Moving to Dallas!

[Nixi]

Are you going to have to change your username now? 

I haven't lived in San Antonio for several years. I lived in that godforsaken place for almost 30 years, so my username describes where I grew up and reminds me that I escaped.

My mind is blown right now, never realized sanantone's name referenced San Antonio!

[sanantone]

Congrats on moving to Dallas!

Thanks.

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So, Dallas is currently having some issues with people shooting each other. I believe there were 41 murders in May, alone, and there's been this strange pattern of transgender women being killed. Hopefully, it's not a serial killer. I'm not concerned with the violence because it's believed that most of the people killed knew their killers. The Dallas Police Department lost a lot of officers over the years due to its low pay. They recently increased the pay to be higher than that of other large cities in Texas, but it's going to take a while for them to hire and train the 600 officers they need. They need assistance with investigating the murders, but I don't think there's much they can do to prevent the murders. It's Texas; everyone has a gun. People just need to choose better ways to resolve their problems.

It turns out that I'm the second youngest person my office hired. The youngest person (one year younger than me) left for another department, though, so I'm now the youngest in my cohort. I'm not just a little bit younger; I'm 7 to 20 years younger than everyone else. I was surprised because I'm in my early 30s and was older than most of my coworkers in my last counseling job. The recent college graduates that they plan to hire at other locations will likely be in their 20s, but I think new revenue officers tend to be 30+. There are a lot of veterans and employees transferring from other departments.

It sounds like the IRS will continue to hire next year, so those who haven't finished their degrees yet might still have a chance. The last time they hired new revenue officers was in 2016.

Our job title is supposed to be changing to civil enforcement officer, and they might start giving us badges. We currently have pocket commissions that we display. There's a bipartisan bill in the House and Senate that would extend law enforcement retirement to revenue officers, revenue agents, and other non-1811 police officers in the federal government. But, I'm not holding my breath. Similar bills have been introduced every year for the past few years.

I found out that locality pay is not based on cost of living. It's based on private sector salaries in a given field. Austin is a tech city with high tech pay. Dallas and Houston have more highly-paid financial services workers, so that's probably why revenue officers and agents get paid more in those cities.

What do you need to qualify for those types of jobs?

https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/513802600