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When I worked for a regional water company, we were setup as a non-profit with a very old-school feel. Everything from dress codes and PTO to IBM mainframes. “
by maybeinsured 4y ago
When I worked for a regional water company, we were setup as a non-profit with a very old-school feel. Everything from dress codes and PTO to IBM mainframes.
“We’re like a family” was the motto and that was true, in the same way you have that dirt bag uncle and drama queen aunt that you invite to all the functions because they’re blood, we had the “he’s three years from retirement so we can’t get rid of them” relationships with tenured staff nearing their pension. We had a Network Analyst pulling around 90k a year that failed to train up over the years and fell behind to the point of uselessness. The entire job for this person was to “maintain our antivirus” which entailed installing and updating Macaffee, manually, on a few hundred machines. Maybe manning the help desk at lunch if they had to go out for calls here and there. No more, no less.
That, to me, is loyalty. It’s an awfully kind of loyalty in some sense but a beautiful kind at the same time.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoReads like a clear waste of taxpayer dollars, not beautiful to me in the slightest.
- AlbertCory 4y agoPeople take civil service jobs just because they'll get that kind of treatment: they're impossible to fire, and they'll get a pension just because they stayed around. You could say that's inefficient and it is, but given what pathetically little the civil service can offer you, "job security" really needs to be part of it.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThat does not need to be a part of it. Governments can choose to pay market rate for labor and not waste money in the long term.
- AlbertCory 4y ago.. and yet, almost none do. Maybe they see it differently from you?
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThey have the ability to punt today’s labor costs to future taxpayers via unaccounted debts in the form of underfunded defined benefit pensions and retiree healthcare. So what they see is promise low taxes today, get votes today, let tomorrow’s taxpayers deal with debt problems. I cannot blame them, the voters give the leaders the wrong incentives.
- AlbertCory 4y agoNow you've got it.
- nmfisher 4y agoSingapore does, which is why the government is so efficient and effective at almost everything it does.
- AlbertCory 4y agoSingapore has a land area equal to Lake Taupo in NZ.
- nmfisher 4y agoWhat does that have to do with the competence of the civil service?