cons – -extreme distrust of employees by management
-promotions can be hard to come by
-work can be tedious, little control for employees over how work is accomplished
-overwhelming workload
-no tuition assistance

Advice to Senior Management – Allow more of your employees to telework. It is incredible to me that legal assistants are only able to work from home with paper records, not electronic records. Attorney and judges in ODAR are able to work from home on laptops. Try to build more of a team atmosphere. Set realistic goals. Conduct monthly training to update employees on regulations are rules that are constantly changing. Pitch in to help when it is the end of the month and the office is trying to reach the dispositions goal!!!

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