Fed employees and work ethic

[Anonymous]

This. I’m a DOJ attorney. I posted this in another thread but we typically work 60-80 hour weeks at my component. I was forced to skip about half of my third trimester prenatal/MFM appointments because of court obligations. No one here is living particularly well.

This. I once worked 16 hours straight and sat in front of my computer so long I pinched a nerve in my back. Got up the next morning in terrible pain and attended meetings. I have done witness interviews with a 103.5 fever, spent 6 weeks away from my family at a time, and been late or absent for many kid events. And now, as I look at my kids' small 529 account and hear all the hatred toward federal workers, I wonder why the heck I am such a sucker. I should have stayed in Biglaw and made bank. Forget the interests of the American people, because they hate us and revel in the possibility that we will be fired.

[Anonymous]

I know a few people like OP mentions in the federal workforce, but I also know plenty of federal contractors that work remotely for these large companies doing the exact same thing. There needs to changes all around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm a non fed with a few fed and state gov friends/acquaintances. For years I've always been mildly annoyed at what I've seen in terms of their work ethic. I get annoyed bc it is such a waste of taxpayer dollars which is paid by every single one of us.

I do think that gov employees should be able to be fired for poor performance etc. I do think gov workforce should be cut bc there are too many fat cats.
Some gov friend stories:
One friend barely works and spends most of her time shopping and texting friends her various shopping finds during the day.
One friend has weeks and weeks of ptonbc she doesn't have to take any. If she needs a day or a few off she only has to check email once or maybe make a call and she does not need to take pto for the entire 8 hrs
One person I know who works for a hhs told me that her job involves supervising others but she literally just does zero work all day long. She works on her side business.
I could go on.

So I personally am looking forward to a trimmed down government employee model. I'm sure this will get a lot of hate. But this is just my own opinion after years of observation.

Typical MAGA talking points.
If you’re spending so much time monitoring your “friends” working hours when are you doing your own?

[Anonymous]

OP, it is entirely possible that your 3 examples are just genuinely bad employees with a bad work ethic. I can see why that would make you feel as you do. I don’t like that either and, as a long time fed get mad about that because they make the honest hardworking feds look bad. In my career the bad actors have been the exceptions.

I would ask that you genuinely consider if these 3 people accurately represent a ~3 million person work sector (is that right? whatever the exact #, you get the idea) that covers diverse fields but also diverse positions from say lawyers and engineers through clerical and maintenance staff. It might be akin to having 2 bad plumbers and deciding all tradespersons are inept.

Then consider the vast # agencies that all have their own scheduling and telework policies. Plenty can step away for an hour or two so long as they get the hours in on a flex schedule. As in the general workforce, I am sure some abuse or take advantage.

The government is certainly not exempt from bad employees the same as any employer, and I agree they should be able to get rid of them more easily than they sometimes are. In my experience, which may be specific to my unique agency, by and large we do get rid of poor performers though it takes a long time. I would welcome thoughtful effective changes and would be happy to see that. The slash and grab or burn it all down mentality is not that though and I think is not in the country’s overall best interests.

[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.

For every Fed worker reading a newspaper I see a nepo hire. There are inequalities all over.

The Feds are the last bastion of MC life though where the expectation is just 40 hour weeks for many and some stability, the same deal corp workers had in the 60s. I can see why the corporate masters want to end it.

THANK YOU 🙏 for pointing this out. 🔥🔥🔥

What a weird mindset being displayed on this thread. I get paid far less than the private sector and I work my 40 hours exactly- and that’s the way it should be for everyone. It’s enough for a happy, healthy middle class existence at the present moment and it must infuriate people like Elon Musk who think workers need to have a slavery/hustle mentality. It’s a race to the bottom and they want the government to join.

I want to raise my children, go to pottery class, clean my own house, and have regular sex with my husband. I do not want to work to the point of exhaustion in some job where people will forget about me 2 months after I’m gone. I don’t need to explain myself to random strangers who think feds don’t work enough. If I get fired, my educational background is elite enough that I could get a really good job wherever I want. My work is valuable and I love working for the public good- but that’s doesn’t mean I or anyone else needs to be dominated by our jobs.

[Anonymous]

My husband and I have both discussed the fact that as we get older our jobs seem to get easier and we work less hard, but here's the thing. I'm an academic and I have studied history and there's this phenomenon where you need to keep certain types of people in strategic professions 'in reserve'. In other words, you might not need that military planner or that economist now, but if you need hundreds of them at some point because you go to war or something, you can't just suddenly find these people and train these people -- so there's this idea of backfill. You have extra people who don't appear to be working hard at the moment, but what you are paying for is to keep their expertise on retainer, to keep their skills up to date in the event that they are needed. I realize that what I bring to the table at the age of 60 is mostly institutional memory, knowledge of procedures, etc. and this is why they keep me around -- because I can answer the question without your having to research it, rather than because you need me to fulfill some other function. And my husband has also added that countries historically keep a lot of ex military around and on the payroll because it's good for these guys to be kept busy and happy -- mostly so they don't riot, carry out a coup, etc. This has been a thing historically since the ROman Empire. I worry that Ramiswamy et al do not understand these basic facts. At the beginning of World War Two, Britain was losing badly against the Nazis because they had cut back on ship manufacturing, and at times they were using civilian fishing boats and the like to patrol the coastline because someone thought defense cuts were a good idea. Short sighted. We can learn from that.

[Anonymous]

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.

This is ridiculous. Who would be looking at the pickleball logs and trying to trace them? This is pure fantasy.

[Anonymous]

You're right and the other posters are right, too. You can't generalize about the entire workforce. I would argue that a large percentage of feds are underworked; they aren't lazy but they simply do not have enough work to do. This may be due to bad management, seasonality, change in priorities, etc.

[Anonymous]

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.

This is ridiculous. Who would be looking at the pickleball logs and trying to trace them? This is pure fantasy.

Also the idea that it would be impossible to figure out that someone booked a tee time under their spouse's name is ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

I left a big law firm to go to a Fed legal job - it was really bad in terms of 70% pay cut (so, 30% of my previous pay) but with pressure to work the same workload. Now, nobody would have fired me for taking longer to complete things / respond, but the pressure was still a constant. I left after less than a year.

I do think if I had stayed longer, I just would have prioritized what I thought was most important, and let other things drag on because I didn't have "time"....

But I am much happier now, with an in-house company job that pays more than the fed gov job but is 45-50 hours/week. Most importantly, my internal clients are happy with my response time - the workload is actually 45-50 hours/week (not 120 hours/week of requests but you only "have" to work 40).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband and I have both discussed the fact that as we get older our jobs seem to get easier and we work less hard, but here's the thing. I'm an academic and I have studied history and there's this phenomenon where you need to keep certain types of people in strategic professions 'in reserve'. In other words, you might not need that military planner or that economist now, but if you need hundreds of them at some point because you go to war or something, you can't just suddenly find these people and train these people -- so there's this idea of backfill. You have extra people who don't appear to be working hard at the moment, but what you are paying for is to keep their expertise on retainer, to keep their skills up to date in the event that they are needed. I realize that what I bring to the table at the age of 60 is mostly institutional memory, knowledge of procedures, etc. and this is why they keep me around -- because I can answer the question without your having to research it, rather than because you need me to fulfill some other function. And my husband has also added that countries historically keep a lot of ex military around and on the payroll because it's good for these guys to be kept busy and happy -- mostly so they don't riot, carry out a coup, etc. This has been a thing historically since the ROman Empire. I worry that Ramiswamy et al do not understand these basic facts. At the beginning of World War Two, Britain was losing badly against the Nazis because they had cut back on ship manufacturing, and at times they were using civilian fishing boats and the like to patrol the coastline because someone thought defense cuts were a good idea. Short sighted. We can learn from that.

Ripe for replacement by AI.
Not even trying to be mean. Just factual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

For every Fed worker reading a newspaper I see a nepo hire. There are inequalities all over.

The Feds are the last bastion of MC life though where the expectation is just 40 hour weeks for many and some stability, the same deal corp workers had in the 60s. I can see why the corporate masters want to end it.

THANK YOU 🙏 for pointing this out. 🔥🔥🔥

What a weird mindset being displayed on this thread. I get paid far less than the private sector and I work my 40 hours exactly- and that’s the way it should be for everyone. It’s enough for a happy, healthy middle class existence at the present moment and it must infuriate people like Elon Musk who think workers need to have a slavery/hustle mentality. It’s a race to the bottom and they want the government to join.

I want to raise my children, go to pottery class, clean my own house, and have regular sex with my husband. I do not want to work to the point of exhaustion in some job where people will forget about me 2 months after I’m gone. I don’t need to explain myself to random strangers who think feds don’t work enough. If I get fired, my educational background is elite enough that I could get a really good job wherever I want. My work is valuable and I love working for the public good- but that’s doesn’t mean I or anyone else needs to be dominated by our jobs.

Everyone wants this in Fed or Private or Nonprofit.
I think the problem is that the kind of people in charge don't want to use economics (sometimes it's a workers' market!) but rather want to create false scarcity of jobs and keep everyone "hungry" and competitive. Which is not a real economic condition. But think about who these people are. They want to maximize shareholder profits.

What's the answer? Stronger unions again? That could backfire.

[Anonymous]

Replacement by AI. Right. Because if we go to war, there's absolutely no possibility that the electrical grid might be affected, or the internet might go down or we might get hacked by our adversaries. You know they are still teaching the students at the Naval Academy how to manually calculate geographic coordinates for maritime navigation etc. because they are assuming there may be a scenario where the technology isn't available. This is what readiness means. Making sure that you don't lose these skills because you outsourced them to machines or technology that is no longer available. This is the definition of short sighted.

[Anonymous]

Enough fed hate. Most posters on here aren’t feds but wealthy big law id SAHMs.

Good luck staying healthy physically or financially without the feds. You want 100,000 people fired whatever you aren’t going to see a dime in your pocket. All the while your life or someone you love’s life is going to get substantially worse. Law firm attorney here making bank while partners play golf and read the paper. My dad had a great union job, too bad those are never coming back!

[Anonymous]

So you are friends with low value folks got it.

I’m a remote fed and I freaking WORK because I love my job and I love the mission and that I make a difference. I help people every single day and I show up.

I took an oath and I follow the rules and loathe to see people who do not and just add more workload that I have to pick up. But you know that’s not why you wrote the post, my MAGA friend.