Pros
The salary is good. Using a uniform saves you money on clothes and laundry and the mental energy of deciding what to wear. Your coworkers, well, there might be some vile snakes (like every job has) but for the most part you will be making friends for life. Some even end up married! We also have health and dental care, Life insurance , TSP, and retirement plan among other benefits.
Cons
Where to start... Your life will change forever. You would be joining the second most hated government agency after IRS. People, for the most part, dislike you. Some even hate you. We had attacks against us at some airports and since we are not armed we cannot defend ourselves. One of us got murdered at the shooting at LAX a couple of years ago. In Louisiana a crazed man armed with a machete and a can of wasp poison spray attacked the officers at the checkpoint. Everyday someone will try and probably ruin your day. If you are not a patient, people oriented person then THIS JOB IS NOT FOR YOU. Now the agency itself. The system usually works this way: HQ in Washington comes up with a stupid new rule, so upper management way to pass it down is by putting pressure on the managers. The manager will pass it down in the same whip-cracking way to the supervisors, who in turn will pass it on to you. If your sup is a cool guy he will do it in a dignified way. If he is just a lapdog, prepare to suffer. Some supervisors and managers are downright evil. I never thought I would wish rectal cancer upon someone until I met some of them. They will haze you for using the sick hours that you had earned, and they have the nerve to deny you leave days even if you are on a Use-or-lose status, which means that your vacation hours over your “limit” get cut. If you have use or lose is because they never approve you anything in the first place!! Micromanagement is commonplace, and so are retaliation, hazing and nepotism. If you are not a “super employee” or a lapdog you are not moving up. And if somehow you break into a position, they will make your life impossible until you either quit or demote yourself. The salary becomes a pair of gold handcuffs if you run into debt. You know that you hate the job but you know that the economy is not doing great so you can’t leave. So morale at some airports is really low. Some officers are so depressed that they stop shaving and their clothes are wrinkly. And they look sad, because they feel hopeless. So unless you are taking this as a steppingstone to move to any other DHS agency like ICE or CBP or FAM’s, stay clear from this agency. Because once in, you will be slowly getting tangled and one day you will want to leave and realize that you cannot do it. Oh, and the public is usually rude, painfully clueless and can be downright mean. You will probably see some people disputing these claims. Those are the lapdogs. Ask any real officer with years in about how it’s really like.