Federal Employees - What’s a Senior Adviser?

[Anonymous]

At my agency, the title is held by extremely accomplished attorneys. I guess it's because they've been around for a long time but don't want to be a supervisor, or simply cannot, because there are only so many managerial roles. So the agency gives them a fancy title with a slightly higher salary.

It definitely depends on the agency.

[Anonymous]

At my agency we sometimes have advisors on roles. They either are (a) working on other projects but might have some area of expertise to help us with or (b) are highly technically skilled and work across a number of projects. Often they are managers and often it requires good people skills. I highly value our advisors - for my projects they have included a physician, a statistician, and a physicist.

[Anonymous]

I was a political appointee during Obama. "Senior advisor" was available as a political appointee position at some agencies. It was generally considered a fairly high level role - usually senior advisors were GS 14 or GS 15 - GS 15 can be as high as 175k a year.

The progression was Confidential Assistant to Special Assistant to Special Advisor to Senior Advisors.

But some agencies did not really have all those roles and just had Confidential Assistants and Special Assistants and Special Assistants could be GS 15.

SO no I don't agree with the quote.

[Anonymous]

At my agency it’s largely technical expert who don’t want to supervise staff, they just want to do the work. But it does sometimes get misused for schedule C (political) hires who get paid a lot to do very little.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At my agency it’s largely technical expert who don’t want to supervise staff, they just want to do the work. But it does sometimes get misused for schedule C (political) hires who get paid a lot to do very little.

I was a career senior advisor and it really depends on the individual. Some political appointees at that level weren’t great but many, maybe even most, were hardworking. While I might not have always loved exactly what they were doing, they often were diligent.

My last year as a senior advisor, I had a political “co-advisor” who wasn’t good. But up until then, they always had been. We just drew the short straw with her. It’s bound to happen.

[Anonymous]

In my office, it’s for functions that are important but judged not to require multiple staff to support full time.

My office has several team leads, all of whom are supervisors. Our senior advisor was equivalent to them in standing, but his portfolio was cross-cutting. The idea was that he’d borrow staff from each team as needed, but in practice he did everything himself and just cc’ed the subject matter teams on things. He got burned out and pushed to get a dedicated FTE to help with his portfolio, but he quit before it could happen.

[Anonymous]

I know three people who developed strong subject matter expertise working on the Hill and then became senior advisors (political, not career) at different agencies during the Biden administration. Basically, they were assistants to the Secretary or other high-level appointees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jared Wise, the man starring in the video below was hired as a DOJ Senior Adviser in this new Trump administration. I can imagine that must make for some awkward interactions with law enforcement.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/body-camera-footage-from-jan-6-attack-shows-justice-department-adviser-yelling-for-rioters-to-kill-police/
Video from Jan. 6 attack shows Justice Department adviser telling rioters attacking Capitol Police to "kill 'em"

Video footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol shows a man who now works as an adviser at the Justice Department shouting at rioters to "kill" law enforcement officers responding to the attack and calling them "the Gestapo."

The footage, from a body camera worn by a Metropolitan Police Department officer, was first published Thursday by NPR. The network joined CBS News and other news organizations in suing to obtain thousands of hours of surveillance footage and court exhibits from the more than 1,000 criminal cases brought by the Justice Department against people who allegedly participated in the Capitol attack.

Among those defendants was Jared Wise, who eventually faced six charges as a result of his alleged actions on Jan. 6. He pleaded not guilty. Wise's hiring by the Justice Department was reported last month. A Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement that Wise "is a valued member of The Department of Justice and we appreciate his contributions to our team."

Off topic much?

Nope--OP asked what a senior adviser is. Jared Wise is one.

He’s one person. Not representative of anything.

[Anonymous]

In my office within Treasury, Senior Advisors are attached to specific positions--our DAS and folks one step below the DAS each has a Senior Advisor. The job requires the SA to keep track of everything that their principal is supposed to review/clear on and to have read everything in order to summarize complex issues while running with the principal to his/her next meeting. They need to know everything to support their principal, and may also be tasked with projects to improve the general administrative functions of the departments that their principal oversees. They also manage their principal's time, making sure that there's sufficient time carved out for necessary document reviews/meetings/briefings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, there are many senior advisors. I disagree with the characterization in the quote however. My experience is that the senior advisor was for someone highly competent but individual contributor, not that they don't have management skills, but often they don't want to be a manager, they want to be an expert.

This. My agency has lots of senior advisors. They're excellent at what they do. They're higher level people who are experts in their field and don't want to be supervisors (who does in the government?!?! Supervising federal employees is close to hell).

Ours definitely aren't people who are moved there because we can't fire them.

Currently some of ours are political appointees.

[Anonymous]

It's because no one wants to be a federal supervisor. You can't fire anyone, can't hire anyone and you're still responsible for all of their work product. When you have a bad employee, it takes up at least 6 months of your life to fire them. And all your other employees think you're a bad manager for not firing them sooner, but you're documenting and working nonstop to get that done and they can't see that.

Everyone dreams of being a senior advisor with no employees. Or a non-supervisory 15.