Fed employees and work ethic

[Anonymous]

I was a fed for several years and it depends on where you work. Many feds are hardworking, many are not.
Here's where I've worked:
NIH: Almost everyone was passionate, smart, committed, and worked long hours.
FDA: huge step down from NIH. Snail's pace, parochial, clock watching
CDC: Smart and hardworking, lot of great people.
MHS: (Military Health headquarters) Lazy, lazy, lazy. Nothing got done. Cronyism, passing the buck, toxic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am a fed and consistently work more than 60+ hrs/week. I do work over the weekends and so does my boss.

+1. I also used to work for one of the largest oil companies in the world, and if you don't think there were some lazy moochers hidden away throughout that organization, I've got a bridge to sell you. Every large bureaucracy will have it.

Not to be all "old" about it, but IMHO the bigger problem over the next decade isn't "lazy feds," but it's the genuinely lazy Gen Z'ers. If you work with anyone in their early 20s, you know that they truly do not like to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to any pickleball courts in the DMV and you will find A LOT of remote Fed workers playing pickleball during normal work hours. There are also A LOT of remote Fed workers at public golf courses during normal work hours. I have played with so many of them for the past five years. They book the golf tee times under their spouse's names, so that it can not be traced back to them.

Please like Feds have the money for even regular play on a public course.

They definitely do, especially those GS-14/15 with specialized pay. I know several GS-14 people at DHS making over 212K/yr. Public golf courses in Fairfax County are very affordable. It costs $39 for an 18-hole round of golf. When a Fed works remotely, he/she saves money on lunch & transportation, and use that money for golf. It's not that hard to understand.

.

I’m a GS-14 at a different agency. How do those at DHS make $212K? I’m
Curious?

DHS was granted the authority to create a new personnel system for cybersecurity in 2014. What came out of that was the Cyber Talent Management System, an “agile and innovative personnel system” that better equips DHS to “compete for cyber talent with the private sector — speeding up the hiring process, attracting talent from non-traditional educational backgrounds, using innovative tools to assess applicants, and offering more flexible performance-based compensation.”

When finalized, the rule will allow DHS to hire cybersecurity personnel at salaries based on their skills, up to $255,800 —the vice president’s salary. [b]That, however, can be overridden in special circumstances, with an “upper limit of 150 percent of EX-I ($332,100 in 2021),” the rule says.

Personnel hired to the DHS-CS will take what the department is calling qualified positions — excepted service roles with their own qualification requirements and that are not subject to the appointment, pay, and classification rules of traditional competitive service positions, based on special hiring flexibilities. The Department of Defense has its own Cyber Excepted Service initiative based on similar hiring flexibilities to make itself more competitive and quick in hiring and managing civilian cybersecurity talent to its forces.

Right, many agencies have specialized hiring processes for very specific personnel. I think we are asking how this equates to the GS payscale, which is a set thing and typically not subject to position specific modifications, since a PP specifically said they were GS14 positions. This page seems to imply they are not https://dhscs.usajobs.gov/assets/pdf/cybersecurity-service-faq.pdf

I suppose they could call them GS14 positions internally despite being divorced from the actual pay scale. Anyway this is clearly something very specific to DHS and unlikely to apply to other agencies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was a fed for several years and it depends on where you work. Many feds are hardworking, many are not.
Here's where I've worked:
NIH: Almost everyone was passionate, smart, committed, and worked long hours.
FDA: huge step down from NIH. Snail's pace, parochial, clock watching
CDC: Smart and hardworking, lot of great people.
MHS: (Military Health headquarters) Lazy, lazy, lazy. Nothing got done. Cronyism, passing the buck, toxic

Who would have thought that a military agency would be bloated?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a fed and consistently work more than 60+ hrs/week. I do work over the weekends and so does my boss.

+1. I also used to work for one of the largest oil companies in the world, and if you don't think there were some lazy moochers hidden away throughout that organization, I've got a bridge to sell you. Every large bureaucracy will have it.

Not to be all "old" about it, but IMHO the bigger problem over the next decade isn't "lazy feds," but it's the genuinely lazy Gen Z'ers. If you work with anyone in their early 20s, you know that they truly do not like to work.

They all got pushed though remote school and public schools have no consequences for behaviors or late work and many schools aren’t allowed to give students a zero on assignments. They aren’t pushed to work early on and it sticks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Go to any pickleball courts in the DMV and you will find A LOT of remote Fed workers playing pickleball during normal work hours. There are also A LOT of remote Fed workers at public golf courses during normal work hours. I have played with so many of them for the past five years. They book the golf tee times under their spouse's names, so that it can not be traced back to them.

Please like Feds have the money for even regular play on a public course.

They definitely do, especially those GS-14/15 with specialized pay. I know several GS-14 people at DHS making over 212K/yr. Public golf courses in Fairfax County are very affordable. It costs $39 for an 18-hole round of golf. When a Fed works remotely, he/she saves money on lunch & transportation, and use that money for golf. It's not that hard to understand.

Do tell where your friends are earning $212k a year as GS14s. I am a 14 in the DC area and the pay scale tops out at $181k. Despite my Ph.D. from a top 5 program I earn considerably less than that even after multiple years with the government. Looking at the locality table it tops out at $187k for New York. I call BS. I suspect the rest of your post is just as accurate.

​For someone with a Ph.D., it is unbelievable that you don't even know this, and you're a Fed. Your Ph.D. should be revoked. LOL....

The DHS Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has special pay for people who are specialized in cybersecurity. I joined CISA in 2021 as a GS-14 step 6. After one year, my salary was increased by 25%, and I also received about 8K in bonuses. In 2024, I am at GS-14 step 7 ($167,276 x 1.25 = $208.75K + $8K bonus = 216K). FWIW, I only have a BS degree in Computer Engineering from UVA.

I imagine the GS-14 PhD from the top five program gets corrected a lot.

I’m that PP and I do get corrected a lot! I am wrong sometimes apparently including now. At every Agency I have worked at or known people the specialized payscalea have different names. Because there’s a lot of public perception that most feds should not earn that much. Our exceptions are mostly medical officers or people hired through different hiring mechanisms.

Anyway apparently you know tons of these cybersecurity people who talk about their pay in great detail (?) and also go golfing nonstop. I stand by the main point of my post which is that the vast majority of GS pay scale employees are not earning that $$ regardless of their education or what they would earn in industry.

Weird take. I'm familiar with different pay scales, special hiring authorities, and other federal government minutiae because I've worked for the federal government as an excepted service and competitive service employee who also can get hired under a special authority. When I read that someone makes more than the upper limit for a particular grade, I assume they are in a special category, usually science, medicine, or IT.

[Anonymous]

Report them to ELON

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
-People who know how to game the system, including use of EEOC and ADA, and do just enough to never get fired. It is genuinely very difficult to get rid of an average to below average employee who can show intermittent periods of doing their job.

And of course there are people in public service who work very hard.

So shouldn't everyone have a some type of income? Should we just fire people because they had a bad year, bad week or got sick? I know many amazing workers who fell ill with cancer, lost a loved one or had a mental health issue. Their work suffered because they couldn't take time off without a paycheck. So they just muddled along until they could get back on their feet professionally.

I find that many Americans want to see people fired, not the street, begging and groveling if they aren't working at 100 percent and firing on all cylinders every day of every year. People should be fired for major screw ups like in medicine, science, architecture and data breaches. But in my years in government, much of the work that people think is fireable is actually laughable. I worked for an overeducated, prep school elite woman who would write paragraphs in emails that were akin to Jane Austin. I couldn't believe she held her position. She said she was such a hard worker, but really it was full of fluff. She also had a son with special needs and was going through a divorce. Should she get fired? I mean what do people think happens to all these unemployed people? They end up on the streets and it isn't a good look for society. Look at California. Hard working people are sleeping on the steps of Rodeo Drive because they were fired. Do we really want a society where all we do is fire people because they are not performing like robots?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have the same problem in corporate America. There are the hard workers and then those who skate by. It took me almost a year to fire a person who was doing basically no work.

It’s way, way easier. I know multiple people who were laid off on maternity leave in corporate America. One of them literally was laid off a day after having a baby. Night and day.

[Anonymous]

🚨🚨🚨Troll Alert 🚨🚨🚨

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a fed lawyer, headed to work at 6:30 am. Will probably be home around 6 pm, spend an hour with my family, and then work from home until bed. That is typical for me. Similar to when I was in biglaw but a much lower salary.

Same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have the same problem in corporate America. There are the hard workers and then those who skate by. It took me almost a year to fire a person who was doing basically no work.

It’s way, way easier. I know multiple people who were laid off on maternity leave in corporate America. One of them literally was laid off a day after having a baby. Night and day.

And that's a good thing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a fed lawyer, headed to work at 6:30 am. Will probably be home around 6 pm, spend an hour with my family, and then work from home until bed. That is typical for me. Similar to when I was in biglaw but a much lower salary.

Also a fed lawyer here. I work similar hours, if not more. But ... surely you look around your office and see other lawyers who barely do any work, right? Certainly less than 40 hours a week? I see plenty of those lawyers.

I'm an AUSA. There's no one working less than 40 hours a week. It's not possible. A few weeks of working <40 hours and you'd be missing filing/indictment deadlines. I tried to take a 2 week international vacation this spring for the first time in 5 years and I had to put in 20 hours a week just to keep balls in the air.

[Anonymous]

Who are all these unicorn fed workers who work longer hours than biglaw?

Listen, i don't begrudge any of you your very sweet fed gigs. The pay is lower, the work often less rewarding and more, well, governmental.

But I have many, many highly competent friends in DC who work for the feds (some straight out of grad school, and some many years after a private sector career). And I've only ever know a handful of them who work past 5:30pm. That's the whole point of federal govt. None of them would say that their jobs or their colleagues' jobs require long hours.

Weird that all 16 fed workers out of 3 million who work 60 hours a week are all on dcum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have the same problem in corporate America. There are the hard workers and then those who skate by. It took me almost a year to fire a person who was doing basically no work.

It’s way, way easier. I know multiple people who were laid off on maternity leave in corporate America. One of them literally was laid off a day after having a baby. Night and day.

I don't really understand what people want anymore. I mean I get that no one wants a lazy worker, but do we want an inhumane work environment as well?

I also think that businesses can hire and fire whomever they want, but it will impact work morale. I lived in a country where the workers were easily fired and the country had the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Truly a nation of the haves and have nots and the people never smiled. There has to be some middle ground.