U.S. Civil Service on the way out, at least at Homeland Security

1. Nobody cares about your job performance. You can't be fired. The only thing you have to do to get promoted is not piss the wrong people off.

2. Pension. It's not a bad deal. Some states don't even tax your federal pension income.

3. For upper crusties, like GS-14s/15s and above, you can actually get hired on at pretty fancy fucking salaries. The govt. figured out a while back the only way to attract decent executive talent was to match offers from private industry, so they built in extra flexibility to the system at the high level.

But really the one I see most effective in the marketplace is #1. If you show up on time, and you don't like sell secrets or something, you're set for life. That's all that matters. People come in to work for the government with high ideals, straight out of college, and then after about 4 years they realize this is a complete and total hock of shit and the commute sucks because government offices are all in pricey areas and you can't afford housing in this part of the country on the GS payscale.

So I'd think this idea was great, if it was intended to let DHS compete for talent with salaries and benefits packages that are actually comepetitive in the marketplace, and designed so that managers could terminate employees based on actual performance and expectations instead of having to wait for the incompetents to get caught doing something illegal. But it's not going to do that. The culture isn't there. The culture is going to simply reinforce and worsen the problems that already exist, and then 10 years down the road when the DHS is (still) the saddest, most pathetically disappointing and poorly-performing federal agency in town, everybody will say "pay banding!" and they'll go right back to the old system. Nobody will ever bring up the idea of paying new hires a living wage, or firing people who have done exactly nothing for 18 years. It's simply unheard of.

There is one dude at one of the agencies that acts like he has never done a record search before everytime I see him, even though THAT IS HIS ONLY JOB. and supposedly he is the only one that can do it out of like 40 floors of people. Plus he always tries to photocopy something that is illegal to photocopy and when I tell people this they just brush it off, because he is SENILE and they feel bad.

I like police offficers. Except the ones that go off on a tangent about how BUsh is so great and that supporting him is real loyalty to the US right there.

However, when she was getting ready to retire, she started telling me stories about her co-workers that are not at all unlike what TOMBOT has described upthread. There were the co-workers who would spend most of the day chatting on the phone to various friends and relatives and then snap up OT first chance they get and the co-workers who called in sick anytime their precious little darlings (i.e. their demon offspring) had any little bit of trouble going through life. Here's the thing, though -- ever since I entered the workplace, I realized that those types of individuals exist pretty much everywhere except at the really slave-driving places, where everyone's pretty much grim-faced and trying to commiserate with each other on a subconscious level. I mean, yeah, some of these civ service people do take advantage of the fact that you'd pretty much have to go as far as being a threat to national security in order to get fired, but I don't recall many examples of people taking advantage of the civ service situation. In fact, it seemed like a slightly more stringent environment than that of the outside.

The GS pay scale does seem to make absolutely no sense, though. And yeah, the entry-level pay is laughable; I get more for my 35 hour a week "part-time" job than I was offered with a full-on, 40 or 40-plus hour week job with the civ service job I was offered right out of college in 2002 (after earning that first, now-useless degree, that is). Though the benefits are robust and I'd not at all be averse to picking up a civ service job in the future should the chances of advancement at my current workplace become nil once I'm able to go work full-time. That is, if civ service still exists by then.

and then 10 years down the road when the DHS is (still) the saddest, most pathetically disappointing and poorly-performing federal agency in town

sup

lol

People come in to work for the government with high ideals, straight out of college, and then after about 4 years they realize this is a complete and total hock of shit

sad otm

I've got a few people on my team nearing that mile marker, ugh

granted, now I also know how bad the contractor life can get, the grass is brown everywhere

Interesting how this story just died out, btw.
Five of the unions brought suit and DHS lost, apparently: https://fcw.com/Articles/2006/08/11/DHS-No-appeals-court-rehearing-for-MaxHR.aspx
Followed by a rebrand (typical): http://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2007/02/dhs-scales-back-pay-for-performance-ambitions/23825/
And eventually Congress cut funding for the "Human Capital Operations Plan" altogether for FY 2008: http://www.govexec.com/defense/2008/01/homeland-security-drops-proposed-labor-relations-plans/26112/

Larry Orluskie, the spokesperson quoted in a couple of those links, passed away this summer. Odd to see his name on things from 10 years ago.