Being competent in federal service work is trying

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get over yourself OP. I work with the highest concentration of talent I’ve ever experienced in my 25 years of public and private service. More competent than my clerkship class, and I clerked for a top US court of appeals.

Hmmm….i do not think OP is the one who needs to get over herself but congrats on your clerkship, which was what, 2 decades ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your entire first paragraph applies completely to my 25 years of employment in corporate America.

I was a fed in DC for 8 years before grad school.

My fed co-workers were equally talented to the corporate workers I'm surrounded by now.

Corporate work pays more but indeed there has been less job security.

Also there are many people in corporate life who have no interest in the greater good AND also have no incentive to give any lip service to that ideal.

Don't believe what people say about the private sector being magically more efficient and productive. A lot of that is self-serving political rhetoric. As you know, many people only support the parts of government that they personally like and benefit from.

This is not OP. I am not anti Fed. I am not anti goverment. I should clarify, I do not think the federal workforce is characterized by incompetence, it is just that those who are incompetent or toxic are not managed well in a way that protects other employees.

PP. You'd be surprised how long incompetent and toxic people can survive in corporate environments. I'm talking big companies.

In general, as long as the boss likes you and there are no clear productivity metrics, and the company is making money, there is no incentive to cut staff. Lots of corporate staff have no clear productivity metrics. Or let me phrase it as...they have shared accountability. Like that phrase "Success has many fathers." Failure is nobody's sole responsibility.

Name the corporation. Otherwise I don’t believe you.

Who cares whether you believe it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Long time fed manager here. Every time I wanted to address performance, I was told "don't be mean, work with them". Believe me I tried. I got some to turn around, others I did place in less harmful/more suited to their "talents" positions. When I finally went to HR for one of the most egregious ones - I felt like it was me that was being disciplined. I had high hopes that DOGE would actually address this. Nope, these folks are just being hidden even more deeply and their work is falling on the actual competent ones. As to that, their are some AMAZING feds who do incredible work. It's just a shame that in my organization they usually just get taken advantage. If they complain/speak up they are seen as the problem.

Sorry for my rant!

You are absolutely correct. It’s awful in fed govt. I worked for two different managers. They couldn’t get rid of employees who yelled, berated others, did little to no work, or where incompetent. No support from upper management. Just told them to put up or shut up. I couldn’t believe it when I first witnessed it. And the phenomenon of promoting a bad employee to get them out of the way blew me out of the water. I thought people were joking. They weren’t.

It blew me away. I have worked since I was 16. I am from a more conservative Midwest area. If you did any of this in any low job I had, you would be fired.

Big problem in govt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I understand completely. I retired from a FINREG because I was working with incompetents. I was doing the work. Work they either refused to do or were too inept to do. One continually played the race card. Just ran around all dang day. The other just whined and bothered everyone else when he/she couldn’t do the work. Both knew well how to play the system.

Nothing was done to correct them - ever. The manager just gave those of us who COULD do the work their work to meet deadlines. The agency I was at didn’t want racial suits so we just had to put up with the minority slacker

After being assigned one too many projects, I decided “ thats it. I can’t take this anymore”.
I put in retirement papers and quietly left.

In retrospect, I wasn’t ready to go. But I couldn’t handle the fact that incompetent people get ahead in the federal government.

It has been hard for me to find other work. Age discrimination and I do miss my job. But it had become unbearable.

Lo and behold, these slackers were targeted by DOGE and given tremendous payouts to go home and do nothing. It’s absurd. I think the place used DOGE to clean out garbage like this.

But I get it. Workers don’t get ahead in many parts of the federal agencies.

Sounds like my FINREG. A number of long time slackers have been put on administrative leave. Many others are headed out the door with VERA/VSIP. Can’t wait for them to leave!

this is not my experience. Doge didn't force anyone bad to leave. It forced the good workers out.

Same. We lost a few mediocre performers and one slacker who took VERA/VSIP, but primarily we lost very strong, experienced, hard workers. It sucks.