Please vent your frustrations with your federal job here

[Anonymous]

Layers and layers of sign-off on the most meaningless decisions. It's like going to Versailles and Madame So and So hands Marie Antoinette's underwear to Madame So and So who hands it to Madame So and So who hands it to the Duchesse de Whatever who hands it to...everyone has a title and everyone takes extreme pride in meaningless review while Marie Antoinette stands there shivering and naked.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, my co-workers work hard, my managers are nice--it's the upper layers of bureaucracy that are annoying--you can't just do what needs to be done, you have to get the front office to sign off, and that takes forever, even assuming they don't have any actual feedback. The constant budget cuts and understaffing resulting from the hiring freeze are frustrating, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Political appointees who know next to nothing about the substantive work of the office they're appointed to lead, and less than nothing about how to manage a Federal agency.

What advice would you give to political appointees?

I agree some are clueless but most at heart want to do a good job and want the career people to enjoy working with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Layers and layers of sign-off on the most meaningless decisions. It's like going to Versailles and Madame So and So hands Marie Antoinette's underwear to Madame So and So who hands it to Madame So and So who hands it to the Duchesse de Whatever who hands it to...everyone has a title and everyone takes extreme pride in meaningless review while Marie Antoinette stands there shivering and naked.

So true!

[Anonymous]

Top management emails me directly without copying 2 levels in between, because he wants answers. The 2 levels in between add very little value (especially when they telework) and are paid more.

Reviewing is only top-down, not 360 degrees. No curiosity. Protecting the positions is more important than productivity or quality of management.

[Anonymous]

Minimally qualified and lazy coworkers who come in late, leave early, and spend the majority of their days making personal calls.

[Anonymous]

Huge workload, impossible to meet court deadlines because funding situation for expert services is a mess.

[Anonymous]

The technology. The amount of money wasted by the failure to invest in good technology is obscene.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Having to do the work of lazy, incompetent colleagues who've been there since the dawn of time and who earn 2-3 times what I do.

I worked in 3 agencies so far and this is by far the worst part. Because it's easy to get tenure, difficult to fire people, and easy to sue - managers are reluctant to discipline poor performers. I worked in an office where the admin assistant was verbally abusive and took her role as the "time keeper" to mean that it was up to her whether or not you go comp time, if you could swap out your AWS day, shift your work hours by an hour, etc. She never provided actual secretarial services to the group, she just guarded her little piece of territory and could be heard yelling at her target of the hour from several cubes down.

My next office, the admin assistant was much kinder - never yelled - but she could not format a word document or do basic data entry. She started 40 years ago and never fully embraced the computer revolution. I ended up spending 20-30% of my time on admin tasks because she was "incapable" of doing it - I tried to show her how to use Word, she did fine when I was watching, but when I stopped looking over her shoulder half the document would come back in errors. She refused to attend Word training. So I realized it's not that she can't; she won't and she's totally comfortable just collecting a paycheck while reading the paper at her desk and chatting with her friends.

But my new agency has contracted out the admin positions and we have much better staff now - the one we have even uses excel to project budget numbers! The challenge I'm facing here is that my direct supervisors don't want to manage people - they do it because that's how you advance yourself, but they don't actually enjoy or want to manage people. It's fine most days but frustrating to know they won't go to bat for their employees on anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The technology. The amount of money wasted by the failure to invest in good technology is obscene.

this is the biggest one

[Anonymous]

This would probably be true outside the fed gov as well, but it seems that the reward for good work is more work but that doesn't come with a promotion. I take pride in my work, some of my coworkers don't, so when management needs something done, they come to me and add to my never ending to-do list while my coworker who's making 15k more than me comes in late, leaves early, takes 2 hour lunches, and is on the phone with his wife, the kids' school, or a restuarant making reservations half the time. I did the math and considering that he only puts in 30 hrs/wk while taking home a full time salary, his hourly rate is almost twice mine. Ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Pay and promotions are not merit based. You can work your tail off all year and still be stuck in some capped position, meanwhile your coworker who has 5-10 yrs on you but does half the work is getting paid twice as much and earning 50% more leave.

And to top it all off, directors can delegate annual reviews out to lower level leads so the person doing your annual review may not actually know that much about what you do. It's not easy to keep your morale up with that kind of set up.

[Anonymous]

Dozens of executives and not one of them a true leader. No one is willing to make decisions, take risks, or stand for something. The 5 year cycle in Federal government makes for a complete inability for any kind of decent long-term strategic planning- which is what truly makes an organization worthwhile.