police officer

equipment operator

senior recreation leader

maintenance person

senior maintenance person

City of Scottsdale

If you read nothing else, read this. The city is a member of ASRS, which is a pension system. This is a good overall benefit if you plan to retire with the City, but it will (currently) cost you 12% of your paycheck right off the top. If you are young and don't think you'll be at the City for the next 20 years, this is effectively just an aggressive savings account. The City matches contributions, but employees cannot vest into that share, so you only ever get what you have put in if you leave at any point prior to retirement. If you are a decent way through your career and want to ride into retirement with an income stream, this is probably a big bonus as long as you can afford the hit on your paycheck in the meantime. 

For most of my 10+ years at the City, it was a fairly low-stress and reliable job. I have formed several relationships that I hope will last my whole professional career. That said, under new leadership, it has become increasingly toxic. Under the old guard, I had semi-frequent contact with management all the way to the top of the chain. There were regular check-ins and opinions were heard, if not always headed. 

Since leadership changed a couple years back, the workplace has become increasingly tense. Leadership micromanages teams to the point of not letting managers or the employees under them have any real say in decisions. At the same time, that same leadership is virtually invisible to the department. They do not interface with workers directly and even managers have little face-time. Employees have been called out in public for perceived errors, most of which were not actually errors at all. There is infighting on teams between peers and between employees and managers. Almost every team has people who literally won't talk to each other for personal reasons. Leadership engages in petty drama with staff that costs the organization and staff time and money. This is not limited to your time on the clock, it has personally cost me significant time and money of my own.

All of this is compounded by the fact that you cannot get fired from the City. Not for being awful to your teammates, not for being bad at your job, not for sitting at your desk ignoring your responsibilities all day. The City is extremely fortunate to have some stellar workers who pick up the slack for a number of employees who do almost nothing at all or go around confidently and consistently doing the wrong thing. 

There are those who constantly step over the line of personal and professional ethics and nothing happens to them. If you bring any of this to HR, they will hand-wave you away. It's a textbook case of a few rotten apples spoiling the bunch. I'd say 80-90%% of the department is great to work with and the remainder make every day a struggle. Unfortunately, in the City, there is no mechanism for resolving that. Those people will be there forever, because leadership actively defends some of them and HR refuses to do their job to resolve any of the issues.

If you just want a (below average) paycheck and job security, this place works. If you care about what you do or who you are working with, you will probably last a year or two before looking elsewhere.

I was at this job for 12 years, in a few different roles. Over that time, we had a lot of turn over on the support team, but had skill to cover. I was given more and more work, and unfortunately, I was given a lot of responsibiltiy without much support. I was in control of major systems, and over worked all while my direct manager allowed others to steal time from the city, work less than 40 hours, and never use vacation when taking extended vacations. I had a job offer, worked with senior leadership to stay, and nothing over the next 6 months changed. I had to make a hard decision to move on in hopes that some of my work forced others to work harder once in a while.

My last 2 years, a very hands-off CIO joined, and was increasingly trying to get friends and career advancement from vendors and forced unneeded tech into the business. Conversations were driven by buzzwords, preferential treatment to people who just sucked up to upper management, and some employees who couldn't get along with ANYONE were still given more and more work. 

The environment has become tough to recommend. Unfortunately, the lower tech roles are filled with inexperience, with little to help them promote. The manager insists on giving the team less and less, wanting to "hang out" more, and they can't grow to become better due to this. Complaints, toxic behavior, and time-theft run rampant.

A lot of this comes from leader ship. Most leaders were great (Directors, CISO, Managers) but the few that aren't really make the day to day unbearable. I cannot recommend this with currently leader ship.  

For 5 summers I was a volunteer worker for a program called Youth Corps. I worked anywhere from summer programs at mohave middle school and Supai helping kids with projects and just having a nice fun filled summer that they can stay out of trouble and do as needed. I also working for a main coordinating office that makes the events for the kids during the summer programs. Lastly I worked at a gym for the city of scottsdale doing anything from paper work, cleaning, memberships and helping those who had questions. The typical day though for the summer camps included a meeting in the morning, then off to art class, gym, recess, music and so much more. Moving so many kids at one was quite a task and made the job difficult due to kids who were on bad behavior but you made sure that you got the rest of the kids to the class and pull the ones who were acting up aside and talk to them and see what was happening and why they felt the need to act up. Doing so it led to great connections with kids and made working with them a very rewarding job

Racism at best, toxic culture people will do anything they can to get brownie points. Which in turn can cost your job, people will talk bad about you no matter how good of technician you are. They will act friendly towards you and in turn will throw you under the bus. You are better off working for a better company and making investments. Retirement plans are a thing of the past. 

A typical day of work lifeguarding for the city of Scottsdale consisted of maintaining vigilance over pool patrons and providing emergency care in emergency situations. A typical day also included opening and closing duties for the pool facility on top of maintaining a decent facility while cleaning up after any incidents. I learned how to obtain friendly and outstanding customer service. I got along very well with the management and my co-workers and the higher management was excellent. The hardest part of the job dealt with providing care at a level that was suitable for the EMT in emergency situations and the most enjoyable part of the job had to do with working with such a positive team of guards.

The Recreation Leader III position serves as the special event coordinator for the McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park and has full responsibility for the planning, administration and execution of major park events that include Holiday Lights, Railfair, a 10-week Summer Concert Series and a variety of other special events held throughout the year. This employee will directly supervise event support and programming staff. This employee will solicit and work with special event sponsors, vendors and other community partners and will be responsible for event analysis and evaluation. Many of the park's special events are held during the holidays, in the evenings and on the weekends and this employee will be required to work a flexible work schedule to accommodate the park's events.

The City of Scottsdale was(I say was because it used to be a highly regarded workplace with decent great people leading the show). Now, it is like walking on eggshells. Should we do away with Public Works as a decent-sized municipality?  Not ( to rename it Transportation and Infrastructure). When the City of Scottsdale got a new mayor and City Manager, the city went into the dump. People want to feel like they have a safe spot in turning to senior leadership, but not here. Not a good place to work if you have to worry about your job. HR does not care about employees at all. They say they do, but...

City had a well-deserved reputation for innovation and great employee morale until the mid-2000s.  That all changed, primarily because of change in the political environment and resulting changes in management.  In previous decades, there was an abundance of mutual respect among political leadership and staff.  In more recent years, significant portion of the political leadership has adopted "government as the enemy" philosophy and been far less willing to take risks, trust staff and be entrepreneurial.  Morale, productivity have suffered as a result.  I have been away for several years, so things may be improving now.

Research local and national job market to compile and document compensation for City's jobs.  First level review of applicants to ensure they meet the qualifications.  Performed administrative assistant and receptionist duties with multi-phone lines, greeted and assist visitors with information regarding job postings and application process and testing.Scheduled meetings and fingerprint for newly hired employees and volunteers.

coached elementary school kids in basketball. Gained valuable experience being able to lead and set good examples for a younger group of people. I enjoyed having fun enhancing skills in the sport of basketball and teaching. The hardest part of this job was controlling the kids at times. I really enjoyed working with my co-workers, and we have developed a friendship outside of work. Management did a great job in setting me up for success by providing materials and guidelines in how to handle the kids when they got restless at times.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Police officer 79 salaries reported	$41.25 per hour
Equipment operator 38 salaries reported	$29.85 per hour
Senior recreation leader 37 salaries reported	$25.33 per hour
Maintenance person 27 salaries reported	$24.97 per hour
Senior maintenance person 36 salaries reported	$27.53 per hour

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