Pros
Truly unique work that sometimes has direct impact on critical national security issues. Many of the front-line employees are great people to work with. Many groups within the agency offer considerable job role flexibility with many opportunities to step up, take on additional responsibilities, and try new things. Agency gives employees lots of opportunities to work in different roles, orgs, and locations. At grades 12 and higher, the pay and benefits are decent, particularly if you have language or computer engineering skills.
Cons
Since the mid-2000s, the corporate culture at NSA has been deteriorating, a process that has only accelerated in the past 24 months. Deplorable management behavior has been seeping down the ranks and now is running rampant even among front-line and mid-level leadership. Lack of funding for promotions has resulted in a hyper-competitiveness for even low-level promotions and results in people being pushed into leadership who exhibit some of the most pernicious management behaviors, including favoritism, scapegoating, bullying and age/gender discrimination. These behaviors go completely unchecked, despite vocal feedback from the workforce. By rewarding those skilled primarily at self-promotion and short-term results, the agency has recently begun to see deterioration of technical talent. Senior management has done nothing to address these serious systemic issues and has instead opted to deny that these problems exist in the first place. Many of the most talented continue to flee. Things are bad and everyone knows it.