Pros
You can generally take leave when you need to. Good benefits. File review experience. Overtime, when available, can be good money.
Cons
Decision writing is not a highly sought after nor easily transferable skill. Forget what you heard about lazy federal employees. They don’t work here. Get your unfavorable draft in in ten hours and your favorables in under four, or else you’ll get PIP’d. Doesn’t matter if the file is 2100 pages and the ALJ’s instructions are a frowney face. This means if you don’t do roughly a decision a day, your job is on the line. Management knows the quotas are brutal. They’re uninterested in your complaints. Upper management is looking at your unit through the lens of production bar graphs and line charts. They have no qualms turning their decisions into people. Union is always playing defense. Depending you might have a great rep or you might have someone four towns over.