5 ms·

I have no data to offer, but I do have a simple, heuristic model that might hint at GP's thinking process: 1. tolerance to short-term career uncertainty varies

I have no data to offer, but I do have a simple, heuristic model that might hint at GP's thinking process: 1. tolerance to short-term career uncertainty varies greatly between individuals (e.g. changing jobs, moving, having money in the bank to cushion the cashflow turbulence) 2. the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability 3. if level of tolerance to short-term disruption is strongly positively correlated to general 'ability', then the government will end up with on average less capable workers Not saying this is necessarily true, and certain fields are probably exceptions (do people who choose to become cryptographers prefer a quiet peaceful life?) but certainly the movers and shakers of industry are people who can stomach enormous amounts of short term risk. And there are also heuristic arguments to think (3) might be true on average. Like, if people with more money in the bank can take more short term risks, and it's usually the most capable people with that cash available (because they had more earning power in the past), then 'valuing career stability' might be a negative signal for candidate ability.

kodablah 9y ago
I too agree with GGP's characterization of the majority of government employees and I too have no evidence beyond anecdotal experience. But I think a reasonable model for evidence would be accountability information. I'll settle for numbers on government employee termination for dissatisfactory work by department (I'm sure it's somewhere, link anyone?). If, as I suspect, termination rates are very minimal in areas requiring skills like IT, I think we can either assume accountability is lower than the private sector or they magically hire the best on first try most of the time. Based on my naive knowledge built from discussions with career-public-sector employees, I suspect the former.
- metaphor 9y ago
  > ...I think we can either assume... If I may posit a third for consideration: for-cause termination is such an insurmountable bureaucratic hurdle that supervisors pragmatically opt to pursue inter/intradepartmental transfer, effectively making the employee "someone else's problem".
  - kodablah 9y ago
    I'm including that in the lack of accountability. If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain. Accountability is lowered when unenforceable.
    - metaphor 9y ago
      > I'm including that in the lack of accountability. Fair enough and thanks for the clarification. In that case, I definitely agree with your perspective, both logically and anecdotally.
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      >If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain. And, if the top of the organization is dysfunctional, making termination much easier (especially where 'easier' means 'no obligation to cite justification') just gives the psychos and empire builders more unchecked power. If termination were easier but 80% based upon a majority of coworkers signing a document stating "this person is not doing their job properly" you could raise accountability and euthanize the empire builders at the same time, but somehow I don't think when they say "it's too hard to fire people" that's what they're aiming for.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes. The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be done where they can do better relative to the role. I'm not saying that's always done, e.g. if the gap between abilities and performance is huge. But in my experience it usually can. And often, if things like performance improvement plans doesn't work, it costs less to simply freeze pay etc. for such employees until inflation does its magic and they're no longer expensive for their reduced responsibility or they decide to leave (but such employees often hang on and quietly accepts their diminished responsibility because they realize they were lucky not to get fired). I don't believe in firing outside of extreme cases, and neither have most of the companies I've worked in, but that's not the same as not being prepared to take action to move people out of roles they're unable to perform well. Personally I see it as a sign of an unhealthy corporate culture and poor hiring if a company need to regularly fire more than a very tiny proportion of employees.
  - kodablah 9y ago
    > Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. I never said it was. My comparison would be on termination for dissatisfactory work. Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments). I worked at IBM, I saw it plenty. Peer quality and management's tolerating of low quality work are among the many reasons I left. But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people? Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture? Many companies can't afford waste, and as strange as it sounds, can't often afford low-salary, low-skilled labor. Humans are our biggest expenditure, we can't just keep adding indiscriminately even with modest growth lest we hurt our customers with increased prices. Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).
    - 9y ago
snowwrestler 9y ago
The movers and shakers of government in the U.S. are the elected officials and their political appointees. A lot of them actually do come from private industry or academia. The staff of government have to work within whatever decisions get handed down to them from the political process. The political process does not always prioritize staff flexibility and initiative. To the contrary, it's a favorite pastime of politicians to play up public distrust of the government. In terms of government staff, a lot of people go into the government not because it is generically stable, but because it's the only place you can do certain work. If you want to manage a public park, you have to work for a government. If you want to catch criminals (and your name is not Sherlock Holmes), you have to work for a government. If you want to fly fighter jets, you have to work for a government. If you want to create policy and regulations, you have to work for a government. Speaking of the NSA--if you want to legally hack into a bunch of stuff, you have to work for a government. In competencies one can do anywhere, like deliveries or contract management, I think you're onto something with your idea of seeking stability. But I think the attribution might be backward. It's not "the government is made inefficient and inflexible by the lower quality of people who work there." It's more like "the government is made inefficient and inflexible by political law making, which makes it hard to attract the most dynamic people."
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  You make it sound like "political law making" is a problem and some other form of non-political law making would be a superior solution. The performance of the civil services in dictatorships indicates otherwise: they're invariably more corrupt, more prone to latching on to bad policies and refusing to give them up even in the face of disaster and so on. Governments don't refuse to fire incompetent people because of "political law making". They refuse because firing people is hard, emotionally draining, legally risky and something that managers will only do when properly incentivised. Without competition or profit there is no incentive to rock the boat and pick a fight at work, so why bother? Some noble idea of higher quality public service? Fat chance.
  - snowwrestler 9y ago
    No, my point is not about democracy vs dictatorship or something. My point is that in government, there is a hard divide between the people who make the rules, and the people who implement the rules. The people who make the rules are rewarded for distrusting and limiting the capabilities of the staff. In private industry, it's the opposite. Executives ultimately are judged by the performance of their staff, and they have great flexibility in how they organize and delegate authority down the chain. Firing is not the key secret to success. Dictators can fire anyone whenever they want, but as you point out, their governments are not necessarily any better, and in many ways worse, than the U.S.
watwut 9y ago
"if level of tolerance to short-term disruption is strongly positively correlated to general 'ability'" That is seriously odd assumption. It sounds like confusing "personality trait that appeals to me on emotional level" with ability. Plenty of inable unstable people around as far as I can tell. Plenty of low ability risk takers too.
- frobozz 9y ago
  I agree. Most of the least competent developers I have worked with in the past have been contractors. I assume the instability appeals to them because they can move on before anyone realises what a pig's ear they have made of everything. Most of the highly competent developers I have worked with have spent 7 or more years in one organisation. From my anecdotal experience, therefore, tolerance to short-term disruption is negatively correlated to ability. However, I would be reluctant to make any assertion that links potentially unrelated traits like these. In my (again, anecdotal) experience, organisations with more stable positions have a greater proportion of people who value that stability for its own sake e.g. those with primary care responsibilities (e.g. for children or disabled dependents); those with voluntary commitments (e.g. scout leaders, special constables); and people who have cause to worry about discrimination (e.g. those from demographics that are poorly represented elsewhere in their profession). That correlation would be one that I would be slightly more comfortable to assert.
- Chris_Jay 9y ago
  Would intolerance to a level of risk typically encountered in civilian life not make someone unable to function there? My own experience in the public service was not so much of people unable to do their jobs but people unmotivated by them. My welcoming speech included the warning 'don't get attached to outcomes', and this was in a department disliked by the elected party where a lot of people had already been forced into early retirement.
  - watwut 9y ago
    > Would intolerance to a level of risk typically encountered in civilian life not make someone unable to function there? I think it is rarely that extreme. Preference for stability rarely means complete inability to deal with instable situations. Also, let's not overstate instability of average tech job. It is not that bad.
zorpner 9y ago
it's usually the most capable people with that cash available (because they had more earning power in the past) It's far more typically because of inherited wealth, which has no bearing on ability but is quite often misinterpreted as such.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  Well, this might be a very unpopular opinion, but if generating wealth correlates to intelligence and ability, and these traits are transmissible to children (either genetically, or through practices that parents teach to their children, or through higher educational investment), then you would expect a positive correlation between ability and amount of parental wealth. This above argument could easily be wrong, but assuming that inherited wealth reveals nothing about ability on average seems like a rather strong claim. Whether it's fair that parents can try to give their children an advantage, of course, is a totally separate question.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    I know that's just anecdata and not representative, but: Donald Trump.
    - UncleEntity 9y ago
      Dude got himself elected while being opposed by both political parties and the media...and he's a billionaire to boot.
      - vidarh 9y ago
        He's a billionaire who has spent decades producing a return worse than if he'd just put the money he got from his dad in a fund. His fortune is not a demonstration of ability.
        auntienomen 9y ago
        He's functionally rich, but we have no proof that he's really a billionaire. His finances are opaque. We don't know how indebted he is. We don't know what his revenues are. (Crain's reported a few months ago that Trump Org has historically overstated revenues by a factor of 10.)
gaius 9y ago
the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability I don’t think this is true anymore, at least in the UK you’re likely to be TUPE’d to Capita or Accenture at the drop of a hat, then laid off in 2-3 years anyway when your job is offshored. GCHQ has similar problems recruiting. And they also have to contend with the class system, exacerbating it.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  The class system? In 2017, really? Or do you mean that GCHQ chooses to hire exclusively from the limited pool of Oxbridge graduates and can't change their internal culture such that they could hire school leavers at 16?
  - gaius 9y ago
    It’s still part of the civil service at the end of the day. The pool of people who can both cyberattack our enemies and conjugate Latin verbs is a very small one!
    - geocar 9y ago
      I read this in Sir Humphrey’s voice. Thanks for that. You’re not wrong though. I know someone denied an MOD posting because they were Irish and had a chemistry degree.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    I think they meant the principal civil service in general from what I see the intelligence arms are are a bit more open to hiring non standard recruits. BTW the NSA equivalent does hire school leavers and even advertises on the busses locally as I live in spook county (befordshire)
  - fsoj 9y ago
    Unsurprisingly this is complete rubbish. Requirements We’re looking for passionate individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds, who are intuitive and curious about technology, computer networks and security, and want to make a real difference to the UK. To apply for these roles, you have, or expect to obtain shortly, a degree in any Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths subject or a Bachelor’s or Masters’ degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security. Alternatively, you have a thorough understanding of networks and protocols, including experience of securing and protecting software and networks. Along with an aptitude for problem-solving, you like to keep up with changing technology, and are able to grasp computing concepts and to apply your knowledge above and beyond academia.
forapurpose 9y ago
> heuristic These aren't heuristics, they are all speculative. We can speculate many other reasons too: For example, people value career stability when they have children and other long-term, serious obligations. Many people work in government because they face discrimination in hiring and promotion in the private sector, such as women and minorities. Even Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg says that's why she ended up in government. Finally, it may be hard for HN readers to imagine, but most people don't seek the life of an SV entrepreneur. It's not that they would do it if they could and settled for something else; they want something else. I could add more speculation, but without some data I don't think I'm adding much.
bryanrasmussen 9y ago
in my experience in non-US government job, it not only offers more stability but also better retirement benefits, as such pay is not as far off as it might seem. Furthermore I'm in a country with paid vacations, but the Governmental vacations offered longer paid vacations - not sure if they do this in the U.S but I could expect they actually do offer paid vacations? Which would be something people might value.

kodablah 9y ago

I too agree with GGP's characterization of the majority of government employees and I too have no evidence beyond anecdotal experience. But I think a reasonable model for evidence would be accountability information. I'll settle for numbers on government employee termination for dissatisfactory work by department (I'm sure it's somewhere, link anyone?). If, as I suspect, termination rates are very minimal in areas requiring skills like IT, I think we can either assume accountability is lower than the private sector or they magically hire the best on first try most of the time. Based on my naive knowledge built from discussions with career-public-sector employees, I suspect the former.

metaphor 9y ago
> ...I think we can either assume... If I may posit a third for consideration: for-cause termination is such an insurmountable bureaucratic hurdle that supervisors pragmatically opt to pursue inter/intradepartmental transfer, effectively making the employee "someone else's problem".
- kodablah 9y ago
  I'm including that in the lack of accountability. If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain. Accountability is lowered when unenforceable.
  - metaphor 9y ago
    > I'm including that in the lack of accountability. Fair enough and thanks for the clarification. In that case, I definitely agree with your perspective, both logically and anecdotally.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain. And, if the top of the organization is dysfunctional, making termination much easier (especially where 'easier' means 'no obligation to cite justification') just gives the psychos and empire builders more unchecked power. If termination were easier but 80% based upon a majority of coworkers signing a document stating "this person is not doing their job properly" you could raise accountability and euthanize the empire builders at the same time, but somehow I don't think when they say "it's too hard to fire people" that's what they're aiming for.
vidarh 9y ago
Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes. The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be done where they can do better relative to the role. I'm not saying that's always done, e.g. if the gap between abilities and performance is huge. But in my experience it usually can. And often, if things like performance improvement plans doesn't work, it costs less to simply freeze pay etc. for such employees until inflation does its magic and they're no longer expensive for their reduced responsibility or they decide to leave (but such employees often hang on and quietly accepts their diminished responsibility because they realize they were lucky not to get fired). I don't believe in firing outside of extreme cases, and neither have most of the companies I've worked in, but that's not the same as not being prepared to take action to move people out of roles they're unable to perform well. Personally I see it as a sign of an unhealthy corporate culture and poor hiring if a company need to regularly fire more than a very tiny proportion of employees.
- kodablah 9y ago
  > Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. I never said it was. My comparison would be on termination for dissatisfactory work. Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments). I worked at IBM, I saw it plenty. Peer quality and management's tolerating of low quality work are among the many reasons I left. But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people? Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture? Many companies can't afford waste, and as strange as it sounds, can't often afford low-salary, low-skilled labor. Humans are our biggest expenditure, we can't just keep adding indiscriminately even with modest growth lest we hurt our customers with increased prices. Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).
  - 9y ago

snowwrestler 9y ago

The movers and shakers of government in the U.S. are the elected officials and their political appointees. A lot of them actually do come from private industry or academia. The staff of government have to work within whatever decisions get handed down to them from the political process. The political process does not always prioritize staff flexibility and initiative. To the contrary, it's a favorite pastime of politicians to play up public distrust of the government. In terms of government staff, a lot of people go into the government not because it is generically stable, but because it's the only place you can do certain work. If you want to manage a public park, you have to work for a government. If you want to catch criminals (and your name is not Sherlock Holmes), you have to work for a government. If you want to fly fighter jets, you have to work for a government. If you want to create policy and regulations, you have to work for a government. Speaking of the NSA--if you want to legally hack into a bunch of stuff, you have to work for a government. In competencies one can do anywhere, like deliveries or contract management, I think you're onto something with your idea of seeking stability. But I think the attribution might be backward. It's not "the government is made inefficient and inflexible by the lower quality of people who work there." It's more like "the government is made inefficient and inflexible by political law making, which makes it hard to attract the most dynamic people."

peoplewindow 9y ago
You make it sound like "political law making" is a problem and some other form of non-political law making would be a superior solution. The performance of the civil services in dictatorships indicates otherwise: they're invariably more corrupt, more prone to latching on to bad policies and refusing to give them up even in the face of disaster and so on. Governments don't refuse to fire incompetent people because of "political law making". They refuse because firing people is hard, emotionally draining, legally risky and something that managers will only do when properly incentivised. Without competition or profit there is no incentive to rock the boat and pick a fight at work, so why bother? Some noble idea of higher quality public service? Fat chance.
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  No, my point is not about democracy vs dictatorship or something. My point is that in government, there is a hard divide between the people who make the rules, and the people who implement the rules. The people who make the rules are rewarded for distrusting and limiting the capabilities of the staff. In private industry, it's the opposite. Executives ultimately are judged by the performance of their staff, and they have great flexibility in how they organize and delegate authority down the chain. Firing is not the key secret to success. Dictators can fire anyone whenever they want, but as you point out, their governments are not necessarily any better, and in many ways worse, than the U.S.

watwut 9y ago

"if level of tolerance to short-term disruption is strongly positively correlated to general 'ability'" That is seriously odd assumption. It sounds like confusing "personality trait that appeals to me on emotional level" with ability. Plenty of inable unstable people around as far as I can tell. Plenty of low ability risk takers too.

frobozz 9y ago
I agree. Most of the least competent developers I have worked with in the past have been contractors. I assume the instability appeals to them because they can move on before anyone realises what a pig's ear they have made of everything. Most of the highly competent developers I have worked with have spent 7 or more years in one organisation. From my anecdotal experience, therefore, tolerance to short-term disruption is negatively correlated to ability. However, I would be reluctant to make any assertion that links potentially unrelated traits like these. In my (again, anecdotal) experience, organisations with more stable positions have a greater proportion of people who value that stability for its own sake e.g. those with primary care responsibilities (e.g. for children or disabled dependents); those with voluntary commitments (e.g. scout leaders, special constables); and people who have cause to worry about discrimination (e.g. those from demographics that are poorly represented elsewhere in their profession). That correlation would be one that I would be slightly more comfortable to assert.
Chris_Jay 9y ago
Would intolerance to a level of risk typically encountered in civilian life not make someone unable to function there? My own experience in the public service was not so much of people unable to do their jobs but people unmotivated by them. My welcoming speech included the warning 'don't get attached to outcomes', and this was in a department disliked by the elected party where a lot of people had already been forced into early retirement.
- watwut 9y ago
  > Would intolerance to a level of risk typically encountered in civilian life not make someone unable to function there? I think it is rarely that extreme. Preference for stability rarely means complete inability to deal with instable situations. Also, let's not overstate instability of average tech job. It is not that bad.

zorpner 9y ago

it's usually the most capable people with that cash available (because they had more earning power in the past) It's far more typically because of inherited wealth, which has no bearing on ability but is quite often misinterpreted as such.

smallnamespace 9y ago
Well, this might be a very unpopular opinion, but if generating wealth correlates to intelligence and ability, and these traits are transmissible to children (either genetically, or through practices that parents teach to their children, or through higher educational investment), then you would expect a positive correlation between ability and amount of parental wealth. This above argument could easily be wrong, but assuming that inherited wealth reveals nothing about ability on average seems like a rather strong claim. Whether it's fair that parents can try to give their children an advantage, of course, is a totally separate question.
- majewsky 9y ago
  I know that's just anecdata and not representative, but: Donald Trump.
  - UncleEntity 9y ago
    Dude got himself elected while being opposed by both political parties and the media...and he's a billionaire to boot.
    - vidarh 9y ago
      He's a billionaire who has spent decades producing a return worse than if he'd just put the money he got from his dad in a fund. His fortune is not a demonstration of ability.
      - auntienomen 9y ago
        He's functionally rich, but we have no proof that he's really a billionaire. His finances are opaque. We don't know how indebted he is. We don't know what his revenues are. (Crain's reported a few months ago that Trump Org has historically overstated revenues by a factor of 10.)

gaius 9y ago

the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability I don’t think this is true anymore, at least in the UK you’re likely to be TUPE’d to Capita or Accenture at the drop of a hat, then laid off in 2-3 years anyway when your job is offshored. GCHQ has similar problems recruiting. And they also have to contend with the class system, exacerbating it.

peoplewindow 9y ago
The class system? In 2017, really? Or do you mean that GCHQ chooses to hire exclusively from the limited pool of Oxbridge graduates and can't change their internal culture such that they could hire school leavers at 16?
- gaius 9y ago
  It’s still part of the civil service at the end of the day. The pool of people who can both cyberattack our enemies and conjugate Latin verbs is a very small one!
  - geocar 9y ago
    I read this in Sir Humphrey’s voice. Thanks for that. You’re not wrong though. I know someone denied an MOD posting because they were Irish and had a chemistry degree.
- walshemj 9y ago
  I think they meant the principal civil service in general from what I see the intelligence arms are are a bit more open to hiring non standard recruits. BTW the NSA equivalent does hire school leavers and even advertises on the busses locally as I live in spook county (befordshire)
- fsoj 9y ago
  Unsurprisingly this is complete rubbish. Requirements We’re looking for passionate individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds, who are intuitive and curious about technology, computer networks and security, and want to make a real difference to the UK. To apply for these roles, you have, or expect to obtain shortly, a degree in any Science, Technology, Engineering or Maths subject or a Bachelor’s or Masters’ degree incorporating ethical hacking, digital forensics or information security. Alternatively, you have a thorough understanding of networks and protocols, including experience of securing and protecting software and networks. Along with an aptitude for problem-solving, you like to keep up with changing technology, and are able to grasp computing concepts and to apply your knowledge above and beyond academia.

forapurpose 9y ago

> heuristic These aren't heuristics, they are all speculative. We can speculate many other reasons too: For example, people value career stability when they have children and other long-term, serious obligations. Many people work in government because they face discrimination in hiring and promotion in the private sector, such as women and minorities. Even Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg says that's why she ended up in government. Finally, it may be hard for HN readers to imagine, but most people don't seek the life of an SV entrepreneur. It's not that they would do it if they could and settled for something else; they want something else. I could add more speculation, but without some data I don't think I'm adding much.

bryanrasmussen 9y ago

in my experience in non-US government job, it not only offers more stability but also better retirement benefits, as such pay is not as far off as it might seem. Furthermore I'm in a country with paid vacations, but the Governmental vacations offered longer paid vacations - not sure if they do this in the U.S but I could expect they actually do offer paid vacations? Which would be something people might value.