'Best places' survey tapped 263,000 feds...Now what do the REST of you think?

The results are in, folks—and topping this year’s list of best places to work in the federal government (among major agencies) are the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (No.1), the Government Accountability Office (No. 2) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (No. 3).

Rounding out the top 10, in descending order, are the Smithsonian Institute, NASA, Social Security Administration, State Department, General Services Administration, Department of Justice, and (collectively) the Intelligence Community.

For the glass half-empty folks, the 10 large agencies scraping the bottom of the same list were, starting with 23rd place, the Department of Labor, Securities and Exchange Commission, Department of Agriculture, Department of Transportation, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Department of Homeland Security, Small Business Administration, Department of Education, and—tied for last place—Department of Housing and Urban Development and National Archives and Records Administration.

In all, the Partnership for Public Service, which just released the rankings, ranks 290 large and small federal agencies and subcomponents using OPM survey responses from 263,000 employees. There are also separate rankings based on criteria like work-life balance, leadership and pay.

So, how about it—are the results fair? Do you work at NRC or GAO—or another agency in the top 10—and if so, are you are loving life at work? Or if you work for DHS, HUD, NARA or other lagging agency, do you agree? Or are the coworkers who dissed your agency just whiners?