And the Bankers Say "Fuck 'Em!"

[popeyespappy]

It's been my experience that people with an opinion similar to that expressed by BreadGod above have little to no exposure to government employees. At least not at the professional level in the federal government. To begin with promotions for federal jobs are awarded competitively. If you want to move into a different position in order to earn a higher salary your resume and performance evaluations are going to be compared against those of all the others interested in the position you want. The US federal government is among the largest employers in the world. That means there is lot of competition for desirable jobs.

I have spent most of the last 25 plus years as a federal government contractor. I work with federal employees every day. With very few exceptions the government employees I work with are intelligent dedicated individuals who consistently put in more than a forty hour work week in a sometimes vain attempt to do more with less. In most cases they are asked to do this for less pay than their contractor counterparts.

...the government employees I work with are intelligent dedicated individuals who consistently put in more than a forty hour work week in a sometimes vain attempt to do more with less.

So it is with a lot of private sector employees too. If government jobs are so bad and so demanding then why did government employees take them in the first place? It would seem to me that government employees knew what they were getting into before they took the jobs. Something about government jobs must have appealed to them. Maybe the cushy benefits packages that they get appealed to them.

I never said they didn't know what they were getting into. What I said was most of the government employees I work with are intelligent, dedicated, have to compete with other intelligent and dedicated people for promotions and desirable positions, and often work for less compensation than their private sector counterparts.

As far as a cushy benefit package goes let's take a look and see how it stacks up against the private sector. My government customer in Corpus Christi is a GS-13 step 8. He has an electrical engineering degree from Texas A&M. He worked in the private sector for 8 years after graduation before taking a government job about 12 years ago. Let's compare him to an electrical engineer V (8 - 10 years experience) working for one of the large refineries in Corpus Christi. The private sector numbers come from salary.com. The GS-13 numbers come from opm.gov and a recent Washington Post article on federal retirement benefits.



As you can see the benefits package for the federal employee is slightly more as a percentage of base pay the the private sector engineer. However, the total compensation package of the federal employee is only worth about 70% that of the private sector employee. So much for cushy benefits packages.

Oh and BTW. My government customer took what amounts to a 5% cut in base pay this year bear he was forced to take off 11 days without pay due to sequestration. This year the Corpus Christi Army Depot is expecting to see a 10% reduction in force due to sequestration. Government employees are gong to get laid off. Funny thing is their work load is not going to decrease. Those that remain will be expected to pick up the slack. They are going to be expected to once again, do more for less.