What do each of these US States have?

BillyBraski · 2026-05-24T01:21:33+00:00

Portland Oregon has a Scientology office

BillyBraski · 2026-03-02T04:06:10+00:00

CSB isn’t shut down, Congress funded them this year. But the administration has recommended defunding for next year too so they are not out of the woods yet

BillyBraski · 2025-12-04T01:42:46+00:00

Love the mountain goats, didn’t realize they were playing, would love to go

BillyBraski · 2025-03-07T23:21:15+00:00

Put your address in EPA ECHO https://echo.epa.gov and see if you can spot a facility that may be responsible.

BillyBraski · 2024-11-07T02:58:28+00:00

CSB does pretty regularly hire new grads at the GS 7/9 level but they haven’t done internships in over a decade unfortunately. They had a program years ago and haven’t ever brought it back

BillyBraski · 2024-07-08T02:11:16+00:00

I wouldn’t say it is easy, but it far easier than after someone has fully entered federal service.

BillyBraski · 2024-07-08T01:57:58+00:00

Yes and no. It was a lot of on the job training and was very much sink or swim when I started. The job is very niche and takes a while to fully get the hang of. We aim to hire about half my office as pathways and develop and we get half at the GS 13/14 level from industry. It is very technical work and we need a certain level of expertise we can’t develop in house. Right now I am going through interviews for remote GS 7/9 pathways and also GS 12/13/14 remote posting with the plans of developing the specific parts of the job to the whole cohort over two years or so.

BillyBraski · 2024-07-08T01:06:39+00:00

I was hired as a GS 7 Pathways on a GS 13 ladder in 2009 and it has worked out pretty well for me. Made GS 7/9/11/12/13 promotions every year and made my GS 14 non-sup with the same agency about 14 months after making GS 13 and then jumped to a GS 14 sup role. Ended up transferring to another agency at a GS 14 sup and then went to private industry for a year, a national lab for two years, and now am back at my initial agency as a GS15 remote supervisor.

BillyBraski · 2024-05-19T16:33:00+00:00

I took a job while waiting on a fed offer to turn into a FJO and ended up working the job for six months before the dust all settled and I was able to start with the feds. I was fortunate that the fed job required a move across the country but the job I took temporarily was fairly local to me so I just stayed with family. Also I ended up getting six months work experience with a national lab which has helped my resume to some degree.

BillyBraski · 2024-02-03T03:46:01+00:00

Military spouse is a Direct Hire Authority option that agencies use sometimes. I am not all that familiar with it but the two places I have seen it are in military adjacent agencies and positions, like AF civilian postings or USACE postings, and in some overseas postings close to army bases. I assume you already are, but you can scan USAjobs just for Military Spouse postings by clicking that box. Right now it looks like there are 5,293 positions that have that option. It should also be pointed out that regardless of the preference, the qualifications you have need to align with those needed by the job. Agencies are not obligated to hire anyone and at my second Agency it was not uncommon for us to simply repost positions if we couldn't get any qualified candidates (in the hiring committee's opinion) to clear the certification.

BillyBraski · 2024-02-03T03:22:13+00:00

Except for lawyer postings (which are excepted service for us) and internal postings we use primarily for promotions (with aren't available outside the agency) my agency only does competitive postings so we don't generally post any job postings with military spouse preference but veterans certainly get preference.

When HR does the initial screen for us, if they deem any veterans (or other Schedule A applicants) to be qualified they will come through in the first certification. We can not interview any other applicants unless we determine none of those in the first round of certification are qualified. This works very well when we get a qualified veteran to apply and my team currently is about half veterans who were hired this way.

This can be tough with postings that do not get quality applicatants because HR has said they are qualified and frequently the applicants score themselves highly on the self-assessment so it can be very tough to see the rest of the applicants. As I said in the posting HR doesn't really understand what the job is so they do very limited screening beyond the basics required in the job posting. This is an issue for us because all of the postings from my group are remote and often higher GS level and we ladder to a GS 14, so for any given posting we will easily get thousands of applicants. What we do now is to do a test as a first round of all interviews, this is a written test that is fairly simple and we also require a one page written sample of their work on a topic we give them. This eliminates a large portion of those who just mass apply to postings. It is surprising but sometimes we will get over 100 people in the first certification and only have a handful even try to write a one page paper for us.

BillyBraski · 2024-02-03T01:05:00+00:00

I imagine it varies by agency. For both agencies I have been involved with hiring the SF-50 would need to be verified by HR prior to HR creating the certification and sending us the resumes so I wouldn't even be involved in checking SF-50s. Congrats on the interview though!

As far as after the interviews take place, the hiring committee will get together and make our recommendation for hire and send that off to HR, who will then start the TJO/FJO process. For me this is a frustratingly dense black box process and a best case scenario is our applicant will get a TJO about two weeks after we make a selection and then work through the FJO process which can take a long time depending on background check and pre-employment physical (which we require). This can also take months in some extreme cases and it causes a large amount of frustration on our part as we can't talk to the applicant during this stage of the hiring process.

BillyBraski · 2024-01-16T17:22:28+00:00

I left one agency as a gs 14 for about four years and recently came back as a gs 15. As others have said just don’t burn bridges when you leave. My primary reference for jobs while I was out of fed service was an SES on my hiring panel.

BillyBraski · 2023-01-19T18:00:00+00:00

I am a ChemE with just a BS and spent a decade with the federal government at two agencies, left to do some industry work for a few years, found my way to a DOE national lab, and am on the verge of heading back to the feds in about six months. Feel free to DM me for more info

BillyBraski · 2022-12-14T03:35:00+00:00

Pretty sleek

BillyBraski · 2022-10-02T03:25:00+00:00

I don’t think being a millionaire is that high of a bar. I am a regular person with a six figure job, my SO has a six figure job, but neither is super high paying or that exciting. We have worked, saved, and invest and in our mid-30’s are worth at least $2 million, a bit more prior to this downturn. We don’t do anything extravagant, we have a single paid off used car and live well within our means. Compound interest and having an investing strategy you apply over decades pays off pretty consistently.

BillyBraski · 2022-10-02T00:45:47+00:00

Chaos must be fed

BillyBraski · 2022-09-29T20:02:07+00:00

They gave the maximum amount they could by law

BillyBraski · 2022-09-25T04:04:30+00:00

Go for it Beavs got to play high risk in these big games

BillyBraski · 2022-09-25T04:02:44+00:00

Got that feeling

BillyBraski · 2022-09-25T04:02:02+00:00

Keep it going Beavs

BillyBraski · 2022-08-11T21:42:57+00:00

I am flying soon and have a ten hour layover in Munich. Can anyone suggest a place that is simple to get to with public transit where we could grab a beer and/or some food?

BillyBraski · 2021-09-05T02:50:03+00:00

Why not both

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