software engineer

sql developer

network administrator

research assistant

operation specialist

Federal Reserve Bank

So first off, there is an onsite cafeteria and the benefits are great.  My wife and I had our daughter basically for free.

OUTSIDE OF THAT,
you will find it very hard to work in the "National IT" category.  I worked in the National Service Desk (NSD) for 3 years before the daily depression, stress and dread of going into work each day made me think better of staying at that horrible post.  During my time there, I had a chance to interact with members in other "Operations" departments such as FRIT who largely felt the same way.  Additionally, I frequently reached out to AMP (Access Management and Provisioning) as an escalation point who are run in an identical fashion.

Specifically, any of the departments designated as "Operations" (or one that falls under "Run" in the management-speak of "Plan-Build-Run") is a grueling 9-5 grind where you will be stuck on the phone all day long.

There is a team called "Workforce Management" whose job is to ping you when you're over 5 minutes out of line with your current scheduled activity... even if you're wrapping up ticket documentation for a very long call, or HAVE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.

You get 2x 15-minute breaks and an hour lunch.  Outside of that, you are expected to adhere to the schedule that Workforce has emailed you that day.  Any variances over 10-15% for the day constitute an "adherence" issue which is pulled in a report by management.

You usually have an hour-long one-on-one meeting with management every 2 weeks where you are graded on:
- average call time which is supposed to stay under 13 minutes--regardless of the issue (which is largely out of your control)
 - How many incoming calls you take which is supposed to be 25 or more depending on call volume (there are always calls waiting)
- FCRs (First-Call Resolution) which is supposed to stay >68%
- Your CSATs (customer satisfaction surveys) on a 1-5 scale where you're supposed to stay as close to 5 as possible.

Additionally, everyone starts out with a performance plan that is set at the beginning of the year, revisited at the 6 month mark and evaluated at the end of the year to determine if you "Do not meet expectations", "Meet Expectations" or "Exceed Expectations".  By getting a "Does Not Meet" rating, you are not eligible for a raise.  Getting a "Meets Expectations" gives you a 1% raise.  Getting "Exceeds Expectations" gives you a 2% raise. After talking with 3 of my nearby coworkers and 2 more senior techs, I found that nobody ever gets "Exceeds Expectations" because this means that management would basically need to guarantee them a raise.  In this performance plan, you are "encouraged" to set higher and higher goals for yourself in the call time, FCR and CSAT categories as well as a paragraph about your personal development desires which management basically ignores.  I found that the idea with this performance plan was to continually have you raise the threshold of what management could expect of you (without them having to say it) until your goals became unrealistic.  At this point, you would inevitably get a "Does Not Meet" and basically cap off your raise potential.  Because of this, there is a high amount of turnover in the NSD.  In my 3 years, I saw around 10 people come and go in my office alone.  (There's an office in Minneapolis, MN too where it appeared the turnover was similar based on my Skype conversations with techs there.)

The best part is that there are 2 yearly satisfaction surveys from an independent company that get sent out to all employees.  One regarding working at the Bank in general and another about your department and management interactions.  Even though myself and the 3 nearby techs I talked with were open and honest about their negative experience, in about a week, management would always proudly tell us how glad they were that everyone was happy and satisfied we all were to work there.

In addition to this, you are also expected to maintain your ever-expanding ticket queue by following up with tickets that require further action.  If a ticket needs to be escalated, you are responsible for first trying to reach out to the other team to get a progress report.  After 3 attempts, you are supposed to ping the department liaison who is supposed to bring attention to your issue.  About half the time this works.  If not, you need to take more time to put together an email to management to explain what the issue is, where you are at in the troubleshooting process, and why you are stuck.

To sum up, these reasons are why I left the NSD:

- the lack of clear and open communication between the techs, other departments and management
- persistent anxiety of breaking adherence
- consistently overflowing call queue
- the inability to realistically meet the ever-growing expectations of management "as set by you"
- perpetually low morale and high turnover

DO NOT work for the NSD, FRIT, or AMP
unless you want to come home every day exhausted and actually hating your life. Your mental health and well-being is not worth it.

When I was initially hires in 2005 it was a great place to work and the culture was very accomodating for minorities.  The Bank was fair and recognized my knowledge and skills so much that I was promoted multiple times.  However, recently the new management appears to have made a 180 degree turn; although they promote diversity, this is no longer the reality.  I was recently manipulated out of my employment for which I believe to be race and age discrimination.  One year ago, I was transferred from a job that I was highly qualified and experienced, to a job that was created in order to reduce the possibility of me making a discrimination complaint.  My job was given to a white man with no experience and no credentials.  A year later, they eliminated my newly assigned position, but kept the position given to the white man with no experience or credentials.  To be clear, I do not think the entire organization is discriminatory, however,  the manager in my previous department "RESG" has clearly discriminated against me yet the organization has allowed it to happen.   Unbelievable, but it happened.

A good place to start or finish a career, but less ideal for individuals who are highly ambitious and focused on rapid professional growth. The organization is heavily impacted by bureaucratic and regulatory processes, which often slow decision making and make it difficult to drive meaningful progress. The technology stack is also fairly limited, and obtaining approval for new tools or solutions can be a lengthy and challenging process.

Leadership frequently emphasizes innovation, but developers are not always provided with the resources necessary to successfully deliver on those expectations. For example, there is significant interest in leveraging AI agents across various departments; however, IT leadership has been reluctant to enable the required AWS services or approve the open source libraries needed to build and deploy effective solutions. This creates a disconnect between the organization's innovation goals and its ability to execute on them.


Although I have previous experience working in an environment similar to this, the Federal Reserve was offering better pay and benefits. The job is your typical job for those who have worked in this type of job before but the high turnover rate is always a factor because it causes the job to become stressful when it doesn't have to be and changes to the operations then when you factor in the employees, some have very different work ethics from others. It's clear they are only working to have a job. They spend more time talking about the very same employees they work with on a daily basis as if no one can ever make mistakes. Unless you are a robot, mistakes will be made and should be viewed as a learning opportunity, rather than making the employee feel shame for committing the error in the first place.

The workplace culture was:
Collaborative, with a strong emphasis on knowledge sharing and team success.
Mission-driven, where everyone understood the impact of their work on financial outcomes.
Process-oriented but flexible, especially in adopting modern DevOps and cloud practices to improve legacy systems.
Supportive of professional development, often encouraging engineers to take ownership of initiatives and mentor junior staff.
Encouraged risk-aware innovation, where automation and efficiency were balanced with customer data privacy and safety concerns.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Good work/life balance, excellent benefits, decent pay. Best health insurance I've ever had, 7% 401k match plus pension!

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
While not fully a federal agency, still affected by government changes.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Great. Open and accepting of all types of people. Lots of training and advancement opportunities. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Active but not stressful. Good balance.

What is the best part of working at the company?
The people, excellent benefits. An excellent pension plan.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Your representing one of 12 largest bank in the nation. So you always strive for perfection.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Can't get any better than the Federal reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Excellent atmosphere, and culture, integrity.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
This question doesn't apply to me as I'm officially retired after 35 years

It is a very large organization, so you need to be able to work with lots of people and groups to accomplish goals and projects.  But the people are generally competent and loyal to the organization.  They are quite risk-averse due to the nature of the mission of the Bank and it's vital importance to the entire US economy, but you do get to work on fairly complex systems and applications.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Easy commute, flexible remote days, organized teams and good staff to work with. Very diverse culture and inclusive. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Not enough time in 8 hours to get everything done.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Diverse and open for the majority of the staff.

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Never a dull moment. I liked planning all the events for the Executives.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Its a place where you can be surrounded by city leaders discussing regional economic forecasts 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Lack of leadership directions.  

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
What you would expect from a company whom wants you to believe that you are a part of something special.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
You can expect last minute urgent assignments.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Software engineer 2 salaries reported	$121,700 per year
Sql developer 2 salaries reported	$71,100 per year
Network administrator 2 salaries reported	$20.00 per hour
Research assistant 1 salary reported	$75,000 per year
Operation specialist 1 salary reported	$25,000 per year

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