The department operates 34 fire stations organized into six battalions and responds to over 100,000 incidents each year, providing firefighting, rescue, fire prevention, hazardous-materials response, and advanced medical services.
The behind the curtain operations of this dept are shameful. Have you ever heard of a Chiefs interview with not one Chief on it? That’s what San Jose does. The panel for a final fire dept Chiefs interview depends on what a fake Chief from dispatch thinks along with a cubicle based director of hiring. Neither person has any fire experience nor are they a sworn employee. How pathetic. If you talk to anyone that teaches in the academies the people that have been getting jobs completely makes sense now. This dept doesn’t hire the people they need and refuses to staff more than 2 days out for vacant positions. I wish there was a rate my union page, this union is gutless and are the laughing stock of the Bay Area and beyond. Everyone minus maybe 2 people are on the board for self serving reasons. The union president talks aggressively to employees and makes it known if you aren’t left leaning in politics they basically will hang you out to dry with minimal effort. Culture is terrible, union and admin Pitt employees against each other instead of fixing their own disasters. With leadership and a union like this, San Jose will always be a bridesmaid and never a bride.
Listen up, anyone thinking about pinning on this badge: Stay the hell away from this department.
We’ve got the spineless “No Nut Sack Union” crowd—the same clowns who spent COVID screeching that unvaxxed brothers deserved to get canned and lose everything, all while preaching “solidarity” from their safe Zoom calls. Now look at us.
The admin? Completely detached from reality, allergic to competence. They’d rather chase shiny DEI checkboxes than hire actual skilled medics who can handle the heat. Then they have the gall to rage when those exhausted medics finally start saying NO to endless mandatory overtime after years of non-stop grind since the pandemic hit.
Our fire chief can’t even be bothered to show up for final chief interviews—sends his civilian assistant and a secretary to play pretend chief instead of real, sworn officers who’ve bled for this job. Pathetic.
City manager? Zero support. We’re hemorrhaging people—down from ~750 sworn to barely 650, when we should be pushing 1,200 just to keep up. Over 30 stations sitting cold or skeleton-crewed. Anyone with the stones to call out the admin or the union gets fed to the rats running rampant in the ranks—snitches, backstabbers, and career assassins.
Bottom line: Don’t come here. If I could rewind the clock and pick any other house in the country, I’d be gone in a heartbeat. But I’m vested, time’s short, and the pension’s the only chain still holding me.
You want brotherhood, and a department that actually has your back? Look elsewhere. This place is a slow-motion burnout, and the flames are getting too close.
Im a straight white male (strike one), over 15 years of fire experience at a large metro department, I have friends who work at San Jose and hate it. I still applied despite them telling me not to. I wanted to work with my friends. After crushing the test, and interviews(even told in my first interview I “was a breath of fresh air” and “congrats we want someone like you and look forward to working with you”), I wasn’t moved on in the process. Instead they hired female EMTs who didn’t make it past the academy and other DEIs. According to friends, the DEIs are allergic to fire much like the admin in previous reviews are allergic to competency. Union has zero back bone throwing a man under the bus on the news. Glad to not be apart of them. Those few old salty firemen and captains still left are the only reason the city doesn’t burn down. They care more about bums than public safety in that city.
If it wasn’t for the people who work here I would go to a different department. The chief can’t even be bothered to show up for biannual inspections. He’s more worried about photo ops and being in the news than his own guys. He’d rather give up positions than fight for us and make himself look bad. All he cares about is what he wants and what he plans. He keeps the entire department in the dark on his decisions until they’re happening. Apparatus shop is the same shop that works on every vehicle for the city. Simple repairs take months and mechanics are overworked and understaffed. We end up losing half of every academy because they care more about DEI hiring than hiring off qualifications. Good medics and good firefighters that work other places try to come and get denied but a woman with no experience who wanted to try out fire got a job and immediately quit in the academy. Taking a spot from a potentially good candidate. I love it and I’ll never leave but the way things are is a joke and the chief needs to give it up
Interesting site, glad I found it.
A “terrible” review for SJFD with only 4 reviews is highly inaccurate. So I decided to chime in. It appears the 4 previous reviews are done by a scorned person and maybe 2 of his/her buddies. Kinda odd that 3 of them are all done on the same day… and one appears to be AI written. Using lots of dashes (who the **** uses dashes in real life)
Anyway, 20 year actual SJFD here. I’ll only inject my opinion where it matters. Some of the complaints in prior reviews are based on facts that may be researched and you can form your own opinions on those topics. IE hiring process, interview process, staffing, number of stations etc. do your homework.
About leadership/admin: We do ok here. Our FC is very fair and extremely lenient on individuals who are struggling with substance abuse. He is forgiving, those who have been let go for substance abuse have been given second and third chances (and failed drug testing on duty mind you) more than once. And I’m not talking about weed, people fail that one all the time and are still here. Under the current FC, we’ve seen multiple new fire stations open up, some relocations with brand new stations replacing old outdated ones, and a state of the art kick ass training facility that rivals the best in the nation. Thank you google for buying the land our old center sits on, funding construction on the new one with essentially no cap, and then pulling out of the deal. Go figure. Again do your research and look up our training center. It’s phenomenal.
Our FC went up against a vote of no confidence as a number of news making headlines have happened under his watch. The vote failed to pass, meaning a majority voted in favor of confidence, though it was close. On the headlines: all were based on the actions of individuals outside of the FC’s direct control. Bad decisions by employees, on their own accord, and they all faced the music. One was ****-canned because he was messing with little girls, one was canned because he snuck around and drained all our narcs for personal use, and well, one just got promoted because that infamous story looked worse than what really happened. He was demoted, but was given the chance to retest and re-promote, so he did… all under this FC. This FC will meet with you one on one if you request a “career development meeting”. Part interview coaching, part quiz on what you know about the city, department, budget, direction, etc. And time to present your resume directly to him and discuss. In my opinion, he is compassionate, fair, and has a true desire to lead us in the right direction.
Other members of senior staff, for the most part, have come up through the ranks. They’re all good people with strong education on top of field experience. We occasionally hire outside folks for these positions and most stay a few years and retire. One was let go but should’ve never been here to begin with. Again do your own research on that.
BC and CA level: All promoted from within. Grueling testing process, extensive reading lists, hard written tests, even harder assessment centers with outside agency SME/scorers. All real fire dept personnel.
Work environment/morale: As in any agency, this one ebbs and flows. We’ve been hit hard lately with headlines and poor staffing levels. The Medic and Engineer ranks getting hit the hardest with mandatories. More to come on this later. But all in all, morale is good. Despite previous reviews, those opinions are scorned and do not reflect the truth. Most people here love coming to work. We laugh, we have fun, we work hard, and we absolutely kick ass on the fire ground. FACT. Looks us up on PulsePoint and listen for yourself. We are ****ing dialed. We fight a lot of fire and see it all. If you want to be an actual firefighter and earn your money, absolutely apply here. Don’t tell the chiefs this, but we’re usually in tee shirts and shorts by afternoon on day 1. Batt houses run a little tighter ship. We work 48s. Our stations are clean with excellent day rooms and gyms. Grumpy people get checked in on by our peers because we care about each other and have a strong sense of community and brotherhood. Scorned people may feel differently, and I can only attribute that to a “they made their own bed” type of situation.
Resources and equipment. 4/5 star easily. We have great stations. A good mix of old and new. The old ones are slowly getting fixed up, new lighting, paint, kitchen and bath renos etc, but they keep that old school charm. The new ones are ok if you like new. (I prefer old) The training center, state of the art. I still can’t believe it exists, it just opened a little over a year ago. Take a class here, yes we put on classes. See it for yourself.
Apparatus, we have several new pierce tillers. They’re awesome. Iykyk. We have a few new pierce engines now but are going back to high-tech. I’m partial to the high-tech engines but LOVE the pierce tillers. We have a kick ass shop that does a great job on repairs. Some take longer than others obv. where you might be in a reserve for several months. But at least we have reserves. We have reserve trucks as well. Mostly straight stick but you won’t not have a rig.
Staffing and scheduling: here’s where it gets tricky. We are only as good as what we can hire from the bottom. Through attrition, we are loosing people from the top to retirements. And we just aren’t seeing the applications we used to like the heydays 10, 15, 20 years ago. I can’t explain that. As for this rhetoric about DEI hiring, I can’t speak on that either. I don’t know what admin is looking for or if we are “skipping” highly qualified people to grab unqualified ones. I highly doubt it. Everyone we hire needs to meet minimum requirements. Period. My advice, come qualified, practice your interviews, know a thing or two about the city and department, be fit, have a good attitude. That’s it. It’s not about race or gender. Yeah we hire females. I’ve met several new employees, females included, over the last few years and I’ve been impressed with all of them. We have hard working probies that know the game. We train them regularly through structured training and company level drills. Depends on the Capts level of engagement but most Capts want a good probie to help make themselves look good on the fire ground, and so we train them.
Staffing levels on a daily basis again ebb and flows. The 2 day out staffing policy recently changed to 6. They’re trying this out but it will likely stick. So if you get mandod, you should know 6 days out and can prepare at home for it. We also have a regular sign up list and a voluntary mando list. Obv one goes before the other. If both get exhausted, and they do, we go to hard mandos. They can happen at the 6 day mark, and they still happen the day before, with last min sick callouts. But, you have the opportunity to control when you get hit now (voluntary mando signups knock you back to the bottom) so cry me a river if you get hit. No offense, but it’s a bit on you.
That said, there was a time when it seemed like the wheels were off for medics. They were getting hit hard. But we adjusted, brought back support medics. Not sure why they ever went away or stripped down to the bone (money of course) but nevertheless they are back and have really helped that rank. Engineers get hit hard as well, partly because there is low interest in this rank for some reason. At any given time it seems to be understaffed. It is a promoted rank, we do not do firefighter/operator here. And you may skip the rank entirely and go straight to CA if you wish. I’d say about 50/50 of folks choose to skip.
What else.. ABC shifts, annual vac pics based on “total time” seniority. Meaning a newly promoted Capt can get a better vac pic than a 10 year Capt based on initial hire date. Good bad or indifferent, that’s what we do. However “in rank” seniority is still honored for station bids. That’s a good thing.
One last note: On our union. I saw a lot of bashing in other reviews. We do have a strong union. They will go to bat for you if you are defendable. They will score you a second chance. Several people have blown that second chance. That’s not the unions fault. They fight hard for our wages and benefits and have won unimaginable battles against the city of San Jose. Do your own homework here. Look up the chuck reed era. People bash on the union president recently because he went on the news appearing to not back a certain individual. This is a controversial topic. I agree it wasn’t a good look for him, less could’ve been said and that would’ve kept the comments to a minimum. Hindsight 50-50 right. On the other hand, you can’t go on your social media wearing an SJFD tee shirt on one post and in another have what some perceive as hateful rhetoric. Those days are over my friend. Everyone’s watching, commenting, recording every little move you make. Waiting for you to **** up so they can smear you. It’s just the day and age we’re living in. If you put on our shirt or badge, please respect it. You went through a lot of work to earn it. Why throw it away? No one is taking away your “free speech” or whatever that guy was crying about… if you play stupid games you win stupid prizes. It’s that simple.
Hope this review was helpful. I kept it honest as possible. The others are scornful and inaccurate. If you choose to come here, you get from it what you put into it. It’s a great department. SJFD✊
Rating Breakdown
1.5/5
1.8/5
1.5/5
1.7/5
6 Reviews on “San Jose Fire Department”
Can’t do anything right. Union president sucks and doesn’t support their members. Hiring there is a joke. Physical standards are an all time low
The behind the curtain operations of this dept are shameful. Have you ever heard of a Chiefs interview with not one Chief on it? That’s what San Jose does. The panel for a final fire dept Chiefs interview depends on what a fake Chief from dispatch thinks along with a cubicle based director of hiring. Neither person has any fire experience nor are they a sworn employee. How pathetic. If you talk to anyone that teaches in the academies the people that have been getting jobs completely makes sense now. This dept doesn’t hire the people they need and refuses to staff more than 2 days out for vacant positions. I wish there was a rate my union page, this union is gutless and are the laughing stock of the Bay Area and beyond. Everyone minus maybe 2 people are on the board for self serving reasons. The union president talks aggressively to employees and makes it known if you aren’t left leaning in politics they basically will hang you out to dry with minimal effort. Culture is terrible, union and admin Pitt employees against each other instead of fixing their own disasters. With leadership and a union like this, San Jose will always be a bridesmaid and never a bride.
Listen up, anyone thinking about pinning on this badge: Stay the hell away from this department.
We’ve got the spineless “No Nut Sack Union” crowd—the same clowns who spent COVID screeching that unvaxxed brothers deserved to get canned and lose everything, all while preaching “solidarity” from their safe Zoom calls. Now look at us.
The admin? Completely detached from reality, allergic to competence. They’d rather chase shiny DEI checkboxes than hire actual skilled medics who can handle the heat. Then they have the gall to rage when those exhausted medics finally start saying NO to endless mandatory overtime after years of non-stop grind since the pandemic hit.
Our fire chief can’t even be bothered to show up for final chief interviews—sends his civilian assistant and a secretary to play pretend chief instead of real, sworn officers who’ve bled for this job. Pathetic.
City manager? Zero support. We’re hemorrhaging people—down from ~750 sworn to barely 650, when we should be pushing 1,200 just to keep up. Over 30 stations sitting cold or skeleton-crewed. Anyone with the stones to call out the admin or the union gets fed to the rats running rampant in the ranks—snitches, backstabbers, and career assassins.
Bottom line: Don’t come here. If I could rewind the clock and pick any other house in the country, I’d be gone in a heartbeat. But I’m vested, time’s short, and the pension’s the only chain still holding me.
You want brotherhood, and a department that actually has your back? Look elsewhere. This place is a slow-motion burnout, and the flames are getting too close.
Im a straight white male (strike one), over 15 years of fire experience at a large metro department, I have friends who work at San Jose and hate it. I still applied despite them telling me not to. I wanted to work with my friends. After crushing the test, and interviews(even told in my first interview I “was a breath of fresh air” and “congrats we want someone like you and look forward to working with you”), I wasn’t moved on in the process. Instead they hired female EMTs who didn’t make it past the academy and other DEIs. According to friends, the DEIs are allergic to fire much like the admin in previous reviews are allergic to competency. Union has zero back bone throwing a man under the bus on the news. Glad to not be apart of them. Those few old salty firemen and captains still left are the only reason the city doesn’t burn down. They care more about bums than public safety in that city.
If it wasn’t for the people who work here I would go to a different department. The chief can’t even be bothered to show up for biannual inspections. He’s more worried about photo ops and being in the news than his own guys. He’d rather give up positions than fight for us and make himself look bad. All he cares about is what he wants and what he plans. He keeps the entire department in the dark on his decisions until they’re happening. Apparatus shop is the same shop that works on every vehicle for the city. Simple repairs take months and mechanics are overworked and understaffed. We end up losing half of every academy because they care more about DEI hiring than hiring off qualifications. Good medics and good firefighters that work other places try to come and get denied but a woman with no experience who wanted to try out fire got a job and immediately quit in the academy. Taking a spot from a potentially good candidate. I love it and I’ll never leave but the way things are is a joke and the chief needs to give it up
Interesting site, glad I found it.
A “terrible” review for SJFD with only 4 reviews is highly inaccurate. So I decided to chime in. It appears the 4 previous reviews are done by a scorned person and maybe 2 of his/her buddies. Kinda odd that 3 of them are all done on the same day… and one appears to be AI written. Using lots of dashes (who the **** uses dashes in real life)
Anyway, 20 year actual SJFD here. I’ll only inject my opinion where it matters. Some of the complaints in prior reviews are based on facts that may be researched and you can form your own opinions on those topics. IE hiring process, interview process, staffing, number of stations etc. do your homework.
About leadership/admin: We do ok here. Our FC is very fair and extremely lenient on individuals who are struggling with substance abuse. He is forgiving, those who have been let go for substance abuse have been given second and third chances (and failed drug testing on duty mind you) more than once. And I’m not talking about weed, people fail that one all the time and are still here. Under the current FC, we’ve seen multiple new fire stations open up, some relocations with brand new stations replacing old outdated ones, and a state of the art kick ass training facility that rivals the best in the nation. Thank you google for buying the land our old center sits on, funding construction on the new one with essentially no cap, and then pulling out of the deal. Go figure. Again do your research and look up our training center. It’s phenomenal.
Our FC went up against a vote of no confidence as a number of news making headlines have happened under his watch. The vote failed to pass, meaning a majority voted in favor of confidence, though it was close. On the headlines: all were based on the actions of individuals outside of the FC’s direct control. Bad decisions by employees, on their own accord, and they all faced the music. One was ****-canned because he was messing with little girls, one was canned because he snuck around and drained all our narcs for personal use, and well, one just got promoted because that infamous story looked worse than what really happened. He was demoted, but was given the chance to retest and re-promote, so he did… all under this FC. This FC will meet with you one on one if you request a “career development meeting”. Part interview coaching, part quiz on what you know about the city, department, budget, direction, etc. And time to present your resume directly to him and discuss. In my opinion, he is compassionate, fair, and has a true desire to lead us in the right direction.
Other members of senior staff, for the most part, have come up through the ranks. They’re all good people with strong education on top of field experience. We occasionally hire outside folks for these positions and most stay a few years and retire. One was let go but should’ve never been here to begin with. Again do your own research on that.
BC and CA level: All promoted from within. Grueling testing process, extensive reading lists, hard written tests, even harder assessment centers with outside agency SME/scorers. All real fire dept personnel.
Work environment/morale: As in any agency, this one ebbs and flows. We’ve been hit hard lately with headlines and poor staffing levels. The Medic and Engineer ranks getting hit the hardest with mandatories. More to come on this later. But all in all, morale is good. Despite previous reviews, those opinions are scorned and do not reflect the truth. Most people here love coming to work. We laugh, we have fun, we work hard, and we absolutely kick ass on the fire ground. FACT. Looks us up on PulsePoint and listen for yourself. We are ****ing dialed. We fight a lot of fire and see it all. If you want to be an actual firefighter and earn your money, absolutely apply here. Don’t tell the chiefs this, but we’re usually in tee shirts and shorts by afternoon on day 1. Batt houses run a little tighter ship. We work 48s. Our stations are clean with excellent day rooms and gyms. Grumpy people get checked in on by our peers because we care about each other and have a strong sense of community and brotherhood. Scorned people may feel differently, and I can only attribute that to a “they made their own bed” type of situation.
Resources and equipment. 4/5 star easily. We have great stations. A good mix of old and new. The old ones are slowly getting fixed up, new lighting, paint, kitchen and bath renos etc, but they keep that old school charm. The new ones are ok if you like new. (I prefer old) The training center, state of the art. I still can’t believe it exists, it just opened a little over a year ago. Take a class here, yes we put on classes. See it for yourself.
Apparatus, we have several new pierce tillers. They’re awesome. Iykyk. We have a few new pierce engines now but are going back to high-tech. I’m partial to the high-tech engines but LOVE the pierce tillers. We have a kick ass shop that does a great job on repairs. Some take longer than others obv. where you might be in a reserve for several months. But at least we have reserves. We have reserve trucks as well. Mostly straight stick but you won’t not have a rig.
Staffing and scheduling: here’s where it gets tricky. We are only as good as what we can hire from the bottom. Through attrition, we are loosing people from the top to retirements. And we just aren’t seeing the applications we used to like the heydays 10, 15, 20 years ago. I can’t explain that. As for this rhetoric about DEI hiring, I can’t speak on that either. I don’t know what admin is looking for or if we are “skipping” highly qualified people to grab unqualified ones. I highly doubt it. Everyone we hire needs to meet minimum requirements. Period. My advice, come qualified, practice your interviews, know a thing or two about the city and department, be fit, have a good attitude. That’s it. It’s not about race or gender. Yeah we hire females. I’ve met several new employees, females included, over the last few years and I’ve been impressed with all of them. We have hard working probies that know the game. We train them regularly through structured training and company level drills. Depends on the Capts level of engagement but most Capts want a good probie to help make themselves look good on the fire ground, and so we train them.
Staffing levels on a daily basis again ebb and flows. The 2 day out staffing policy recently changed to 6. They’re trying this out but it will likely stick. So if you get mandod, you should know 6 days out and can prepare at home for it. We also have a regular sign up list and a voluntary mando list. Obv one goes before the other. If both get exhausted, and they do, we go to hard mandos. They can happen at the 6 day mark, and they still happen the day before, with last min sick callouts. But, you have the opportunity to control when you get hit now (voluntary mando signups knock you back to the bottom) so cry me a river if you get hit. No offense, but it’s a bit on you.
That said, there was a time when it seemed like the wheels were off for medics. They were getting hit hard. But we adjusted, brought back support medics. Not sure why they ever went away or stripped down to the bone (money of course) but nevertheless they are back and have really helped that rank. Engineers get hit hard as well, partly because there is low interest in this rank for some reason. At any given time it seems to be understaffed. It is a promoted rank, we do not do firefighter/operator here. And you may skip the rank entirely and go straight to CA if you wish. I’d say about 50/50 of folks choose to skip.
What else.. ABC shifts, annual vac pics based on “total time” seniority. Meaning a newly promoted Capt can get a better vac pic than a 10 year Capt based on initial hire date. Good bad or indifferent, that’s what we do. However “in rank” seniority is still honored for station bids. That’s a good thing.
One last note: On our union. I saw a lot of bashing in other reviews. We do have a strong union. They will go to bat for you if you are defendable. They will score you a second chance. Several people have blown that second chance. That’s not the unions fault. They fight hard for our wages and benefits and have won unimaginable battles against the city of San Jose. Do your own homework here. Look up the chuck reed era. People bash on the union president recently because he went on the news appearing to not back a certain individual. This is a controversial topic. I agree it wasn’t a good look for him, less could’ve been said and that would’ve kept the comments to a minimum. Hindsight 50-50 right. On the other hand, you can’t go on your social media wearing an SJFD tee shirt on one post and in another have what some perceive as hateful rhetoric. Those days are over my friend. Everyone’s watching, commenting, recording every little move you make. Waiting for you to **** up so they can smear you. It’s just the day and age we’re living in. If you put on our shirt or badge, please respect it. You went through a lot of work to earn it. Why throw it away? No one is taking away your “free speech” or whatever that guy was crying about… if you play stupid games you win stupid prizes. It’s that simple.
Hope this review was helpful. I kept it honest as possible. The others are scornful and inaccurate. If you choose to come here, you get from it what you put into it. It’s a great department. SJFD✊