Department of Interior

Inquiring about taking a position at a lower grade (GS9). I have been a GS11 and above (ZP3 equiv to GS12) for 10 of my 11 years of federal service. I am coming from a DOC agency to a position with a DOI agency. Five of my previous years of federal service have been with DOI and 6 years with DOC agency.

Will DOI honor my current pay, especially given 11 years of service in the federal government? I'm will to take a slight pay cut but I really don't want to throw it all out the window after all these increases in salary over the years.

Anyone have experience with this?

There is a lot of people posting about this recently. Trying to leave Defense for DOI or the Forest Service.

Getting to be a common post.

Here is my 2 cents, as I try to fallow you out the door.

1. Depending on how much you currently make outside the government (military retirement, whatever), can be the thing that allows you to focus your decision making tools. If you can afford a pay drop for you think will be a better quality of life step, then do it.

2. If you have a lot of time left until you retire, this may not be a bad idea.

3. If you think that Interior/Forest agencies are perfect you are not only wrong, you are stupid wrong. They suffer from all the problems that Defense does except they have an absolutely dog poop budget. The only up side is they often have good scenery to do the mission, but not always.

a. They have tiny budgets, if you didn't get that before.
b. They work their people to death, often without overtime or comp time.
c. They screw their people out of full time employment in remote areas by shutting down the staff during the late winter for 2-3 months.
d. Everyone has cut throat promotions, but they excell at it.
e. They have problems with sexual harassment, assault, and even fighting. As they usually have zero establish dicipline expected, the worst ones are a inferno of drama. Google the problems with Grand Canyon National Park and other "high profile" areas.
f. They established woke policies as soon as Mr. Trump left office, and are not likely to get away from it. This might be your bag, it is just something to think about. Many Interior and Forest units have emails with preferred pronouns, tons of gender training and more.
g. They hire state and national directors from the public sector for senior positions like directors of national parks, forest supervisors, and state agency managers from environmental lobbiest groups.

Defense not so much. Not saying we are perfect.

a. The no Colonel left behind act is a real thing.
b. BS civil servants in defense have to deal with from Army CSM's and occasionally from Navy Command Masterchiefs is real. In Interior they know of no such BS.
c. Even on installations with real scenery unless you work for public works, safety, law enforcement or environmental you will spend zero time out on the range.


My 2 cents your mileage may very.