Pros
The best reason to work at NSA is the contribution to producing intelligence and technology that protects the United States. The benefits are standard government benefits, so leave rates are solid even if health insurance and other benefits are more or less average. Depending on what your supervisor and corporate overseers will approve, there may be a large potential to have numerous training courses paid for in full.
Cons
Unfortunately, in many cases, the downsides far outweigh the benefits. Pay far lags beyond the private sector and even other government agencies, even after accounting for differences in work experience and education. Advancement at NSA in many cases is not based on meritocratic principles but rather on personal connections and political considerations. Performance management is mandated; however, because the majority of managers are not solid performers (and in many cases seemed to take management positions for career advancement since that is one of the few paths to advancement at NSA), feedback and mentoring is often severely lacking and, when available, is more of an afterthought than an integral component of operations. Unfortunately, those who possess strong technical skills and contribute to solving NSA's hardest mission challenges are often left behind when it comes to promotion in favor of management. Sadly, some of the most technically savvy are among the more junior employees because of this principle. Despite outward claims of a high-tech, forward-facing workforce, a high proportion of the workforce is anything but. The isolation that comes with national security positions, unfortunately, results in many employees being very technology inept. This is especially true of policy organizations whose approval is often vital to modernizing anything. Even within the organization, there is a dearth of knowledge about how the organization and its systems actually work; there are very few people who know this information and from whom you can hope to learn it. Hoarding of information and not sharing it was historically rewarded at NSA, so many employees with more than 5 years of experience conform to that model; this makes it especially challenging to learn and get things done. Bureaucracy is stifling. Indecision is rampant, and oftentimes problem solving is severely hampered by colleagues whose primary responsibility it seems is to delay, defer, and pass the buck. Depending which physical office you are assigned to, parking and walking to or shuttling to your building could easily result in an added 30-60 minutes of your day. This time is not compensated, so this can be a serious drain on not only convenience but also work-life balance. This may seem trivial, but this easily eats up 100+ hours of time each year. There are high numbers of employees who under perform yet by and large nothing is done about this. These employees exist at all levels of the enterprise and, in many cases, earn high, six-figure salaries while the organization claims it cannot pay its underpaid workers more. There is a large disparity between an employee's value and how they are compensated, even when considering the budgetary and other constraints. There is a prominent egress of highly skilled technical employees in recent years due to disparities like this and other non-meritocratic principles.