List of Toxic Federal Agencies

[Anonymous]

I’m at DHS OIG and everything I’m reading about USAID OIG is peanuts. They got nothing on us. We are bottom of the barrel. It was so bad here that congress asked GAO to investigate the OIG. GAO lit us up with recommendations. Go google that report. Of course their report doesn’t go into detail on all of our scandals! And the scandals are super juicy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m at DHS OIG and everything I’m reading about USAID OIG is peanuts. They got nothing on us. We are bottom of the barrel. It was so bad here that congress asked GAO to investigate the OIG. GAO lit us up with recommendations. Go google that report. Of course their report doesn’t go into detail on all of our scandals! And the scandals are super juicy!

Your scandals are still the best (or at least the most public, including your former IG!).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m at DHS OIG and everything I’m reading about USAID OIG is peanuts. They got nothing on us. We are bottom of the barrel. It was so bad here that congress asked GAO to investigate the OIG. GAO lit us up with recommendations. Go google that report. Of course their report doesn’t go into detail on all of our scandals! And the scandals are super juicy!

Different poster- yes even I have heard about the DHS OIG. As a positive, I’ve also heard they’ll “take anyone” and it’s a great way to get into the federal government.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Federal Reserve is one of the most toxic places I’ve worked in. Mean people, fragile egos, and completely ineffective.

Wow, not true at all in my experience. Great place to work.

I’ve worked at three different federal bank regulators. Fed was the worst work environment but not as bad as this poster above me describes. My coworkers were fine, they just kind of has a private sector mentality that we needed to be working 50+ hour weeks. Sorry, the reason I took a pay cut to come to government was for a chiller working environment. The two finregs I’ve been at since then get it.

When I started at the Fed I was immediately working 14 hour days and weekends. My group was filled with dead wood and the managers would abuse the new hires. I did like the work I did though but hated having harsh deadlines because the people around me were either incompetent or just refused to do work.

The long hours sound right, but the dead wood doesn't unless you were in a nonbusiness line funtion or a very specific section.

+ 1
Long hours but not a lot of dead wood.

Yes, lots of dead wood (and RIPs— retired in place) and agree others have to compensate because of incompetent managers. Two previous posters are likely current employees and don’t want to admit they may be part of the dead forest….

[Anonymous]

Does dead wood routinely put in 60 hours a week?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Does anyone think highly of any OIG, though?

I liaise with a lot of OIGs through CIGIE. Staff at HHS, DOT, Education and NASA always seemed to be happy. Actually, I thought USAID OIG staff were happy. The folks that represent them on CIGIE committees seem to be happy and really good leaders. A few years back their quality assurance guy had the whole QA community excited. My staff was excited to go to those workgroup meetings and always gave a lot of high praise for the USAID folks leading that committee. I worked with USAID OIG's Chief of Staff on a CIGIE committee. She is always eager and super helpful. Their nominee is also very involved an CIGIE and has a great reputation. I hope she can turn things around over there. I would have never guessed USAID OIG was in such a bad state.

Out of curiosity, I looked up their AIG for management given the earlier post. I know of her! She was at Energy OIG not too long ago. The stories...I definitely feel bad for USAID OIG staff. That woman is a tornado. She wrecks everything around her.

The nominee's reputation is based on the old IG, her friend, pushing her to others. Nominee went from a GS-14 at DoT-OIG to an SES at USAID OIG in 3 years. All former IG's doing. IG let the nominee go straight to her on everything so that nominee didn't need to go to her boss- IG basically mandated nominee get outstanding ratings so that her way was paved for nomination. Nominee never managed more than a dozen people. She's competent, but ambitious to a fault and where she is not because of competence, but because of her working her relationship to the old IG.

USAID GC is terrible as well.

I disagree. I liked the GC I worked with for CIO! USAID CIO was great when I worked there. The CIO just left so I’m unsure if the culture changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Federal Reserve is one of the most toxic places I’ve worked in. Mean people, fragile egos, and completely ineffective.

Wow, not true at all in my experience. Great place to work.

I’ve worked at three different federal bank regulators. Fed was the worst work environment but not as bad as this poster above me describes. My coworkers were fine, they just kind of has a private sector mentality that we needed to be working 50+ hour weeks. Sorry, the reason I took a pay cut to come to government was for a chiller working environment. The two finregs I’ve been at since then get it.

When I started at the Fed I was immediately working 14 hour days and weekends. My group was filled with dead wood and the managers would abuse the new hires. I did like the work I did though but hated having harsh deadlines because the people around me were either incompetent or just refused to do work.

The long hours sound right, but the dead wood doesn't unless you were in a nonbusiness line funtion or a very specific section.

+ 1
Long hours but not a lot of dead wood.

Why are you all working illegal unpaid OT? Take your ADHD meds and get your work done in 9 hours like everyone else.

LOL. The Fed has very, very few nonexempt employees, and I'd be very surprised if they were the ones working long hours. Also, the hours are better than the industry side of banking, and the pay is better than the other federal banking agencies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Federal Reserve is one of the most toxic places I’ve worked in. Mean people, fragile egos, and completely ineffective.

Wow, not true at all in my experience. Great place to work.

I’ve worked at three different federal bank regulators. Fed was the worst work environment but not as bad as this poster above me describes. My coworkers were fine, they just kind of has a private sector mentality that we needed to be working 50+ hour weeks. Sorry, the reason I took a pay cut to come to government was for a chiller working environment. The two finregs I’ve been at since then get it.

Which are the two that get it? I have been interviewing at several and would like to know - I left the private sector for a reason.

If bank finreg, FDIC and OCC. If consumer involved could be CFPB, not sure what hours expectations are there.

I've ever heard anyone claim that CFPB has better hours than the Fed.

Anyways, this entire discussion about which federal banking agency provides a better life style is pretty meaningless without discussing which function or role someone is looking at.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

The IG nominee is part of the fighting and drama. She did what you didn't like about your coworker - ran to the old IG - to get her way, get people pushed out she didn't like or agree with. And used her access to get herself ahead at their expense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

The IG nominee is part of the fighting and drama. She did what you didn't like about your coworker - ran to the old IG - to get her way, get people pushed out she didn't like or agree with. And used her access to get herself ahead at their expense.

That's hard to believe. she seems to to be rationale. admittedly, I don't work with her often. but she and the DIG has been the most pleasant of all those folks on the leadership team.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

The IG nominee is part of the fighting and drama. She did what you didn't like about your coworker - ran to the old IG - to get her way, get people pushed out she didn't like or agree with. And used her access to get herself ahead at their expense.

That's hard to believe. she seems to to be rationale. admittedly, I don't work with her often. but she and the DIG has been the most pleasant of all those folks on the leadership team.

Agree with the previous post, the GC and DIG at USAID OIG are excellent leaders and are trying their best!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

The IG nominee is part of the fighting and drama. She did what you didn't like about your coworker - ran to the old IG - to get her way, get people pushed out she didn't like or agree with. And used her access to get herself ahead at their expense.

That's hard to believe. she seems to to be rationale. admittedly, I don't work with her often. but she and the DIG has been the most pleasant of all those folks on the leadership team.

She's very pleasant until you disagree with her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:USAID OIG. STAY VERY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ORGANIZATION! The all-caps is VERY INTENTIONAL

Agree.

Why?

What makes a toxic work culture is fighting, drama, and unhappy employees. Several posters have covered this. So I'll add:

-the senior leadership team is not cohesive. They fight each other. They try to hide this but we see that many of them don't like each other...They set organizational priorities, but individual executive will tell their staff "we are not focusing on this or that." How is it ok that the division priorities do not align to the organizational priorities? The last IG was intensely focused on people (a good thing, mostly). The other executives didn't agree and kept focusing on the technical aspects of the job over people. Nearly every promotion to management was solely based on technical skills. Yes, technical skills matter, but managers need to like people, or at least be willing to collaborate and hear different perspectives. And the leadership keeps wondering why the organization is stuck. Pay attention to who you put in team leader and manager roles. Why didn't they follow the IG's vision for people in management roles?

-leadership is quick to punish people who are not in their favor. In audit, there is an employee who is notoriously known for "telling it how it is." That employee was allowed to skip over 3 layers of management to call/email the head of audit and snitch on people. This employee would literally brag to us about being able to call up the head of audit anytime. This type of behavior was encouraged and the employee was promoted. Yet, employees who were not "in" with the head of audit got talked down to at the attempt of raising any concern. We all breathed a sigh of relief when the head of audit resigned to go follow the former IG (his friend) to Deloitte last month.

And don't get me started about the people he put in charge to write policies and train us. I worked in the field with a couple of them. They made the same mistakes as me. How did they all of a sudden master the technical skills in 4 months and be in a position to write policy and deliver trainings? If you ask questions about the policies they wrote, they can't answer them. The default response is ALWAYS "it's a judgement call." These were the chosen folks. So many of us "play the game" with these people so they wouldn't say anything bad about us to the head of audit. Doing so would literally send us to exile.

the IG nominee will have her work cut out for her. Building morale will not be easy. She has to start with her leadership team and mid-level managers. And as a previous poster said, all the surveys point to them needing to do better. We have 5 years of surveys that all say the same thing. No more data is needed. Action is needed!

The IG nominee is part of the fighting and drama. She did what you didn't like about your coworker - ran to the old IG - to get her way, get people pushed out she didn't like or agree with. And used her access to get herself ahead at their expense.

That's hard to believe. she seems to to be rationale. admittedly, I don't work with her often. but she and the DIG has been the most pleasant of all those folks on the leadership team.

Agree with the previous post, the GC and DIG at USAID OIG are excellent leaders and are trying their best!

Are they really trying? Let's be honest about that. Many of my colleagues in the office of management had meetings with the former IG and the DIG (now acting IG) about the leadership abuse and mis-management in our division. I'll give them credit for demoting the former AIG of management (another friend of the former iG) out of SES. That seemed like a promising step forward. But they made him a foreign service officer and sent him overseas to live a lavish life. News flash, that is an upgrade, not a downgrade! Then they replace him with someone worse. We feel like they intentionally delivered us to the devil! They spent nearly a year searching for the perfect executive, and they hired the devil. And what makes this horrible is that there were other options. The former HR director acted in the deputy role. He was smart and charismatic. So no, we do not feel like they are trying. My colleagues in audit and investigations might feel differently since they are not the step children of the organization.