Federal folk - what's been your experience with choice of locale after training?

[Kimble]

They finally got away from transferring as discipline, but if you want a promotion or an assignment other than running up and down a freeway, you will have to move.

The state police back home did the same thing recently. They have a new Colonel/Director of DPS who came from USSS, and instituted a new policy that trooper academy graduates could put in for location at or near home. His reasoning: "People work harder when they are happy, and are generally happier when they are home." Makes sense to me.

[Group9]

The state police back home did the same thing recently. They have a new Colonel/Director of DPS who came from USSS, and instituted a new policy that trooper academy graduates could put in for location at or near home. His reasoning: "People work harder when they are happy, and are generally happier when they are home." Makes sense to me.

There you go, talking sense again. :D

[Group9]

Ouch!!

A while back I read an ariticle in USAToday about how the FBI was having problems keeping new agents in the So. Cal area. and they're GS-10's

As I said I don't know how anyone lives there as a GS-7 with a family.

Back when I started as a GS-10 (1988) , one of my classmates went to Los Angeles.

He called me up a month later and said, "I've got a college degree, and a law degree, and I getting paid $36,000 a year. And, I'm looking at an advertisement to go to work for the LA Sheriff's department for $44,000 a year with only a high school diploma. Where did I go wrong?" :D

[retdetsgt]

That's like our DA's office. We've had a couple of guys get their law degree, quit and go to work for the DA. After a few years, they make pretty good money, but the cops in the area make half again more than they do starting out. Which is why there is such a turnover. Most find they can't stick it out that long. The cops that went over all came back to the dept before their first year was up.

I considered going to law school instead of graduate, but I got to looking around at all the stuggling lawyers around here and decided against it. I had no reason to believe I would score high enough in my class to think I would be any different.:confused:

[BP348]

but I got to looking around at all the stuggling lawyers around here and decided against it.

There are a lot of lawyers out there that make less then new PO or Fed's. Lots of lawyers are only making $50K, not that that's bad money, but many LEO's make more then that.

He called me up a month later and said, "I've got a college degree, and a law degree, and I getting paid $36,000 a year. And, I'm looking at an advertisement to go to work for the LA Sheriff's department for $44,000 a year with only a high school diploma. Where did I go wrong?"

I have a friend with ICE who told me his best friend from the academy spent $35K of his own money because he wasn't making it as a GS7, 9, & 11. He was only just making it as a GS-12 and he had to live 2 hours away from the office. I know he had a G-Ride but that's still 4 hrs everyday not counting the LA traffic.

The state police back home did the same thing recently

USBP has changed it's thinking on this as well. it used to almost automatice that if you were from TX you would be offered CA and vice versa. Not any more.

[Nole795]

When I started applying to federal agencies I made it a point to target those agencies that gave you your location prior to your appointment.

A very wise DEA Agent told me to never take a job where you don't know where you are going prior to hiring.

I took his advice and it worked out for the better. As for the DEA Agent, he left shortly after a few years to another 1811 spot.

[Group9]

When I started applying to federal agencies I made it a point to target those agencies that gave you your location prior to your appointment.

A very wise DEA Agent told me to never take a job where you don't know where you are going prior to hiring.

I took his advice and it worked out for the better. As for the DEA Agent, he left shortly after a few years to another 1811 spot.

The number one reason people leave the DEA, (and FBI, from what I remember), is being stuck in a place that they, or their family, absolutely can't stand living. One of the things that always strikes me about upper level DEA management, who are the ones making these rules on assignements, is how disfunctional almost all of their family and personal lives are whey you get to know them.

In DEA, (and FBI, too), to really advance to the highest level positions, you have to move a lot. And, since it is the rarest wife and kids in the world who want to move around a lot, most of the people of high rank have done it without the support or approval of their families. They paid the price and they expect everyone else to willingly pay it to (there is an old joke in DEA, that made it into the movie Clear and Present Danger, some of which was filmed at our headquarters (my wife is in the movie if you know where to look :D), that if DEA wanted you to have a wife and kids, they would have issued them to you).

So, having chose to do this, and with a large number of them having alienated their wives (most have had more than one) and kids, they really have no sympathy for the people below them having unhappy families. I've always said that I could be happy working anywhere from Miami, to Bogota to Lahore to Nogales, but I take my family's wants and needs into account. With my kids living in their third house and going to their third school, (and already on my second wife, mostly due to my dysfunctional assignments, TDY and PCS) earlier in my career, they don't want to move twenty feet, and I don't blame them.

If there is one down side to working for DEA, that it definitely it. But, it's a big one and I have lost count of the people we have lost because of it.

[If you want to be a SAC, I can give you the formula to do it, but I can't tell you how to still have a successful (original) family life when you get there].

[retdetsgt]

I obviously have no personal experience, but of all the feds I worked with, the guys that seemed the happiest with their agency was ATF. I worked a few cases with those guys and I was amazed at how several actually praised ATF as a good place to work.:confused: Getting their assignments was just one of the things they commented on.

[Group9]

I guess it just depends on where you are. I know for us, when you go to a different office, it often feels like you have gone to a different agency. Good bosses versus **** bosses makes all the difference in the world.

[Nole795]

I guess it just depends on where you are. I know for us, when you go to a different office, it often feels like you have gone to a different agency. Good bosses versus **** bosses makes all the difference in the world.

Amen to that. My first office was not my cup of tea, but I transferred to another one in an area that I wanted, and I gotta say my job outlook has improved ten folds and my wife is loving the new area.

A happy wife is a happy life...