Why do some private sector workers hate Fed workers so much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do some private sector workers hate Fed workers so much?

I have never worked in the public sector. I don't spend my days worrying about Americans who work in other sectors. I wish everyone luck.

But the absolute hatred toward Fed workers is borderline psychotic if you want my honest opinion? Why is that? I just don't get it.

Long story short: they are losers.

Only losers are fixated on what other people are getting instead of moving forward in their own lives. They don't read, they watch TV segments. They don't know anything about the government but they have big feelings about it.

Only losers feed on angry propaganda about feds, "welfare queens," "illegals," etc. These are all the same people.

There are so, so many losers in America right now. They are miserable people who want everyone else to be miserable. We know what they support and who they vote for. They are willing to destroy the entire country just to punish all of the various groups of people they find unworthy of humane treatment. We still have to live with these people and they have a lot of power so I don't know how we move forward as a country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a former fed in various agencies and supervisory positions - and as somebody with a variety of private sector experience both prior to and following my decade as a fed - there is a much higher tolerance for low performance and misbehavior in federal agencies. That's not to condemn all feds and I get why it's intentionally difficult to dismiss federal employees, but the stereotypes about lazy feds has more than a kernel of truth.

If you're grinding away in the private sector, constantly worried about downsizing, a new boss not liking you, or just instability in general, the exaggerated narrative of the federal employee is going to be really frustrating.

They could easily address this by making it easier for individual supervisors to dismiss low performers, but 1) that could reintroduce the spoils system and 2) that would remove the convenient scapegoat that the political class likes to have to blame for their ineptitude.

This post is spot-on. My federal boss once joked that firing a federal employee would practically take an act of Congress—and he wasn’t wrong.

I spent my first four years at the Bureau of Labor Statistics starting in 1990 and, honestly, did absolutely nothing. Not only did nothing happen to me, but I was promoted from GS-7 to GS-9 after six months, GS-9 to GS-11 after a year, and GS-11 to GS-12 a year later. I was even on track for a GS-13 promotion when I decided that it wasn’t the place for me.

I left the federal government to join AOL for a much higher salary, and later, in 2000, I moved to the Carlyle Group for even more. The private sector, however, was far more stressful—because there, the only thing that truly matters is profit.

Well didn’t one of Carlyle senior partner left private to work as VA senator? 😂 I like him.

[Anonymous]

Federal workers are the hardest working in the world with the possible exception of bureaucrats of USSR and Cuba.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do some private sector workers hate Fed workers so much?

I have never worked in the public sector. I don't spend my days worrying about Americans who work in other sectors. I wish everyone luck.

But the absolute hatred toward Fed workers is borderline psychotic if you want my honest opinion? Why is that? I just don't get it.

Long story short: they are losers.

Only losers are fixated on what other people are getting instead of moving forward in their own lives. They don't read, they watch TV segments. They don't know anything about the government but they have big feelings about it.

Only losers feed on angry propaganda about feds, "welfare queens," "illegals," etc. These are all the same people.

There are so, so many losers in America right now. They are miserable people who want everyone else to be miserable. We know what they support and who they vote for. They are willing to destroy the entire country just to punish all of the various groups of people they find unworthy of humane treatment. We still have to live with these people and they have a lot of power so I don't know how we move forward as a country.

Right. Only losers ignore the looting of public money.

[Anonymous]

Because of the sense of entitlement.

Should be easier to fire a fed. So much paperwork. Feds think they are untouchable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I see the feds have rushed in to defend themselves - all the best performers I'm sure. I ask you though, if you're doing such a great job it must really piss you off seeing all those co-workers coasting along right? I was a DOD contractor for 5 years in the DC area and it was egregious how little some people did. They also didn't have to answer to anyone and had so many early releases/"trainings" etc they barely even had to show up.

Are you telling me you don't know anyone in the private sector who get paid for doing nothing lol?

This would be exceptionally rare and unusual in the private sector.

This is laughable. Have you ever worked in a law firm? I am a fed and I spent 10+ years in the private sector. Incompetence is plenty everywhere. I’ve seen (and still see from across the table) attorneys who bill hundreds of hours for complete shit work. People get paid for doing nothing all the time and people get paid for doing a lot of crappy work all the time.

+1. I spent 10 years in the private sector in giant corporations that are every bit as bureaucratic as the government. They also have people who barely work and skate by. There was one woman who spent 1 hour a week updating a spreadsheet and just hung out the rest of the week. But her spreadsheet was the only record of an entire P&L for the company and was so illegible only she could decipher it, so her job was secure.

I've worked both in private and Fed jobs. There are slackers everywhere. But Fed certainly enables it much more easily than in the private sector, where layoffs are frequent and culls of low performers happens all the time. People wanted Fed jobs because of the security and promise of a pension. The Feds I worked with all openly admitted it. They willingly accepted lower salaries (historically) in exchange for security and no fears of being pushed out at 55.

The Fed efficiency isn't great either. I've seen many paper pushing jobs, even at the G13 levels. Big corp isn't immune to this either but these roles are ruthlessly scrutinized when there's a tightening of belts. I've lived through mass layoffs and it was brutal. Very few Feds have that experience.

Your mistake is equating private sector layoffs with culling poor performers. That is not what layoffs are. They do not target poor performers and are often done for reasons unrelated to actual efficiency.

Feds will talk about wanting security from layoffs, from age discrimination, from the company closing. Not about security from being fired for poor work. And the accountability required on the federal side is much higher, in terms of working when you say you are, spending only what you are allowed, etc.

As a side note, I don't understand the repeated mention of "paper pushing" on this thread. Government programs and funds are documented, and records of government activities are preserved and made public, because of the public accountability required. What is the "paper pushing" you think shouldn't happen? Reports required by Congress, maybe, but our hands are tied there.

I don’t know where you work - private or fed but you are naive. In my 30 years of senior mgmt roles in private sector, layoffs always target poor performers and/or trouble makers. It’s house cleaning of sorts under the guise of an RIF and a few companies I worked for it was a matter of usual business. We were not stupid enough to cut our own throats by “riffing” high performers. We worked around star performers and always found a landing for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a former fed in various agencies and supervisory positions - and as somebody with a variety of private sector experience both prior to and following my decade as a fed - there is a much higher tolerance for low performance and misbehavior in federal agencies. That's not to condemn all feds and I get why it's intentionally difficult to dismiss federal employees, but the stereotypes about lazy feds has more than a kernel of truth.

If you're grinding away in the private sector, constantly worried about downsizing, a new boss not liking you, or just instability in general, the exaggerated narrative of the federal employee is going to be really frustrating.

They could easily address this by making it easier for individual supervisors to dismiss low performers, but 1) that could reintroduce the spoils system and 2) that would remove the convenient scapegoat that the political class likes to have to blame for their ineptitude.

This post is spot-on. My federal boss once joked that firing a federal employee would practically take an act of Congress—and he wasn’t wrong.

I spent my first four years at the Bureau of Labor Statistics starting in 1990 and, honestly, did absolutely nothing. Not only did nothing happen to me, but I was promoted from GS-7 to GS-9 after six months, GS-9 to GS-11 after a year, and GS-11 to GS-12 a year later. I was even on track for a GS-13 promotion when I decided that it wasn’t the place for me.

I left the federal government to join AOL for a much higher salary, and later, in 2000, I moved to the Carlyle Group for even more. The private sector, however, was far more stressful—because there, the only thing that truly matters is profit.

You have been out of the loop for 25 years, you have no idea what you’re talking about.

I am a federal manager. It’s hard to fire people yes, but that’s not the biggest problem we have. For every loser employee there are five rock stars doing the work of ten people. I don’t know or care why people hate us, but I do know that it’s not the employees that are responsible for where we are today. Public servants that show up and do their work are some of the finest employees a private company would be lucky to have.

They can’t cut it in the private sector. We all know that.

Most of the US population is working in the private sector so it's honestly preposterous to think someone couldn't move from the federal government to the private sector. Even idiots from the first Trump administration managed to make that transition the last time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am near retirement and in my last private sector job. It is job 12. Not a job hopper.

But working 40 years and 3.5 year average per job. A 3-4 year run is a good run in private. I don’t think most govt workers could ever land 12 jobs. They are not overly qualified other than their niche field or ambitious.

I think govt workers should be appointed and tossed after 3-5 years. Keep them fresh

Our agency uses rotators that come in for 2-4 year stints. They are helpful for new energy and sometimes new ideas. But they simply don’t pick up enough on that timeframe to become replacements for the permanent staff. There is just so much nuance to how agencies have to follow the laws and interact with stakeholders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do some private sector workers hate Fed workers so much?

I have never worked in the public sector. I don't spend my days worrying about Americans who work in other sectors. I wish everyone luck.

But the absolute hatred toward Fed workers is borderline psychotic if you want my honest opinion? Why is that? I just don't get it.

Long story short: they are losers.

Only losers are fixated on what other people are getting instead of moving forward in their own lives. They don't read, they watch TV segments. They don't know anything about the government but they have big feelings about it.

Only losers feed on angry propaganda about feds, "welfare queens," "illegals," etc. These are all the same people.

There are so, so many losers in America right now. They are miserable people who want everyone else to be miserable. We know what they support and who they vote for. They are willing to destroy the entire country just to punish all of the various groups of people they find unworthy of humane treatment. We still have to live with these people and they have a lot of power so I don't know how we move forward as a country.

Right. Only losers ignore the looting of public money.

Can you actually name one real example of the “looting” of public money, that is, looting not being done by Trump and his crypto cronies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So I see the feds have rushed in to defend themselves - all the best performers I'm sure. I ask you though, if you're doing such a great job it must really piss you off seeing all those co-workers coasting along right? I was a DOD contractor for 5 years in the DC area and it was egregious how little some people did. They also didn't have to answer to anyone and had so many early releases/"trainings" etc they barely even had to show up.

Are you telling me you don't know anyone in the private sector who get paid for doing nothing lol?

This would be exceptionally rare and unusual in the private sector.

This is laughable. Have you ever worked in a law firm? I am a fed and I spent 10+ years in the private sector. Incompetence is plenty everywhere. I’ve seen (and still see from across the table) attorneys who bill hundreds of hours for complete shit work. People get paid for doing nothing all the time and people get paid for doing a lot of crappy work all the time.

+1. I spent 10 years in the private sector in giant corporations that are every bit as bureaucratic as the government. They also have people who barely work and skate by. There was one woman who spent 1 hour a week updating a spreadsheet and just hung out the rest of the week. But her spreadsheet was the only record of an entire P&L for the company and was so illegible only she could decipher it, so her job was secure.

I've worked both in private and Fed jobs. There are slackers everywhere. But Fed certainly enables it much more easily than in the private sector, where layoffs are frequent and culls of low performers happens all the time. People wanted Fed jobs because of the security and promise of a pension. The Feds I worked with all openly admitted it. They willingly accepted lower salaries (historically) in exchange for security and no fears of being pushed out at 55.

The Fed efficiency isn't great either. I've seen many paper pushing jobs, even at the G13 levels. Big corp isn't immune to this either but these roles are ruthlessly scrutinized when there's a tightening of belts. I've lived through mass layoffs and it was brutal. Very few Feds have that experience.

Your mistake is equating private sector layoffs with culling poor performers. That is not what layoffs are. They do not target poor performers and are often done for reasons unrelated to actual efficiency.

Feds will talk about wanting security from layoffs, from age discrimination, from the company closing. Not about security from being fired for poor work. And the accountability required on the federal side is much higher, in terms of working when you say you are, spending only what you are allowed, etc.

As a side note, I don't understand the repeated mention of "paper pushing" on this thread. Government programs and funds are documented, and records of government activities are preserved and made public, because of the public accountability required. What is the "paper pushing" you think shouldn't happen? Reports required by Congress, maybe, but our hands are tied there.

I don’t know where you work - private or fed but you are naive. In my 30 years of senior mgmt roles in private sector, layoffs always target poor performers and/or trouble makers. It’s house cleaning of sorts under the guise of an RIF and a few companies I worked for it was a matter of usual business. We were not stupid enough to cut our own throats by “riffing” high performers. We worked around star performers and always found a landing for them.

High performer actually leave for better paid roles. Juniors leave every 1-2 years, MDs leave every 5-8 years.

Unless someone is absolutely non-productive, we don’t jump to fire someone right away. And I work in an extremely competitive field.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do some private sector workers hate Fed workers so much?

I have never worked in the public sector. I don't spend my days worrying about Americans who work in other sectors. I wish everyone luck.

But the absolute hatred toward Fed workers is borderline psychotic if you want my honest opinion? Why is that? I just don't get it.

Long story short: they are losers.

Only losers are fixated on what other people are getting instead of moving forward in their own lives. They don't read, they watch TV segments. They don't know anything about the government but they have big feelings about it.

Only losers feed on angry propaganda about feds, "welfare queens," "illegals," etc. These are all the same people.

There are so, so many losers in America right now. They are miserable people who want everyone else to be miserable. We know what they support and who they vote for. They are willing to destroy the entire country just to punish all of the various groups of people they find unworthy of humane treatment. We still have to live with these people and they have a lot of power so I don't know how we move forward as a country.

Right. Only losers ignore the looting of public money.

Can you actually name one real example of the “looting” of public money, that is, looting not being done by Trump and his crypto cronies?

Well Trump is done looting after 3 years.

[Anonymous]

I have been a contractor for a long time and have worked with some really amazing feds. Some of the smartest, most capable people I've ever worked with have been federal employees.

But I have also worked with some incredibly stupid, lazy feds who relied on the contractors to do EVERYTHING for them. I'm concerned that the program that I worked hard on for two years that has thousands of users is going to die because we were given one week notice that our contract was ending and there are literally NO feds that know how to do anything related to the program. We have documented everything, but are they going to read it when they're back at work? I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because of the sense of entitlement.

Should be easier to fire a fed. So much paperwork. Feds think they are untouchable.

That should all be written in the past tense.

[Anonymous]

Because many have absolutely no idea how the federal government works. All the know is the government takes taxes and, like most human beings, they don't like someone taking their money away, especially if there are purposes they disagree with (for war, for feeding migrants, for bailing out banks, for military parades, etc). It's one big mystery to a large segment of the population. They hate it and have contempt for those who run it, but alas, they also have absolutely no idea what they'd like to replace it with. A king? A corporation? Government by small village board?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because of the sense of entitlement.

Should be easier to fire a fed. So much paperwork. Feds think they are untouchable.

This.