Pros
Benefits like any other federal government organization, such as health insurance options and coverage; retirement options; paid leave (vacation and sick time); etc.
Cons
This was by far the worst career move I have made. I loved my previous job but transferred here (DLA) because the previous job wouldn’t guarantee permanent telework and I was living two hours away from my family and I wanted to return home to help a loved one with their health on the weekends. I was expecting DLA to be great but red flags started to flash when I noticed that their guides/standard operating processes (SOPs) were outdated. I would get reprimanded when I would follow them when doing a task and when I would point out that I followed the instructions on the SOPs I would receive a “oh, that’s outdated we don’t follow that anymore.” Um, then why is it still active in our organization’s SharePoint (platform for us to share information)?! Whenever I completed assignments, I would either not receive feedback at all or if I did receive feedback, it would be two weeks later. Gossiping was rampant here and disrespect was tolerated among coworkers. Many managers assumed the worst and would act upon it without any investigation. The training was inadequate and I would often receive attitudes from others when I asked for help. The last straw that made me look for other opportunities was when my immediate family member had a medical emergency. I immediately instant messaged my supervisor and told her that I would be leaving to transport my loved one to the hospital and I made sure to ‘CC my supervisor on all the previous tasks that I had completed earlier that day. I ended up being out of the office for several days and when I returned, I received 10+ emails from my lead reading "you made this error or that error." My lead knew I was out of the office with a family member in the hospital, but she didn’t care and thought it was okay to send me emails about what I did wrong during this time instead of waiting for me to come back to the office. I also was reprimanded for not completing a task on the very day that my loved one had a medical emergency. When I brought this to my supervisor’s attention, about it being the day I left early, she attempted to intimidate me and responded in an aggressive tone with “I’m done talking about this! I’m OVER it!” After this, the job took a heaver toll on my health. I began to lose weight and have trouble sleeping. My supervisor thought she had gotten the last word by refusing to give me my promotion on my career ladder (non-competitive promotion). She never scheduled any meetings with me to discuss my performance leading up to her decision nor did she tell me what I could do to have a higher probability of getting my promotion. In the end, I got the last word. I transferred back to my previous employer because they offered me permanent full time telework! I received two promotions and $4,000 in rewards within 10 months of returning.