administrative intern

police officer

typist

recreation leader

senior legal assistant

City of Long Beach

Everyday my co workers and I would take the first 30 minutes to clean the park around our immediate area. We also checked the playground for hazardous material and graffiti. The children would begin to arrive at this point. The next hour or so was our homework time. It was always interesting to help the kids because they all learned in a different way. So everyday I would to change my strategy on how to show them how its done without giving them the answers. This was definitely the most challenging part of the job. I learned how to adapt and change on the fly. The next couple of hours was spent on arts and crafts an physical activity. I took the backseat to one of my co workers during arts and crafts because he was better at it than I was. For our outside activity we played a variety of school yard sports, such as tether ball, kickball, basketball, and so on. The last 30 minutes or the program was cleanup. Everyone would clean up their own mess and that would conclude our after school program. The most enjoyable part for me is what happened next. The youth sports program. I was the coach for pretty much every sport. I coached basketball, football, soccer, volleyball, baseball, and kickball. I've had the privilege of working with plenty of different people over the years. I've had plenty of lessons over the years, but the most important lesson is how to be a patient people person. Learning how to deal with everyone and I mean everyone is not easy. If you enjoy working with kids like I do they'll end up teaching you a thing or to as well.

I supported a bureau of 123 employees - 4 Superintendents (Acquisitions, Maintenance, Operations, and Towing and Lien Sales) and Bureau Manager: assisted Operations with the city's underground storage tanks, fuel sites, and fuel key operations, reconciled the cash from the City's Impound Yard, tracked personnel benefit usage and performance evaluations, scheduled interviews and meetings, performed new hire orientations, scheduled employee safety training, managed the Bureau Manager's calendar, wrote and edited various correspondences and memos, served as the Imprest Cash custodian, processed travel request and reimbursement, responsible for all memo routing and approval tracking, organized employee recognition events.  Tracked Uniform/Shoe expenses and issuance.  Served as their Office Manager.... initiated and tracked all tech services requests.   I was expected to be a mother to the entire Bureau.  The Bureau Manager position had high turn over -- I had 4 different bosses during my 6 year term, each with a different idea of what my job duties should be.

I work in a department that's not apart of the main city hall branch and we're kind of left to our own devices. Therefore, I do not know if my experience represents what other city employees experience at all. I'm hoping that it's completely different in other departments.
Management in my department is not very supportive and I feel that there is absolutely no room for moving up here. Additionally, there are a lot of people that seemingly work here because they  have been tossed here due to how hard it is to terminate someone. It makes for some people really knowing how to do their job and some people being incompetent. If they realize you can actually work, you often get a lot added to your plate, sometimes out of classification. The pay also feels like it hasn't caught up with the times and I feel you can find similar administrative positions with better starting pay. However, there is a step system so you always get a pay increase at least yearly. Lastly, there is a large resistance to change amongst employees, a large brown noser culture, and a huge rumor Mill. Needless to say I'm searching for something new.

On a typical work day, I would review activities left over from the prior day and schedule that day's meetings. I would discuss and assess the status of assignments with each member of my staff. I would offer my suggestions for dealing with problems and schedule to review the outcome to help monitor the various projects under each accountant. The hardest part of the job is the constant stream of non-routine problems and requests. I learned the art of juggling multiple responsibilities, especially since my manager kept adding new tasks to my repertoire because he had confidence that I could handle it. 
My co-workers are extremely congenial, especially my manager. The most enjoyable part of my job is my meetings with my manager when I get to discuss with him my ideas for improvements and share in his knowledge of how best to handle disruptive issues. Imagine my surprise when he fired me, ostensibly because of budget cuts.

There is important work happening here, but it’s held together by a handful of people carrying the entire load while leadership pretends the system is functioning. Processes are inconsistent or nonexistent, turnover is high, and institutional knowledge disappears constantly. Management repeats slogans about accountability while refusing to actually build the structure needed to support it. The culture is reactive, disorganized, and dependent on employees absorbing chaos so leadership can claim everything is “fine.” The hardest part of the job is watching preventable problems get ignored until they explode. The only enjoyable part is knowing you did your job despite the environment, not because of it.

City of Long Beach, like with any government job, is full of people who work there who didnt really earn their way there. Everyone there is related to someone else there which had me very suspicious right off the bat. Management is full of old white dudes who got in 30 years ago with no masters degrees or above. Some management personell didnt even have Bachelors degrees. Management is so lazy. They are afraid to make any real decisions and do their job impartially because of fear of city council reacting negatively. Long Beach is nepotism at its finest. They have a high turnover rate for new, not well connected, employees. I was an intern there with a bachelors and at the time and was pursuing a Juris doctorate. I came in early and left late every day; but when a promotional, entry level, opportunity arose they hired someones family member. I quit and chose to pursue law instead.

The City of Long Beach is one of the underpaying cities in all of Southern California.  Its not TERRIBLE, but when compared to Hunting Beach or even the City of Los Angeles, we're nowhere near what those cities pay their employees.

The training is good, management is great, no complaints there.  And the atmosphere is light hearted and overall good spirited.  

Showing up to work is probably the hardest part of the job.

Depending what title you get there's 3 main work schedules to choose from:  

1. Four 10's, with 3 days off. (Saturday Sunday always off)
2. Five 8's, with weekends off.
3. Nine 80, every other week you get 3 days off.

Major holidays are paid time off, the medical benefits are pretty good, and you get raises every year until you top out.

A lot of people use the City of Long Beach as a stepping stone to get into other cities doing the same job but for higher pay.

Worked in the finance department. Employee turnover was huge here Unless you had family working at the city. There was A LOT of nepotism at the city of Long Beach. Every other person who had been working there for more than a year or two had either a brother sister or parent working there too. Many of these family member were NOT qualified for their positions in terms of past experience So you can judge for yourself how they got their jobs... I saw them fire a young hispanic Male coworker for cutting his hair. They said it looked “thuggish.” All it was was a taper fade.. management was sexist and it seemed as though they preferred attractive females over males when hiring... i couldnt take it anymore and I left for another job with another city. You’ll soon find out why Long Beach is ALWAYS hiring for government jobs..

Many systems still rely heavily on paper documentation or on Excel spreadsheets.  Data and applications are siloed and difficult to get to interoperate with other applications.  Departments intentionally ignore each other's requests for special assistance.

Management is profoundly territorial.  They are highly sensitive to being asked to share resources of any kind.  Processes are strictly watched over to insure that change is incredibly difficult.

Co-workers are nice, generally.  However many are encouraged by management to spy on other employees and to be highly suspicious of those outside of their department.  Gossip can run rampant and can destroy careers.

Ireally liked working for this municipality. Having been able to manage the Water Billing Department and stream line cuts in the City's budget was very rewarding.
Putting my business sense and my organizaional skills I was able to implement quarterly billing for the Water Billing Department. I was able to review accounts with much added time to my workload to find that over 10 years of missed billing was done which I was able to bill out and collect in the amount of $25,000. Upon review after six months I was promoted to accountant in the Comptrollers office where I streamlined the current budget and help put together the Provisional budget which I was able to save the city over $5 million dollars.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Administrative intern 44 salaries reported	$24.53 per hour
Police officer 28 salaries reported	$48.36 per hour
Typist 27 salaries reported	$25.27 per hour
Recreation leader 26 salaries reported	$21.11 per hour
Senior legal assistant 14 salaries reported	$71,900 per year

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