What's it like to work (behind the scenes) at the (US) state department?

March 15, 2024 5:30 AM

I'm interested in comments, non-fiction, or even fiction, but with a lean towards the back of house support people.

I unexpectedly had an interview with the state department for a technical / professional (not tech) support position in the US. I doubt anything will come of it, but it's so far from anything I'd ever thought of doing that I'm enjoying playing with the idea. Help me imagine what it might be like.

posted by sepviva to Work & Money (12 answers total)

Best answer: I have a family friend who's in the Diplomatic Security Service. It's a weird mix of boring travel, shift work, firearms, threat assessment, and somehow also supporting arrests related to immigration violations. She's moving overseas to be stationed somewhere for a few years. She is very well compensated.
posted by knile at 6:19 AM on March 15 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Having work in an adjacent set of agencies, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but most of your time will be spent doing normal office stuff, in low quality offices, with sub-standard technology and resources, while trying to remember passwords you can't store anywhere, and bring prompted to take endless IT secutity trainings.

There are a few jobs that are more interesting and get you out of the building, so to speak - State DSS as knile mentioned is one example - but they're the very, very, very minority of roles, and not the "technical / professional (not tech) support" type.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 6:32 AM on March 15 [4 favorites]

Yeah, basically a federal job ... unless you are going to be directly supporting FSO(s) or political appointees, in which case it could be super interesting.

Pay scales for federal employees and the defense/national security/intelligence federal contractor staff have not really kept up with the cost of middle class living in the DC area. A lot of those workers bought their DC condos or Montgomery County houses 20 years ago, and a lot of them are the lower-paid spouse in a two-income family combining for mid-six-figures of income. If you're neither, you're going to face a choice between saving almost nothing or commuting an hour+ each way.
posted by MattD at 6:42 AM on March 15

The salary is what it is (you should be able to look up the range in advance, but don't forget to consult the table with the DC locality pay adjustment, not the base), but note that State has a more generous pension plan than the feds generally (which, by having one at all, the feds are more generous than probably 85% of private employers these days). State also has its own health plan which I understand is pretty popular.

I think the multiplicity of passwords has largely given way these days to 2FA cards, at least domestically.
posted by praemunire at 7:40 AM on March 15 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: You will not disappoint me with unexciting or negative info! I am familiar with government work in general (non fed). Every department I've worked with has had it's own feel, though.
posted by sepviva at 8:04 AM on March 15 [1 favorite]

My mom is still on my father's pension and health insurance from his time as a FSO, and as I understand it it's still considered a gold standard retirement plan. All the info I have is on the antiquated side, but my dad mostly worked with economic/trade issues and sometimes I'd go into work with him and color on printer paper. He said it was a lot of meetings and writing up case studies, with the occasional ceremony/reception where people were given things like coffee table books, paperweights, and meaningless awards. His offices were usually pretty institutional.
posted by PussKillian at 8:14 AM on March 15

Best answer: You should read Lessons from the Edge by Marie Yovanovich. It's a really interesting, well written memoir. She was on the public-facing side, of course, but there's a lot of detail about what goes on behind the scenes.
posted by The corpse in the library at 11:11 AM on March 15 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I've never worked for State, but I've worked with people there. Overall they've run the usual gamut in terms of niceness, smartness, etc. Certainly there's interesting work, depending on your interests! Some things that might be a little different from other federal jobs:

You or your colleagues being pulled from your regular work to do something related to the geopolitical crisis du jour.

You'll work with people who have lived all over the world, which is cool. I'm not sure if it's disruptive to have FSOs coming and going.

I have been personally victimized by State IT. Maybe average for a federal agency, maybe below.
posted by umwelt at 2:40 PM on March 15 [1 favorite]

I have one friend who works for the State Dept. The only solid thing I know of her work situation is that she's worked from home exactly zero times (even through the heights of the pandemic) since the nature of her work meant that she could only do it under whatever technological security measures were available at the office.
posted by mhum at 3:45 PM on March 15

Best answer: Anecdotally it seems to very much depend on whether you're a political appointee, the culture of your own unit, and the way the international winds are blowing. I know folks in political and non-political roles and the non-politicals tend to be much like those in any other fairly hierarchical gig that requires specialist secondary education.

The politicals are often true believers to some extent, not in a jingoistic sense but in a sort of pragmatic but nevertheless idealistic way. I sort of find it refreshing if a bit frustrating.

I don't know if it's more diverse than the DC-based federal workforce but none of the folks I know who work there are white and all of them have lived in several different countries.

The salary thing is whatever, plenty of people in DC live just fine on federal compensation and it's absolutely possible to live here comfortably on a state dept salary depending on your lifestyle.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:42 PM on March 15 [1 favorite]

I know a person who, as a young lawyer, got a job pre-Trump with the Civil Rights Division at DOJ. Trump basically closed the Dept down and a lot of more senior lawyers left rather than twiddle there thumbs for the duration. So, some jobs are more sensitive to the politcal winds than others. I imagine the folks in the Dept of Labor who compile econ stats are pretty immune.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:05 AM on March 16

Just to caveat praemunire's comment - foreign service employees have a more generous pension plan and access to a special health insurance plan, but that doesn't apply to non-FSO employees at the Department of State. If your job is based in the U.S., you're likely looking at the standard federal government benefits package.
posted by exutima at 5:52 AM on March 17