National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency reviews

Laundry list first: Bureaucracy slows down everything but you're expected to deliver based on substandard tools and data with no notice. Everyone is enamored with open source software and wont pay for the tools you need because of it, but they won't support the open source tools as much as they require. There is no understanding of project management or product development. Hiring people in from outside takes months, if not years, so it's not done a lot and you get people who just park in a seat to collect a check because they have a clearance and they can. Everything about being an employee is hard-confusing communications, complex requirements, nonsense rules, and nowhere to go for help. It feels like we are always being set up to be caught doing something wrong. Now the big thing: I have no idea what the organization does. We have a mission and vision, but we never seem to stick to it and we hear about a new strategic "approach" every few months that suggests we have no idea how we fit into the big picture. Given the competition we have from the private sector it makes me really concerned that we don't have a future.

- Mediocrity is ignored, leaving the rest of us to pick up all the slack - Change is slow and difficult to implement; lots of hoops and settling for good enough