Pros
opportunity to learn a lot about survey and research methodology. lots of technical, leadership, and project management training opportunities. flexible work schedules. generally interesting work. generally friendly colleagues.
Cons
performance bonuses for top performing staff are a joke. Unequal hiring standards for economists vs. sociologists and demographers: Bureau hires economists with a Ph.D. and no work experience at a GS12 with a signing bonus and automatic advancement to a GS13 after 2 years. Sociologists with a Ph.D. and no work experience are hired at a GS11 with no signing bonus and have to competitively apply for a GS 13 after an average of 3 years. In most all branches, economists and sociologists do the exact same work. Advancement can take a long while or require a lot of persistentence. A lot about how interesting your work is, how much you learn, how much responsibility you have, and how much research you are able to do depends on the specific branch in which you work. Some branches will give you a lot of responsibility and interesting / new work to do very quickly. Other branches will leave you doing work that can be done by a high school student. Bureau has a bad habit of promoting people into management who are very good at the technical work but don't want to be managers and are really horrible at it.
