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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Anyone work at the Board?

The Board has long had a bad reputation for its toxic work environment and poor work-life balance. How are things these days?[/quote]

I've worked there for many years and some of what's been posted is still accurate and some of it reads like angry people who struggled at the job. This isn't the job for everyone and some people will think it sucks.  But the level of toxicity people are describing is not as pervasive as they make it seem.

There has been some turnover at the SES level that bodes well.  The chief judges have all been sent back to being regular judges, and so some of the supervisory problems that were around for years are gone now too.  Certain chief judges were pretty awful.  One extremely negative person in senior leadership retired and was replaced with someone much better.  The chairman remains extremely focused on production, but has been doing less of the employee-focused things lately.  The quota is still challenging but instead of just a quota based on cases, there's now one also based on issues contained in a case and so there are two ways to meet it now.  The issues route was created with the union to help attorneys who get lots of hard cases.  There's a claims file browser that makes file review more efficient.

Many people here are complaining about the judges and there are a few who are really, really terrible.  But, most of them are okay and some are actively good to work for.  If you get one of the bad ones, the job will suck, that's the truth.  But, odds are the judge you get will be okay.  The judges have a quota too and so some of them don't go over your stuff with a fine tooth comb.

The claims files are large, but with practice people can learn to review them efficiently.  Some estimates of the number of pages in a claims file are being deliberately exaggerated.  Yes, there are some files that are huge but there are others that are small.  Efficiency is something that has to be learned, and many people can do it just fine.  Those who can't will struggle and this probably isn't the job for them.

Using the Forum of Hate/FOH as an example of board culture is completely unrealistic.  I worked there when it became public.  This type of awful behavior was a small group of people and when it was discovered they were dealt with.  That was one of the few good things management at the time did well.  The things that were said by the FOH are not at all representative of what culture at the board is like.

Also, "mass firings" are not a thing.  Yes, people have been fired and yes, people resign.  But there are no "mass firings."  Attrition is high for more than one reason.  Some people get stuck with bad judges and leave, but some people just aren't capable of doing the work.  The Board has people who can't review files efficiently or are bad writers and so they end up resigning.  Most of the attorneys are fine. The angry people are just really loud about it. The Board isn't perfect, but it's slowly getting better.

Re: quality of life - remote telework is a great thing and it would be hard to find a federal job where you can live where you want. Or you only have to go to the office 2 days out of every pay period.  They're hiring remotely right now because of covid but I don't know if that will last.  [/quote]

If you think that the attorneys in the survey are deliberately exaggerating the number of pages in each case file, you may be interested in reviewing the following conversation between Representative Mast and the Chairman of the Board during a Congressional hearing:

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Representative Mast: How about pages could we be talking about?

Chairman Mason: Thousands of pages for one case and if it is multiple issues then tens of thousands of pages.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6148&v=AACgoVzBKKg&feature=emb_logo

Watch entire section from: 1:44:00 - 1:45:10
----

It's great that you are able to efficiently review tens of thousands of pages AND write a decision EVERY eight hours. From my experience, the "poor performers" are the ones who fall behind because they refuse to take shortcuts to save their jobs, i.e., not read the entire case file. Please share your secret on how to regularly review tens of thousands of pages a day.[/quote]

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