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I recently read that the CCP only accepts the top students whereas mostly i see the top students avoiding government bureaucracy in favor of private industry as

I recently read that the CCP only accepts the top students whereas mostly i see the top students avoiding government bureaucracy in favor of private industry as it is more lucrative and there are not many prestigious positions in public service. I believe the atmosphere within these institutions isn’t conducive to action either. Put your time in and get your pension. Do nothing and nothing bad will happen, try something big and it might fail and you look worse than everyone who did nothing. So we need to start offering 300k/yr for middle level public servants just like programmers in California.

Consultant32452 6y ago
>So we need to start offering 300k/yr for middle level public servants just like programmers in California. I agree with this, but you have to accompany that with making it just as easy to fire a public servant as it is to fire a programmer.
- tempsy 6y ago
  I check San Francisco City worker salaries on occasion (all public) and there are plenty of people making $300K+ a year for a secure job with a pension and not super stressful.
  - Consultant32452 6y ago
    In my city pay rate is entirely based on tenure. People just starting out for the city have very low pay, people about to retire have insane salaries. Maybe it is more helpful to just generically say compensation and ease of removal needs to compete with the market.
    - tempsy 6y ago
      I don’t think if you increased the pay you’d start seeing creative people at the entry level suddenly want to work for the government. The bigger problem is with elected offices. We as a society aren’t wired to desire change. We generally prefer incumbents and people who maintain the status quo over anyone “radical” which is a dirty word in politics.
      - solidasparagus 6y ago
        I went into the private sector over the public sector solely due to pay. If you do well in the private sector in your first couple of years, your compensation will shoot up. In the public sector your compensation is tied to years of experience so when I wanted to work for the gov, they required me to take a demotion and take only 40% of what I got in the private sector.
        tempsy 6y ago
        Purely Extrinsically motivated people are not going to solve the build problem.
        solidasparagus 6y ago
        Everyone has bills and debt. Make the compensation closer and intrinsic motivation can come into play.
- xxpor 6y ago
  Au contraire, it's far too easy to fire people in government for issues that have systemic root causes due to the nature of politics and public pressure. So the poor schmuck who pushed the button gets fired, and that's the end of it. No deeper evaluation or reports on how to prevent the issue from occuring in the future. This leads to extreme aversion to any risk taking and creates bureaucracy. This is opposed to the classic stories about junior engineers who lose their companies money, go into the bosses office expecting to be fired, and the boss says "why would we fire you? we just spent $X training you".
  - stx 6y ago
    I see many of these same problems in large companies. Every one just tries to avoid being blamed. Those best at avoiding blame while assigning it to others rise up. Its politics.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - xxpor 6y ago
      And I would guess that the companies that have "blame" cultures end up doing much worse than companies that have "fixing" cultures.
  - michaelkeenan 6y ago
    This sounded wrong to me so I googled and according to the first source I found, the layoff and discharge rate is 1.3% in the private sector, and 0.4% across federal, state, and local government. The data come from Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://freebeacon.com/issues/workers-private-sector-3-times-likely-get-fired-govt-workers/ https://freebeacon.com/issues/workers-private-sector-3-times...
tempsy 6y ago
Uhm have you looked at some government salaries? It’s all posted online. In San Francisco there are plenty of government workers making well over $300K/year for a safe secure job that you can coast in. That is part of the problem.
- sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
  Can you link to the data you're talking about? I did some searching and I see about 20 people making more than $300k a year and almost all of them are director level positions.
  - WillPostForFood 6y ago
    https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=410&year=2018 https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=4... As of 2018, about 90 people making 300k or more in SF County, probably over 100 by now.
    - Ancalagon 6y ago
      90 or 100 seems small in comparison to the number of tech workers in SF making that kind of cash
      - tempsy 6y ago
        Most of that is equity comp for engineers. For government you have to factor in job security, generous pension and benefits, and guaranteed annual pay raises. Engineers have none of those things.
      - rjpn 6y ago
        Not small if you consider total govt. employees in SF.
        chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        The link that showed the 90 employees making $300K or over is a link to a page about San Francisco city employees specifically, and says there's 40,951 total. (And it is 90 exactly according to that page.) So is 0.2% of workers earning that much a lot compared to tech companies, do you think? How about employees making $200K or over? That's 1790, or just about 4%. $100K or over? 15997 employees, or around 39%. So over 60% of SF city employees make under $100K. The median salary, in fact, is just under $86K. I could be wrong, but I suspect that's lower than Facebook's median salary.
ar813 6y ago
Singapore is similar, in that pay for top public servants is competitive with top private sector pay. And they try to attract the best and brightest.
ardy42 6y ago
> I recently read that the CCP only accepts the top students My understanding is that's not really true. They do ask a few high-achieving students to join, but those people tend to not be very active in the Party. They accept a lot more based on personal connections (first) and bribery (second).

Consultant32452 6y ago

>So we need to start offering 300k/yr for middle level public servants just like programmers in California. I agree with this, but you have to accompany that with making it just as easy to fire a public servant as it is to fire a programmer.

tempsy 6y ago
I check San Francisco City worker salaries on occasion (all public) and there are plenty of people making $300K+ a year for a secure job with a pension and not super stressful.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  In my city pay rate is entirely based on tenure. People just starting out for the city have very low pay, people about to retire have insane salaries. Maybe it is more helpful to just generically say compensation and ease of removal needs to compete with the market.
  - tempsy 6y ago
    I don’t think if you increased the pay you’d start seeing creative people at the entry level suddenly want to work for the government. The bigger problem is with elected offices. We as a society aren’t wired to desire change. We generally prefer incumbents and people who maintain the status quo over anyone “radical” which is a dirty word in politics.
    - solidasparagus 6y ago
      I went into the private sector over the public sector solely due to pay. If you do well in the private sector in your first couple of years, your compensation will shoot up. In the public sector your compensation is tied to years of experience so when I wanted to work for the gov, they required me to take a demotion and take only 40% of what I got in the private sector.
      - tempsy 6y ago
        Purely Extrinsically motivated people are not going to solve the build problem.
        solidasparagus 6y ago
        Everyone has bills and debt. Make the compensation closer and intrinsic motivation can come into play.
xxpor 6y ago
Au contraire, it's far too easy to fire people in government for issues that have systemic root causes due to the nature of politics and public pressure. So the poor schmuck who pushed the button gets fired, and that's the end of it. No deeper evaluation or reports on how to prevent the issue from occuring in the future. This leads to extreme aversion to any risk taking and creates bureaucracy. This is opposed to the classic stories about junior engineers who lose their companies money, go into the bosses office expecting to be fired, and the boss says "why would we fire you? we just spent $X training you".
- stx 6y ago
  I see many of these same problems in large companies. Every one just tries to avoid being blamed. Those best at avoiding blame while assigning it to others rise up. Its politics.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - xxpor 6y ago
    And I would guess that the companies that have "blame" cultures end up doing much worse than companies that have "fixing" cultures.
- michaelkeenan 6y ago
  This sounded wrong to me so I googled and according to the first source I found, the layoff and discharge rate is 1.3% in the private sector, and 0.4% across federal, state, and local government. The data come from Bureau of Labor Statistics: https://freebeacon.com/issues/workers-private-sector-3-times-likely-get-fired-govt-workers/ https://freebeacon.com/issues/workers-private-sector-3-times...

tempsy 6y ago

Uhm have you looked at some government salaries? It’s all posted online. In San Francisco there are plenty of government workers making well over $300K/year for a safe secure job that you can coast in. That is part of the problem.

sfkdjf9j3j 6y ago
Can you link to the data you're talking about? I did some searching and I see about 20 people making more than $300k a year and almost all of them are director level positions.
- WillPostForFood 6y ago
  https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=410&year=2018 https://publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/Cities/City.aspx?entityid=4... As of 2018, about 90 people making 300k or more in SF County, probably over 100 by now.
  - Ancalagon 6y ago
    90 or 100 seems small in comparison to the number of tech workers in SF making that kind of cash
    - tempsy 6y ago
      Most of that is equity comp for engineers. For government you have to factor in job security, generous pension and benefits, and guaranteed annual pay raises. Engineers have none of those things.
    - rjpn 6y ago
      Not small if you consider total govt. employees in SF.
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        The link that showed the 90 employees making $300K or over is a link to a page about San Francisco city employees specifically, and says there's 40,951 total. (And it is 90 exactly according to that page.) So is 0.2% of workers earning that much a lot compared to tech companies, do you think? How about employees making $200K or over? That's 1790, or just about 4%. $100K or over? 15997 employees, or around 39%. So over 60% of SF city employees make under $100K. The median salary, in fact, is just under $86K. I could be wrong, but I suspect that's lower than Facebook's median salary.

ar813 6y ago

Singapore is similar, in that pay for top public servants is competitive with top private sector pay. And they try to attract the best and brightest.

ardy42 6y ago

> I recently read that the CCP only accepts the top students My understanding is that's not really true. They do ask a few high-achieving students to join, but those people tend to not be very active in the Party. They accept a lot more based on personal connections (first) and bribery (second).