FUEGO
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2007
- Messages
- 7,746
Fuego, it you found the gravy train and are coasting, you probably want to start looking over your shoulder. This is a type of cognitive dissonance for me, because I hear others say things like this but the people I know that are (or were) public employees work long hours, are not well paid and deal with as much stress as anyone else. Many family members (parents, siblings) and very close friends, so I cannot reconcile one with the other, and feel they are not the outliers.
We aren't well paid here compared to market salaries in the private sector. Trust me - I am familiar with comparable direct salary rates given my position. A small minority are in government for the pension (the proverbial 30 years and out). Most are using it as a stepping stone to something bigger (consulting, industry, etc). All of us enjoy the one fringe benefit of working for the government: knowing we can put in 40 hours or so and go home. No clocks to punch, lots of time off.
But in the broader organization outside my little group, I really don't get the feeling that a majority of people are particularly stressed or care about their jobs (for anything besides the paycheck). There are clearly a few that do, and they rise to the top pretty quickly.
Luckily that general malaise hasn't hit my group (yet). We still do a very good job (given the constraints). But our performance is judged by outcomes and results, not whether we punched the clock for 8 hours and maybe worked, maybe stared at a blank wall or played solitaire (oops - apparently we don't have solitaire on these computers lol).
I'm not trying to color all govt employees as lazy good for nothings. Just saying from what I see, it is a bunch of people that show up, get paid and go home. Not a lot of urgency compared to the private sector.
My reason for posting my first post in this thread was that I wanted to answer the OP's question - "is this job sustainable"? And the answer in my case is "yes". Good work/life balance, good coworkers that aren't a$$es. A large amount of autonomy and within my small group at least, we are all focused on executing our projects successfully. I was just thinking the other day that I could do this job for another 5 years or so, and that I am actually looking forward to what we can do within those 5 years. Unless the mothership's pervasive malaise kills the spirit...