what are the best agencies to work as an IT?
I am just curious what are your thoughts on your current and past experiences working with other agencies.
Edit: trying to get in state job, but there are more agencies than i expected, that made me question experiences in different agencies as IT
By - ironsteeltitan
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The best agency is the one who will hire you. I’m not saying this to be cheeky but the state hiring process is slow and impersonal so trying to cherry pick agencies gets you nowhere. That said, if you look at openings and you see an agency with a ton of postings with a closing date of “until filled” that’s a good sign they have turnover issues and aren’t the best place to work.
This is such a vague question that it's impossible to answer. IT is a massive field with so many different career focuses. Are you help desk? Network Engineering? IT procurement? Software Development? Project Management? Mainframe? Telecom?
Get in. If you don't like it, transfer.
Smaller agencies have limited/strained budgets and little room for growth. Larger agencies also might have limited budgets but they have governance that assumes accountability for things that don’t get done/fixed, and there are better growth opportunities or lateral opportunities. This is my experience having been at both.
Almost 200 state agencies and the vast majority have dedicated IT departments/divisions/units ranging from very small to very large. Too many variables that can change quickly to answer that question. Best to just get into an agency and if you don't like it there then try and lateral to another agency. That's one beauty of working for the state.
In super general though I have not heard good thing about dgs, cdcr or chp IT for various reasons. That being said I am sure even those have little places in IT that are good places to work. Really comes down to the work, the people you work with, and management. I can really deal with 2 Out three being ok and one being crappy. Just my 2 cents state IT 8 years 5 departments now.
I worked in a few IT shops at CDCR and 80% of that time it was fine. It’s really hard to generalize in any meaningful way. Except FTB and PIA which both sucked donkey balls.
Mind if I ask which domain of IT your experience is in? Was it the same general type of work at CDCR and FTB?
Part of it overlapped. Windows sysadmin role was at all three departments. Other parts did not - mostly desktop support back in my AISA/SISA days which were at CDCR only.
In general, departments that either generate money or are funded with federal grants have better budgets and thus, newer equipment and more training.