Vantaggi
Meeting interesting people. Hearing interesting stories. Being able to say you drove the equivalent of 1.5 circumnavigations of the earth in a year. Tax free mileage reimbursement.
Svantaggi
Crushing pressure to perform at unreasonable levels. A company that only cares about sucking as much tax payer cash out of the American people. No discretion in your investigations... none. You will spend 2 weeks interviewing elderly neighbors for a 19 year old who joined the Air Force, agonizing over details like what summers they mowed yards for Old Mr. Fjorjdensen (possible foreign national, why didn't you confront the subject?) down the street. But ask for an extra week to track down the former co-workers that another subject sexually harassed and are the only people who can testify to his utter lack of self control, and you will be told something like this case is a priority and you just need to transmit what you have before the end of the month. Upper management has no regard for national security, Their priority is fast profit. The company is owned by a multinational capitol investment group, let that sink in, and then ponder if that fact could possibly ever cause some sort of conflicts of interest. Most of the management that had experience in national security (ex military, retired GS employees, reasonable people) have seen the writing on the wall and jumped ship. We are left with managers that have the mindset of the sales manager at that sketchy car lot down the street. My manager is actually a pretty decent person ( one of the few old holdouts)but this is not typical. The company is hemorrhaging experienced investigators. Investigators with 10-15 years on the contract are telling mgmt they are leaving because they can't handle the current pressure cooker atmosphere, and the response they are getting is "so long, don't let the door hit you" type statements. Think about working for a company which has so little regard for its employees, it is willing to lose all of its highly experienced people rather than spending just a little time and money to keep them. For the prospective employee: DO NOT WORK HERE, don't do it, just no, stop. For your own mental and physical well being, for your family, for your marriage, look somewhere else. They will crush even the heartiest of you with inhuman metrics. You will start having anxiety attacks, you will come home and yell at your kids because someone in an old coal mine in PA decided the 22 page report you had 9 hours to type had a few mistakes in it, and this tanks your metrics and you will now not receive the 2200 dollar bonus you already earned. There are no bonuses, you will not get a bonus, you might earn a bonus, but they will find a way not to pay you after you do the extra work. Ask anyone who works here if they have ever missed out on their bonus. You will be hired to do a seemingly reasonable level of work, and then your manager will come up with a clever name for adding 25-35% to your expectation and then hound you to do it all in a shorter amount of time than possible. They expect you to put in overtime, but they will do anything to make sure you will not be paid for it. DO NOT WORK UNCLAIMED OVERTIME, don't do it, no one should have to work and not get paid for it. Use math and logic to explain to your supervisor that your job is ridiculously hard and only people who are cheating are making their numbers. You will be forced to figure out how to make the hours you spend traveling (or sitting in city traffic) into productive work time. The company could care less about how much time you spend on the road. They will give you tdy time on some of your travels, but it's not the actual time you spend in the car, it's a ridiculous formula which would only work out if you drove 100 mph everywhere you go. I am not exaggerating, ask about the tdy formula and do the math. They will make you go on tdy trips for 3 weeks at a time to other parts of the country on as little as 1 week notice, good luck people with kids, pets Ect. You will not get a raise! Not ever! Not even if there is a fire! You may someday convince your boss to "promote" you but only after 3 consecutive months of working at the next level of expectation ( without being paid for the extra work) and then you're on the hook to continue at that level forever, and if you fall behind you will be "demoted" To all of you current employees, I know you're struggling. Keep your heads up. You're juggling a lot of balls right now (work family marriage faith health) all of them are glass except for work, work is a rubber ball, it'll bounce if you drop it. God bless all of you.