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The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence

The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence. Government work is for two types of people (and there's some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can't hack it in civilian life. It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers. Government work is a kind of kabuki theatre, in which everyone agrees to praise the emperor's new clothes and ignore the boy who points out that he's naked. The unfortunate thing is that government work is really important: it requires the best and the brightest, not the lazy and the uninspired. Patriotism should of course be a sine qua non for the civil service, but so should excellence. We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality. Raising rates without working to improve quality would mean getting mutton when we pay for lamb.

latch 9y ago
I agree. I don't know if this is a problem in the US, but something else worth mentioning is that for many jobs, public sectors pay much more (higher pay, better pensions, more sick leave, better job security, ...). So it isn't just about firing people for incompetence. [1] If the govt should be increasing pay to match market rates, then it should also be decreasing pay to match market rates. [1] https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government-and-private-sector-compensation-in-ontario-2017 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government...
- metaphor 9y ago
  > I don't know if this is a problem in the US... With respect to STEM career fields, that's a gratuitous no. For an idea of what a grunt GS-12/13 engineer's salary in Silicon Valley (highest locality adjustment in the country) looks like, see [1]; management is at GS-14/15 level. For the sake of completeness, other locality rates can be found here[2]. Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. Not all federal organizations apply the GS scale (the NSA may be one), but they don't deviate far from it either. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/18Tables/html/SF.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... [2] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2018/general-schedule/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
  - fern12 9y ago
    >Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. This is true in some cases, but not all. I was hired at the GS-11/2 level without any prior government/military experience. A coworker of mine worked as a contractor for a few years, and was hired as a GS-15 last year. This is all in Silicon Valley (although he has a tech background, while I do not).
    - metaphor 9y ago
      To be sure, the time it takes to progress from Step 1 to 10 has no bearing on the grade and step in which an employee is hired at. If your colleague was hired into GS-15 Step 1, then it would still take this person the same 18 years to progress up the ladder to Step 10, assuming no irregular increases in pay. If coming from private industry, entry step is often negotiable; prior industry salary serves as basis, so it wouldn't surprise me if this person started at Step 10 (not that it matters after Step 5 based on Bay Area locality). In any case, GS-15 is a management position.
      - hiram112 9y ago
        Not all GS-15 are management positions.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government.. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government.... Who is the Fraser Institute? Looking at their website, they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments. For example, playing down income inequality, complaining about difficult investing in oil and gas, "Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada", etc. Wanting to reduce public sector pay would fit with that.
  - latch 9y ago
    It's definitely libertarian and conservative (by Canadian standards). But that doesn't mean it can't be right. FWIW, it's high on the list of known/established Canadian think tanks. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has done its own reports on this [1]. This also seem to be true in the UK, but at least there they say the gap is closing [2]. The IFS report says what I've also observed and what this [3] economist article states: "Wage differentials are relatively small in the public sector. Lower-level workers, such as secretaries, are usually better paid than their private-sector equivalents, whereas higher-level workers are worse paid." [1] https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-public-sector-and-private-sector-wages https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-p... [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40480766 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40480766 [3] http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 http://www.economist.com/node/17849199
  - pc86 9y ago
    > they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments Better ignore everything they say, then! > Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada If that's wrong, then why not cite why? If it's correct, I suspect there's a good reason for it (e.g. progressive tax structures work and are objectively a good thing for society).
    - wfo 9y ago
      It is not wrong, but it is irrelevant except as propaganda: it frames the cost of government services as being borne by the wealthy and suggests the wealthy are being charitable already or that they should have some extra say over where their money goes. In fact it is the labor of the poor, extracted by the wealthy, then partially recovered from them in taxes that funds society. The wealthy hold the wealth not because they deserve it, but because they have used their power to take it. Choosing to talk about what the rich pay, rather than how they have siphoned wealth from society (i.e. how much of their ill gotten gains should they be allowed to keep, rather than how much do they give) is not a "fact" even if it is a true statement, it is a political position, a rhetorical strategy, and a framing device -- it is an assault on your brain, an attempt to trick you into accepting a conservative frame covertly without being honest about it: "I'm just stating facts, what's wrong with that?" Well, everything is wrong with that. There are trillions of facts yet they state this one. For a reason, obviously. You can reconstruct perfectly an ideological argument (of any ideology) based only on the sequence of facts they choose to present.
epmaybe 9y ago
Pedantic addendum, many government employees are still civilians.
wahern 9y ago
The legal floor of difficulty will always be greater with Federal employees as opposed to private employees as Federal employees have a property interest in their job. In other words, no Federal employee can be fired without some sort of paper trail. This is a constitutional Due Process issue and not something that Congress can easily address. That said, I think the difficulty--or at least the consequence of the difficulty--is exaggerated. As a practical matter every large organization must contend with red tape, much of it self-imposed. Most government agencies, much like most corporations, impose more red tape than the applicable law necessarily requires. Consistency and repeatability demand process. Red tape is merely an epithet for process that appears wasteful, especially out of context. IMO, government salaries suck because of the politics: Congress is more likely to increase expenditures if that money is laundered^Wfiltered through private contractors. Bureaucratic inefficiency is just a convenient narrative for why Congress prefers outsourcing. Over the past 50 years almost all the increase in expenditures for Federal work has gone to private contractors. The size of the federal civil service has increased by about 20-30%[1] since the 1960s, but budgets have increased several times that[2]. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu... [2] See, e.g., https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2017/assets/hist04z1.xls https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb... from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/omb/budget/Historicals https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
- pc86 9y ago
  Serious question, why is being fired from your government job a due process issue while being fired from your private sector job is not? If tomorrow, all government jobs were made At Will and the pay increased accordingly, what property of due process has been violated?
  - BearGoesChirp 9y ago
    If I fire you from your government job because you said something I didn't agree with, being that I'm an acting agent of the government, am I violating your First Amendment? This would not apply to a private employee firing someone for the same reason because they are not an acting government agent.
olingern 9y ago
The other side of this is the stability that a government job provides to low to middle income classes. The southern states where I grew up and went to college both lauded people who were able to secure government jobs. No matter how grueling or toxic a work environment becomes and no matter how inefficient workers become -- everyone stays in those jobs for the pension. In cities and areas where education in literacy is higher it's as if the market "pushes" that desire out, and the perception around having a government job is largely negative (excluding contractors). I wish there were a way to increase competition for gov jobs and change the perception of them without resorting to privatization.
- philipov 9y ago
  As long as policy is driven by lobbyists for private corporate interests, that will never happen. Keeping government jobs weak serves to make the labor market easier for them by reducing competition.
  - olingern 9y ago
    Agreed on corporate interests, but I'm not sure about keeping government jobs weak. With the government, your target market is every citizen (plus visitors, immigrants, etc.). The private sector has to create its market by providing a product or service, whereas the government is obligated to provide some products and services. What incentive is there for government to squander talent and keep itself workforce weak?
    - philipov 9y ago
      It is not in government's interest, but government has to follow the laws passed by congress, and keeping budgets hamstrung so that it's impossible for agencies to compete with the private sector keeps the private sector lobby happy. Politicians' incentives are not to create effective government, but to keep getting elected. Having an ineffective government satisfies their financiers' desire to have less competition for top talent, and gives politicians an easy problem to campaign on fixing during election season, by never targeting the real problems. Break some windows so you can claim credit for trying to fix them, and then blame the opposition when it doesn't work. It's a game where everyone wins, except the dupes that keep voting for them.
snowwrestler 9y ago
It's popular to say things like some government employees are "folks who can't hack it in civilian life," but there's basically no evidence this is true. First of all, let's make sure we look at the full scope of civilian life with a sober eye. Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town. And any medium to large company has plenty of internal politics. Don't make the mistake of comparing the worst case of government to some idealized notion of private enterprise. Second, take a look at what happens to people who do leave the government. Very often, their salaries go up in the private sector. This is especially true for specialists like the folks who work at the NSA. Seems like they can hack it. Folks who have not worked for the government, or very close to it, have a hard time comprehending the fundamental differences between government and private enterprise. For one thing, when you work for the government, many rules of your job carry the force of law. Being too flexible might not just get you fired, it might get you prosecuted. And there are so many rules. I'll give you one example scenario: a person leaves their job, and a subordinate steps up, takes on their workload, and does great. In a private company, you'd just promote the subordinate. You already know they can do the work, you retain institutional knowledge, and it's easier to hire junior positions. Efficient and effective. But in most federal agencies that would be illegal, as it might permit some form of corruption. The subordinate would have to keep doing the extra workload, while the supervisor requisitions a new position to replace the old one, and then runs a (highly regulated) open public application process. The subordinate can apply too, of course. This is not because the supervisor is some terrible inflexible or dumb person. The rules are just stricter and more burdensome in the government than in private enterprise. Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it's easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules. So: if you want people to act smarter in the government, you have to give them permission to act smarter. Firing has little to do with it. You have to give people the opportunity to try things and make mistakes in good faith.
- shaklee3 9y ago
  I agree with what you say, but you attacked OP for not providing evidence, and you didn't provide any either.
anonacct37 9y ago
> Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers In my limited experience this depends on the area. For example I know scientists who work for the government because environment and policy is their passion and for better or worse the EPA is/was the place to be. First choice not second. But I've also met developers that work for state government and... I don't think they could handle a private industry job for the most part.
guelo 9y ago
> It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon How do you know? I know a couple of talented, hard working statisticians that work for the census. They tell me a lot of good work gets done there. Well, at least until this year when they have suffered complete demoralization after a Trump political appointee crashed their china shop.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  Lots of private sector employees manage to deal with the fact that their CEO is an asshole.
  - taejo 9y ago
    For some agencies, it's not so much that the CEO might be an asshole (whether or not the president is an asshole is a fairly minor detail, IMO, as long as he can do the job). This is more like a pharmacologist working at a company making a vaccines being taken over by an anti-vaxxer.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      I don't understand that analogy. I don't keep up with all the news, but my impression is that Trump hasn't done all that much. He has rolled back some regulations that originated in executive orders, left some positions unfilled, while eliminating some other positions. Do you mean to say that the conflict is between his "this bureaucracy will be smaller" and the public servants' "this bureaucracy must be larger"? The growth of the bureaucracy is not the purpose of any of these bureaucracies, even if some bureaucrats have convinced themselves otherwise. Even if you don't care about bureaucracy size per se but only want to see more regulation, "moar is better" is also not a sensible philosophy of regulation, in a government that is theoretically representative of the will of the electorate. ISTM Trump governs exactly like any other republican would govern, which is nearly the same as any democrat would govern. His vilification and resulting election are a property of the media/content landscape more than they are due to anything particular about him. I stand by my initial impression, that the "problem" is that Trump is an asshole.
greggman 9y ago
Completely non sequitur but if you've never see it check out "Ikiru" by Akira Kurosawa. It's a movie about a government employee that's been doing nothing but serving the organization customers his whole life until he finds out he has cancer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/
shams93 9y ago
Yeah my dad worked for army corps of engineers his whole life while he got stability, never was laid off the work was so unchallenging he has dementia as a result in retirement.
- ptaipale 9y ago
  Sorry for that, but I don't think dementia is caused that way (although the claim is usable as a hyperbole in conversation).
forapurpose 9y ago
> It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics ... Is there any basis for this claim and the others? It's repeated by many, but that doesn't make it so. It doesn't describe the people I know that work in government.
crdoconnor 9y ago
>It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers. Government work is a kind of kabuki theatre, in which everyone agrees to praise the emperor's new clothes and ignore the boy who points out that he's naked. You've just described every large institution I've ever worked for. IME, large companies that were well insulated from competition were way more dysfunctional than the government, too.
a-saleh 9y ago
> Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this.
- LordKano 9y ago
  >I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this. This is certainly true of my last employer. Let's just say it's a famous Fortune 500 company, in heavy industry. I have seen a great many people promoted to their level of incompetence. I had the combination of having good technical skills but terrible organizational political skills. This company currently has a director of Cyber Security who doesn't know what ICMP is or why it's not feasible to block all ICMP traffic on internal firewalls & switches. Having no technical abilities but outstanding political skills have served her well.
JohnStrange 9y ago
Ahhhh ... it doesn't suffice to simply do your work without slacking, we need no less than the best and brightest for mostly boring office jobs in the government! Maybe some groups within the NSA need the best and brightest, but the government in general doesn't. A lot of government work concerns accounting and administrative tasks that are neither intellectually challenging nor do they have a clearcut equivalent in business. Most government agencies cannot be run like businesses, because there either is no market to speak with or the markets for their 'products' are not free and open. All you need is people who get their work done. > but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence That only works if you start at the very top. If you get what I mean.
BearGoesChirp 9y ago
>Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers. So you are saying that government employees are greater at serving the people who actually matter. Not the people who should matter, but the people who do. Imagine a startup that focused on its customers' customers (maybe once or twice more removed) instead of the people paying it. Would anyone be surprised if it gets out competed by a different startup focusing directly on their customers, even if at the cost of their customers' customers? This isn't unique to government. I've seen private organizations where employees will make choices that benefit their own department at the cost of the overall organization. I sometimes wonder if a natural selection-esque drive behind this is the reasons that inefficiency grows as organizations grow. > We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality. I think this would fix a lot of problems, but implementing it is going to be a nightmare because it isn't just the rank and file employees who you need to do this for. You almost have to start at the top, and from what little I've worked with governments, you are looking as a massive cycling of employees and a large loss of institutional knowledge. Also, given that much of how any government agency works is dictated by some of the same people who would be replaced under this, you are looking at having to pay people much more than even going market rate because of the extra costs of working the position. For example, hiring good government IT is not just going to mean having to pay market wages, but also having to account for paying people to work in dead languages and eldritch abominations built by poorly managed contractors who often still have rights to the software that prevent the government employees from doing major changes (lots of contract security).
michaelbuckbee 9y ago
These issues are often talked about in the abstract, but I've seen them first hand. I worked in military medicine, and the IT department at one of the hospitals was entirely staffed with (in some cases well-meaning), but wildly unqualified staff. Mostly this was people who were previously department secretaries and who turned out to be just generally incompetent, unmotivated or abrasive. As they couldn't be fired, they were promoted to IT. It was a dumping ground. Their "Database Administrator" literally didn't know what SQL was and that's how it was for everything. One of them told me to my face (I was a contractor there to train them on an app): "I'm only going to be here for 5 more years, so I don't really want to learn all this." Disgraceful.

latch 9y ago

I agree. I don't know if this is a problem in the US, but something else worth mentioning is that for many jobs, public sectors pay much more (higher pay, better pensions, more sick leave, better job security, ...). So it isn't just about firing people for incompetence. [1] If the govt should be increasing pay to match market rates, then it should also be decreasing pay to match market rates. [1] https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government-and-private-sector-compensation-in-ontario-2017 https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government...

metaphor 9y ago
> I don't know if this is a problem in the US... With respect to STEM career fields, that's a gratuitous no. For an idea of what a grunt GS-12/13 engineer's salary in Silicon Valley (highest locality adjustment in the country) looks like, see [1]; management is at GS-14/15 level. For the sake of completeness, other locality rates can be found here[2]. Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. Not all federal organizations apply the GS scale (the NSA may be one), but they don't deviate far from it either. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/18Tables/html/SF.aspx https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... [2] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2018/general-schedule/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
- fern12 9y ago
  >Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. This is true in some cases, but not all. I was hired at the GS-11/2 level without any prior government/military experience. A coworker of mine worked as a contractor for a few years, and was hired as a GS-15 last year. This is all in Silicon Valley (although he has a tech background, while I do not).
  - metaphor 9y ago
    To be sure, the time it takes to progress from Step 1 to 10 has no bearing on the grade and step in which an employee is hired at. If your colleague was hired into GS-15 Step 1, then it would still take this person the same 18 years to progress up the ladder to Step 10, assuming no irregular increases in pay. If coming from private industry, entry step is often negotiable; prior industry salary serves as basis, so it wouldn't surprise me if this person started at Step 10 (not that it matters after Step 5 based on Bay Area locality). In any case, GS-15 is a management position.
    - hiram112 9y ago
      Not all GS-15 are management positions.
forapurpose 9y ago
> https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government.. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/comparing-government.... Who is the Fraser Institute? Looking at their website, they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments. For example, playing down income inequality, complaining about difficult investing in oil and gas, "Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada", etc. Wanting to reduce public sector pay would fit with that.
- latch 9y ago
  It's definitely libertarian and conservative (by Canadian standards). But that doesn't mean it can't be right. FWIW, it's high on the list of known/established Canadian think tanks. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business has done its own reports on this [1]. This also seem to be true in the UK, but at least there they say the gap is closing [2]. The IFS report says what I've also observed and what this [3] economist article states: "Wage differentials are relatively small in the public sector. Lower-level workers, such as secretaries, are usually better paid than their private-sector equivalents, whereas higher-level workers are worse paid." [1] https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-public-sector-and-private-sector-wages https://www.cfib-fcei.ca/en/advocacy/wage-watch-comparison-p... [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40480766 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-40480766 [3] http://www.economist.com/node/17849199 http://www.economist.com/node/17849199
- pc86 9y ago
  > they seem to turn out libertarian and conservative arguments Better ignore everything they say, then! > Top 20 per cent of families pay 56 per cent of all taxes in Canada If that's wrong, then why not cite why? If it's correct, I suspect there's a good reason for it (e.g. progressive tax structures work and are objectively a good thing for society).
  - wfo 9y ago
    It is not wrong, but it is irrelevant except as propaganda: it frames the cost of government services as being borne by the wealthy and suggests the wealthy are being charitable already or that they should have some extra say over where their money goes. In fact it is the labor of the poor, extracted by the wealthy, then partially recovered from them in taxes that funds society. The wealthy hold the wealth not because they deserve it, but because they have used their power to take it. Choosing to talk about what the rich pay, rather than how they have siphoned wealth from society (i.e. how much of their ill gotten gains should they be allowed to keep, rather than how much do they give) is not a "fact" even if it is a true statement, it is a political position, a rhetorical strategy, and a framing device -- it is an assault on your brain, an attempt to trick you into accepting a conservative frame covertly without being honest about it: "I'm just stating facts, what's wrong with that?" Well, everything is wrong with that. There are trillions of facts yet they state this one. For a reason, obviously. You can reconstruct perfectly an ideological argument (of any ideology) based only on the sequence of facts they choose to present.

epmaybe 9y ago

Pedantic addendum, many government employees are still civilians.

wahern 9y ago

The legal floor of difficulty will always be greater with Federal employees as opposed to private employees as Federal employees have a property interest in their job. In other words, no Federal employee can be fired without some sort of paper trail. This is a constitutional Due Process issue and not something that Congress can easily address. That said, I think the difficulty--or at least the consequence of the difficulty--is exaggerated. As a practical matter every large organization must contend with red tape, much of it self-imposed. Most government agencies, much like most corporations, impose more red tape than the applicable law necessarily requires. Consistency and repeatability demand process. Red tape is merely an epithet for process that appears wasteful, especially out of context. IMO, government salaries suck because of the politics: Congress is more likely to increase expenditures if that money is laundered^Wfiltered through private contractors. Bureaucratic inefficiency is just a convenient narrative for why Congress prefers outsourcing. Over the past 50 years almost all the increase in expenditures for Federal work has gone to private contractors. The size of the federal civil service has increased by about 20-30%[1] since the 1960s, but budgets have increased several times that[2]. [1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-docu... [2] See, e.g., https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2017/assets/hist04z1.xls https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/omb... from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/omb/budget/Historicals https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/omb/budget/Historicals

pc86 9y ago
Serious question, why is being fired from your government job a due process issue while being fired from your private sector job is not? If tomorrow, all government jobs were made At Will and the pay increased accordingly, what property of due process has been violated?
- BearGoesChirp 9y ago
  If I fire you from your government job because you said something I didn't agree with, being that I'm an acting agent of the government, am I violating your First Amendment? This would not apply to a private employee firing someone for the same reason because they are not an acting government agent.

olingern 9y ago

The other side of this is the stability that a government job provides to low to middle income classes. The southern states where I grew up and went to college both lauded people who were able to secure government jobs. No matter how grueling or toxic a work environment becomes and no matter how inefficient workers become -- everyone stays in those jobs for the pension. In cities and areas where education in literacy is higher it's as if the market "pushes" that desire out, and the perception around having a government job is largely negative (excluding contractors). I wish there were a way to increase competition for gov jobs and change the perception of them without resorting to privatization.

philipov 9y ago
As long as policy is driven by lobbyists for private corporate interests, that will never happen. Keeping government jobs weak serves to make the labor market easier for them by reducing competition.
- olingern 9y ago
  Agreed on corporate interests, but I'm not sure about keeping government jobs weak. With the government, your target market is every citizen (plus visitors, immigrants, etc.). The private sector has to create its market by providing a product or service, whereas the government is obligated to provide some products and services. What incentive is there for government to squander talent and keep itself workforce weak?
  - philipov 9y ago
    It is not in government's interest, but government has to follow the laws passed by congress, and keeping budgets hamstrung so that it's impossible for agencies to compete with the private sector keeps the private sector lobby happy. Politicians' incentives are not to create effective government, but to keep getting elected. Having an ineffective government satisfies their financiers' desire to have less competition for top talent, and gives politicians an easy problem to campaign on fixing during election season, by never targeting the real problems. Break some windows so you can claim credit for trying to fix them, and then blame the opposition when it doesn't work. It's a game where everyone wins, except the dupes that keep voting for them.

snowwrestler 9y ago

It's popular to say things like some government employees are "folks who can't hack it in civilian life," but there's basically no evidence this is true. First of all, let's make sure we look at the full scope of civilian life with a sober eye. Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town. And any medium to large company has plenty of internal politics. Don't make the mistake of comparing the worst case of government to some idealized notion of private enterprise. Second, take a look at what happens to people who do leave the government. Very often, their salaries go up in the private sector. This is especially true for specialists like the folks who work at the NSA. Seems like they can hack it. Folks who have not worked for the government, or very close to it, have a hard time comprehending the fundamental differences between government and private enterprise. For one thing, when you work for the government, many rules of your job carry the force of law. Being too flexible might not just get you fired, it might get you prosecuted. And there are so many rules. I'll give you one example scenario: a person leaves their job, and a subordinate steps up, takes on their workload, and does great. In a private company, you'd just promote the subordinate. You already know they can do the work, you retain institutional knowledge, and it's easier to hire junior positions. Efficient and effective. But in most federal agencies that would be illegal, as it might permit some form of corruption. The subordinate would have to keep doing the extra workload, while the supervisor requisitions a new position to replace the old one, and then runs a (highly regulated) open public application process. The subordinate can apply too, of course. This is not because the supervisor is some terrible inflexible or dumb person. The rules are just stricter and more burdensome in the government than in private enterprise. Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it's easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules. So: if you want people to act smarter in the government, you have to give them permission to act smarter. Firing has little to do with it. You have to give people the opportunity to try things and make mistakes in good faith.

shaklee3 9y ago
I agree with what you say, but you attacked OP for not providing evidence, and you didn't provide any either.

anonacct37 9y ago

> Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers In my limited experience this depends on the area. For example I know scientists who work for the government because environment and policy is their passion and for better or worse the EPA is/was the place to be. First choice not second. But I've also met developers that work for state government and... I don't think they could handle a private industry job for the most part.

guelo 9y ago

> It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon How do you know? I know a couple of talented, hard working statisticians that work for the census. They tell me a lot of good work gets done there. Well, at least until this year when they have suffered complete demoralization after a Trump political appointee crashed their china shop.

jessaustin 9y ago
Lots of private sector employees manage to deal with the fact that their CEO is an asshole.
- taejo 9y ago
  For some agencies, it's not so much that the CEO might be an asshole (whether or not the president is an asshole is a fairly minor detail, IMO, as long as he can do the job). This is more like a pharmacologist working at a company making a vaccines being taken over by an anti-vaxxer.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    I don't understand that analogy. I don't keep up with all the news, but my impression is that Trump hasn't done all that much. He has rolled back some regulations that originated in executive orders, left some positions unfilled, while eliminating some other positions. Do you mean to say that the conflict is between his "this bureaucracy will be smaller" and the public servants' "this bureaucracy must be larger"? The growth of the bureaucracy is not the purpose of any of these bureaucracies, even if some bureaucrats have convinced themselves otherwise. Even if you don't care about bureaucracy size per se but only want to see more regulation, "moar is better" is also not a sensible philosophy of regulation, in a government that is theoretically representative of the will of the electorate. ISTM Trump governs exactly like any other republican would govern, which is nearly the same as any democrat would govern. His vilification and resulting election are a property of the media/content landscape more than they are due to anything particular about him. I stand by my initial impression, that the "problem" is that Trump is an asshole.

greggman 9y ago

Completely non sequitur but if you've never see it check out "Ikiru" by Akira Kurosawa. It's a movie about a government employee that's been doing nothing but serving the organization customers his whole life until he finds out he has cancer. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044741/

shams93 9y ago

Yeah my dad worked for army corps of engineers his whole life while he got stability, never was laid off the work was so unchallenging he has dementia as a result in retirement.

ptaipale 9y ago
Sorry for that, but I don't think dementia is caused that way (although the claim is usable as a hyperbole in conversation).

forapurpose 9y ago

> It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics ... Is there any basis for this claim and the others? It's repeated by many, but that doesn't make it so. It doesn't describe the people I know that work in government.

crdoconnor 9y ago

>It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers. Government work is a kind of kabuki theatre, in which everyone agrees to praise the emperor's new clothes and ignore the boy who points out that he's naked. You've just described every large institution I've ever worked for. IME, large companies that were well insulated from competition were way more dysfunctional than the government, too.

a-saleh 9y ago

> Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this.

LordKano 9y ago
>I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this. This is certainly true of my last employer. Let's just say it's a famous Fortune 500 company, in heavy industry. I have seen a great many people promoted to their level of incompetence. I had the combination of having good technical skills but terrible organizational political skills. This company currently has a director of Cyber Security who doesn't know what ICMP is or why it's not feasible to block all ICMP traffic on internal firewalls & switches. Having no technical abilities but outstanding political skills have served her well.

JohnStrange 9y ago

Ahhhh ... it doesn't suffice to simply do your work without slacking, we need no less than the best and brightest for mostly boring office jobs in the government! Maybe some groups within the NSA need the best and brightest, but the government in general doesn't. A lot of government work concerns accounting and administrative tasks that are neither intellectually challenging nor do they have a clearcut equivalent in business. Most government agencies cannot be run like businesses, because there either is no market to speak with or the markets for their 'products' are not free and open. All you need is people who get their work done. > but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence That only works if you start at the very top. If you get what I mean.

BearGoesChirp 9y ago

>Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers. So you are saying that government employees are greater at serving the people who actually matter. Not the people who should matter, but the people who do. Imagine a startup that focused on its customers' customers (maybe once or twice more removed) instead of the people paying it. Would anyone be surprised if it gets out competed by a different startup focusing directly on their customers, even if at the cost of their customers' customers? This isn't unique to government. I've seen private organizations where employees will make choices that benefit their own department at the cost of the overall organization. I sometimes wonder if a natural selection-esque drive behind this is the reasons that inefficiency grows as organizations grow. > We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality. I think this would fix a lot of problems, but implementing it is going to be a nightmare because it isn't just the rank and file employees who you need to do this for. You almost have to start at the top, and from what little I've worked with governments, you are looking as a massive cycling of employees and a large loss of institutional knowledge. Also, given that much of how any government agency works is dictated by some of the same people who would be replaced under this, you are looking at having to pay people much more than even going market rate because of the extra costs of working the position. For example, hiring good government IT is not just going to mean having to pay market wages, but also having to account for paying people to work in dead languages and eldritch abominations built by poorly managed contractors who often still have rights to the software that prevent the government employees from doing major changes (lots of contract security).

michaelbuckbee 9y ago

These issues are often talked about in the abstract, but I've seen them first hand. I worked in military medicine, and the IT department at one of the hospitals was entirely staffed with (in some cases well-meaning), but wildly unqualified staff. Mostly this was people who were previously department secretaries and who turned out to be just generally incompetent, unmotivated or abrasive. As they couldn't be fired, they were promoted to IT. It was a dumping ground. Their "Database Administrator" literally didn't know what SQL was and that's how it was for everything. One of them told me to my face (I was a contractor there to train them on an app): "I'm only going to be here for 5 more years, so I don't really want to learn all this." Disgraceful.