The Foreign Service Journal, January 2007

What is your current or most recent overseas Foreign Service posting? (Please evaluate only one post where you have served within the past four years.) Most Frequently Evaluated Posts (in descending order) Rome Santo Domingo Seoul Cairo Kabul New Delhi Tokyo Hong Kong Mexico City Ankara As one might expect, most of these 10 posts are large embassies. But it is striking that only one (albeit at the top of the list) is in Europe, and that two other heavily evaluated posts are considerably smaller: Santo Domingo and Hong Kong. Which post in your career do you consider to have been the best? And why (briefly)? Best Posts (in descending order) Tokyo Bangkok Cairo Mexico City London and Paris (tie) New Delhi Nairobi Pretoria Warsaw and Madrid (tie) Manila Although every geographic bureau can claim at least one of these posts, clearly Asia and Western Europe are the most popular regions to serve in. A sampling of member comments begins on p. 24. Comments on the best and worst posts address post management — admit- tedly a moving target — as well as country features and conditions. Which post do you consider to have been the worst? And why (briefly)? Worst Posts (in descending order) Moscow Beijing Lagos Baghdad Frankfurt and Kingston (tie) Conakry Santo Domingo Abidjan Riyadh Addis Ababa The complaints members submitted about their posts tend to fall into two categories. The ones located in First World countries frequently cite the lack of interesting C O V E R S T O R Y J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 23 Though well over 10 percent of the current active-duty Foreign Service work force responded to the survey, we make no claims that our findings are statistically valid. Nor, recognizing that we are not pollsters, would we claim that our methodology was scientific; indeed, as many respon- dents informed us, some glitches crept into the process. First of all, sincere apologies to all members of the man- agement cone for the anachronistic references to “adminis- trative” sections (though we did at least get the nomencla- ture right in the question that asked respondents to evalu- ate the post management section). In addition, as several members from USAID and other foreign affairs agencies pointed out, the wording of some questions reflected an unintended, and unwarranted, assumption that all respon- dents would be State Department employees. (Of course, the vast majority of them were, but we still regret not being more inclusive.) And a few questions, such as the one about opportunities for athletics, were apparently more confusing than illuminating, judging from the responses. Finally, we neglected to offer an “other” category for responses to several questions; most notably (and regret- tably) the one asking respondents to identify the section of the post they worked in. Similarly, due to a software glitch, the survey did not include a free comment field after the final set of “quality of life” questions (though respondents could offer those comments elsewhere). Nenetheless, we believe our survey has elicited some worthwhile, candid insights into life at overseas posts. On Methodology