asdaaaaaaaa t1_iylkfwp wrote on December 2, 2022 at 7:55 AM

Reply to comment by jackanape7 in US Customs officer retirements pose another challenge for cross-border trucking. More than 9,800 officers will be eligible to retire in 2028. by r_sharon

> It's the job security, benefits, and pension.

Don't count out connections/advancement. Getting your foot in the door even with a "dumb" job like security in a government position can be enough to have people consider you for something when they never would have before. As you said, it's rarely pay directly, but everything combined isn't a bad deal, especially when you consider government jobs are very hard to get completely fired from as well.

Some of the benefits can be pretty nuts too. Depending on organization, you can get paid $1,000 more per year, per language, provided you can pass a proficiency test. Doesn't matter if you use it or need it for your job ever again, they literally will (would?) pay you simply for "knowing" another language. Again, not amazing, but if you put in some work and play it smart, government work isn't terrible. Now, you want to talk the politics of government jobs, that's sometimes a very good reason to avoid it, although not like private companies don't have issues with that as well.

fvb955cd t1_iymo6gm wrote on December 2, 2022 at 3:17 PM

I used to interact a with a lot of customs officers and the big two exit options seemed to be

A more prestigious, or desk law enforcement job, like FBI or HSI agent, IG investigator, or like intelligence analyst roles in the government
Get into the trade side of things, and then get either a federal office job doing that kind of work, or go to the private sector for a shipping or logistics company to do that kind of work

That said, there did seem to be an attitude that the trade side was fairly clogged up with old officers, and that a new officer was looking at 5-10 years of passport stamping before that path opened.

Data-Hungry t1_iyo6inb wrote on December 2, 2022 at 9:19 PM

The language needs to be used something like 15% of your time to receive 5% pay boost. It also needs to be a language of usefullness, such as terrorist related languages.