> can be someone who has that mandatory certification and is too incompetent to get any job that pays better than the vastly below-market public-sector payscale

> can be someone who has that mandatory certification and is too incompetent to get any job that pays better than the vastly below-market public-sector payscale. Incompetence is hardly limited to the public sector. I don't know anyone who works at a business who hasn't seen gross incompetence or waste/fraud (the local F500 companies near me have a horrible reputation for their IT departments and friends who have worked for them have many stories about "working lunches" that are expensed visits to a strip club etc). I've also seen plenty of consultants come into government agencies that have no clue what they are doing and are charging 3x the hourly rate of a FTE but the agency is forced to use them because of some arbitrary cap on headcount due to political reasons.