Pros
--pay & benefits are good for the region --quiet, physically comfortable environment --co-workers are decent people --you can work fairly independently --the organization has an important mission; you are helping people --it's stable and fairly predictable --they make an effort to train you --great job is you are smart but have only a HS degree
Cons
--senior managers have few management skills and spend 75% of their time managing up --promotion is largely based on seniority, favoritism, and nepotism --it's fine for 2-3 years then the lack of mobility becomes apparent...and, when combined with the favoritism, it becomes obvious it may take 10 years to get promoted --it's difficult to do quality work because this is a white-collar factory environment - the emphasis is on numbers & once you figure out the best (only?) way to meet those, you have to sell your soul to meet your quota....in rare instances you may deny claims you think could be allowances because taking the risk of an allowance may result in an "error" for you (you can only have two such "errors" per year). Doing high quality work takes more time and after awhile it's a losing game --among all positions in the agency (management, IT, medical & psych consultants, and clerical staff) the DE job is the most stressful and the most mission-critical; however, you are treated like you are completely expendable and are not rewarded for measurably good performance --you have lots of time off but good luck taking more than 1 week of vacation at a time, and always two months or more apart, because you will come back to a huge, ugly pile of work (it is impossible to avoid this no matter how much extra work you do beforehand) - whereas managers routinely take multiple weeks off at a time --unless you started out with few skills, you will gain virtually no transferable skills in this position - the work is complex but it is a closed system and the knowledge you gain is only about adjudicating disability claims (again, few opportunities) --high attrition, for all the reasons stated above --due to current economic times, this agency is stagnant at a time when people desperately need services; therefore, you have a relentless caseload and claimants who've waited a long time for their claims to be processed