Friend,
You may not have applied for the position at Westover Air Reserve Base. If you posted your resume on-line, someone at the Air Force Personnel Center may have found your resume, determined you met the minimum qualifications for that position, and submitted your resume to the hiring supervisor.
Whenever someone tells me they were offered a position for which they did not apply, I always tell them: This must be a difficult to fill position. Why do you suppose the position is difficult to fill? The usual answer is that the pay minus the cost of living is much too narrow. The federal civil service pays people based on grade and step. The step is really little more than longevity pay.
Too often federal employees grades are not commensurate with the pay in the private sector. Some such as public affairs people are paid too much. Others such as scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians are paid too little. The result of this imbalance is an influx of people who cannot do better in the private sector and an outflow of people who can do better in the private sector.
A numbers of years ago I accepted a position at Hanscom AFB. I was appalled by overall lack of capabilities of the average government civilian employee. The program managers were in the business of making up excuses as to why their programs were overbudget, behind schedule, and when delivered the systems often did have the required features. (Yes, acquisition reform has addressed these issues, but not all that well.)
The people in Massachusetts were, for the most part, angry, nasty, unfriendly, and rude. The people at Hanscom AFB did not play well with their counterparts—those people developing electronic systesm for command and control, for combat support, for IT, etc.—in hte Army, in the Navy, and in the DoD. The program manaagers often went out of their way to sabatoge competing programs in the Army, in the Navy, and elsewhere in the DoD.
The cost of living was in the stratosphere. Housing, fuel, and food were much higher than in the Heartland.
The politics is controlled by secular progressives a/k/a socialist thugs. For example, you will probably be earning too much to qualify for “affordable” housing. That means you will have un”affordable” housing. You will pay more to subsidize those in “affordable” housing.
Those in “affordable” housing often are young couples or roommates who enter a subsidized apartment between graduation from college and starting their first job. Their income at that time qualifies them for subsidized housing even if they will soon start a job that pays six figures.
We lived in a small town where a couple each had a job paying north of $80,000.00. They worked hard to get their two young sons flagged as being “autistic” because they were “developmentally disabled”. The older son had trouble saying certain words. The younger son had trouble running without tripping. Both sons are IMHO normal. So why did the parents shop for a doctor who would document their children’s “disabilities”? The couple gets what are called “crazy checks” for each son—about $5,000.00 a month for each! Oh, and there is no real process to reassess the two sons. Therefore, the parents will get about $10,000.00 a month until their sons turn 18 (or if they go to college until they graduate!)
I was exceedingly happy when my Uncle Sam decided to send me to Afghanistan!! The Afghanis are much more civilized then the Massholistanis.
There's never been a job that has taken over 5 months to fill, and the job closed way back in August. When those jobs close the list of possible candidates is immediately forwarded to the managers and supervisors so they can choose someone and get them hired.
So because it took over 5 months to offer me the position, I very strongly believe there is something "not quite right" going on with the job.
That, along with other considerations like the crime rate (over 700% higher than here in Indiana), being Irish in an Italian/Polish community (I don't want to even go there), the housing costs (being 125% higher than Indiana), and I would have to make over $45,000 to compare with what I'm making here (the job would pay $41,000-$42,000), pretty much confirmed what I already knew, but I didn't know how bad it could be out there.
Overall, it's just not a good feel or fit for me. Still waiting on Oklahoma or Montana. I appreciate your views and trust me, you helped me make a major decision.