Pros
Standard work/life balance with weekends and holidays off. Vacation time is decent and sick time accrues.
Cons
Working for the federal government has got worse and worse over the years particularly recently, as can be seen by the hardships federal employees have been experiencing from terminations to being forced back to an office. We don't make what private sector employees make and we do to help create a better country. Our raises have been awful and not making up for inflation so if you come to the government expect to make less and less each year. If you get fired or let go, you can throw all the time and money away you put into the pension. The benefits used to be good, but now the little raise we get each year goes to the increase in the healthcare benefits. The vision and dental are 100% paid for by the employee with 0 government contribution. There is a fairly standard 5% TSP/401k match. My suggestion for all is don't come here, run fast especially if you are young. Go work hard in the private sector and contribute the extra dollars you save from paying the pension contribution to your 401k. We self fund the pension like social security. If you die there is little benefit. 401k is the way to go if you are a motivated investor. The environment here has been getting worse and worse. It is toxic and people now live in fear always waiting to get closer to retirement age in a cubicle. Don't live your life like this. Management tries to sell and brainwash you into thinking you are doing something good when they continue to cut and bypass regulation that protects individuals. Don't even come to the federal government and if you must, don't go to the DoD. It is by far one of the worst agencies. Many are not on the GS scale and have less job protections and are not allowed to unionize. They expect you to work after hours and on days off and mark this against you if you don't. They expect you to be available all the time and respond quickly on your personal phone. This is not how the government used to be run so you might as well do the same for a real company that pays you for the same expectation. The NH pay scale is built to be discriminatory and pass better raises to favorites not necessarily high performers. The NH pay scale is done by ranking and filling employees from 1 to .... Please take my advice. I wish someone told me 20 years ago.