Vantaggi
The only real benefit at the City is the leave time policy. You can easily accumulate enough comp time (accrued overtime) to take a lot of days off without using your PTO. Sick time is separate. Beginning employees get 13 days of PTO and 12 sick days per year. It is, as the rumors say, difficult to get fired here.
Svantaggi
Health care is ok. Average coverage, neither good nor bad, but a little expensive. Dental and vision are both awful. Dental offers you either a very expensive option or a cheap option that limits you to a few select, low quality dentistries. Vision is similar. Everything at the City is obsessively focused on equity and inclusion. While these are good things to focus on, there is no focus put on excellence or performance. There is no incentive to do well because the presumption is that everything will be equalized anyway, so there's not really a way to move up or earn any sort of additional benefit from doing a good job. The City takes 13% of your paycheck automatically and puts it in the pension system. If you do not end up vesting (5 years) or taking the pension, then you can take your contributions back when you leave, but they will have gained no interest and will be penalized or roll over into a 401k. If you do take the pension, those contributions to the pension will only outperform investing them in a 401k if you're older and have less time for them to grow. Younger employees joining the city do not benefit from this system.