USDA Forest Service Reviews

Pros

The pay is very comparable.
The ability to work outside is great.
The atmosphere and employees are great to work with.

Cons

Working for the government, you always run into some bureaucracy.
Ability to be promoted is available, yet can be slow unless completing some sort of leadership development.

Pros

Working for the government is an overall plesant experience. The job stability is what I appreciate the most and the benefits are nice.

Cons

The salary is quite low compared to privately owned companies.

Pros

The job has many opportunities for advancement and for additional training; provides varied, interesting job duties; and the majority of management respects their staff. The agency has a great work/life balance, flexible hours, and decent pay and benefits.

Cons

Management does not effectively communicate their decisions to lower-level staff and they reward employees who perform badly by pushing them up the career ladder and onto another District.

Advice to Senior Management

Clearly communicate your decisions and listen to how it affects the employees and their programs. Try to address their concerns. In addition, do 360 interviews on upper management annually to make sure that they are encouraging teamwork and a positive working environment. And most importantly, abandon the "Screw up, Move up" mentality. Don't put problem workers on other Districts.

Pros

good pay and benefits and teams

Cons

wretched people to work with

Advice to Senior Management

hire giher quality people

Pros

The best reason to work for the Federal Government is the flexibility of your work schedule. The amount of paid time off, retirement benefits, health benefits, and pay is considerably high for natural resource professionals.

Cons

I guess when you take a bunch of people who want to work out doors by themselves, and put them in an office and they have to work together, it is kind of a problem. I believe something like 80% of the FS work force is introverted, while there is nothing wrong with being introverted, it makes for bad managers. Many times they don't want to deal with bad behavior and inadequate performance. It's never easy to tell someone that they're aren't doing their job, or being a jerk, or BOTH!

Advice to Senior Management

Deal with the problem people. Proper leadership training for managers. Remember that the people at the district level are the ones who carry out the true mission of the Forest Service, and upper managements job is to make them as successful as possible.

Pros

All depends on your manager.
Great benefits and worked with my schedule.
I enjoyed the people that I worked with at the research facility.
Felt like I was making a contribution to society.

Cons

Red tape was an issue.
People frustrated after years of red tape.
Your experience all depends on your manager.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a way to reward top performers.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.

Pros

Opportunity to live in rural area
Secure job
Good benefits, vacation pay, sick pay, lots of paid holidays
Flexible schedules

Cons

-Way too much planning to do even trivial things
-We usually don't get a budget until half way through the fiscal year
-Poor performers are not dealt with and are just encouraged to move on, even promote, just to get them out of the local scene.
-Constant battle with environmentalists, ranchers and loggers
-Reduced budgets year after year have kept us from hiring younger workers,,, there will be a huge expertise gap when the boomers leave the work force.
-Low budgets are making it hard to pay for transfer of station costs for mid-level management and journeyman level workers, thus making it difficult to move or promote.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire new people NOW and get them trained before the aging work force retires
Get rid of the poor performers
Congress needs to make it easier for us to do our jobs by reducing planning requirements

Pros

Stable job, good benefits flexible hours.

Cons

Lack of communication, lack of trust, lack of clear understanding of mission. Leadership at Forest levels poor. Lack of support to employees and lack of disciplinary actions for problem employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in leadership development of Senior Leadership prior to promoting employees to these positions.

Pros

flexible work schedules and quality work environment

Cons

little opportunity to improve technical skills...contractors are hired to handle new stuff

Advice to Senior Management

decentralize admin services some and bring technical development back inside agency

Pros

Job Satisfaction, it's good to know that you are helping people. The people you work with are pretty great, they are usually down to earth and knowledgable about a wide variety of things. The best part probably is the ability to travel and work whenever you want. As a firefighter you can usually sign up to go out on trips to the west whenever it is convenient for you and you see some really beautiful country. It's also very good exercise.

Cons

It is the government. There is a lot of beauracracy and incompetence in the management. The work is sometimes very hard and sometimes there is no work at all. It is usually just a toss up as to whether you are actually working a fire or not.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus less on rules and regulations and more on getting the job done efficiently.