Are Fed jobs really that great?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No!! My government job was extremely stressful and long hours. Much easier to be a government contractor or work in tech and pay is double. But I’m in cybersecurity.

Special case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I quit my Fed job earlier this week and I have never been so certain about leaving a job. I am getting $80K base pay increase, large bonus, better benefits, 9% into 401K and actually working with competent people. I am so looking forward to my new role.

Oh, so you haven’t even started the new job yet.

PP ignore this poster- it sounds like an amazing opportunity. I am sure this responder is one of those dreaded middle government managers who drives people away

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No!! My government job was extremely stressful and long hours. Much easier to be a government contractor or work in tech and pay is double. But I’m in cybersecurity.

Special case.

I had the same experience.

[Anonymous]

In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No!! My government job was extremely stressful and long hours. Much easier to be a government contractor or work in tech and pay is double. But I’m in cybersecurity.

Special case.

Same experience, in HHS. Pharma companies pay more; the only advantage for federal employment at this point for me is their willingness to hire older workers if you have been laid off from your private industry position. People are leaving left and right for more money and the ability to continue remote work for private companies, rather than being forced back into the office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No!! My government job was extremely stressful and long hours. Much easier to be a government contractor or work in tech and pay is double. But I’m in cybersecurity.

Special case.

Same experience, in HHS. Pharma companies pay more; the only advantage for federal employment at this point for me is their willingness to hire older workers if you have been laid off from your private industry position. People are leaving left and right for more money and the ability to continue remote work for private companies, rather than being forced back into the office.

Pharma layoffs are brutal and often. Bank that higher pay. It definitely can be worth it if you are paid enough and can return to Fed quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

Well if I was GS 13 I would be in despair as a professional

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

Feds do the same thing on here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

Well if I was GS 13 I would be in despair as a professional

I left a 14 to be a 13 at a financial regulator. The top pay at a 13 is higher than most SES were making at my previous agency. So, I don’t know that grade is the indication of happiness or success. Also, many people stay a 13 at one of my previous agencies because they prefer the hands-on work to managing projects and strategy. People actually have different preferences for how they work. I know, it is hard to believe it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

Well if I was GS 13 I would be in despair as a professional

I left a 14 to be a 13 at a financial regulator. The top pay at a 13 is higher than most SES were making at my previous agency. So, I don’t know that grade is the indication of happiness or success. Also, many people stay a 13 at one of my previous agencies because they prefer the hands-on work to managing projects and strategy. People actually have different preferences for how they work. I know, it is hard to believe it.

So you left Fed work and make more than $50k over that SES Scale? So like $300k? So you are in finance or law.

And if you list a pay scale, the default is GS; regularities are FR or something like that so please include that to be useful.

[Anonymous]

No not great. Just what a true middle class job should be. Steady hours. Steady tenure. Steady pay. It’s feast and famine in private sector; if you can claw your way to the feast side it’s way way better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our household, I am a federal contractor and my spouse is a Civil Servant. Spouse has been a CS for about 35 years and is due to retire in about 5 years. They are a GS-14T/9. I have been with my agency for 30 years. Here are some of the differences to note:

Leave:
My spouse has 26 days of AL plus 11 days of sick leave. Rarely uses sick leave and just uses AL as needed. In order to keep annual rollover of AL maxed, will sometimes work credit hours on weekends or evening before we go on vacation and use the credit hours to ensure that even with Use-or-Lose at the end of the year, they keep to about the cap on rollover.

The problem with being a federal contractor, is that when a contract turns over, you have a choice to leave your job and find another one by your current contractor, or to stay with the job and switch to the new contractor. Over the years, I've had 7 employers and 7 jobs within the agency, not overlapping. I've had times I've stayed with the job and had to get a new employer. I've also had times that I've stayed with the employer and found a new job on a different contract. The issue is that each time you switch employers, they pay out your vacation time in cash and you start out again at zero with the new company. More importantly, every employer has different benefits plans. I've had some employers where I could negotiate additional leave to match what I had at the last employer, but there are some employers who have strict leave policies based on seniority within the company. My current employer is one of those (I've been with this contractor for just over 5 years now). I had 5 weeks of PTO leave at the last employer, but this employer strictly ties leave to the years you've worked and I had to move back to three weeks of leave. While negotiating, the recruiter understood and she negotiated adding salary dollars slightly over one week of pay (one week of pay, rounded up to the nearest $5K mark) to my offer since she couldn't get me the additional PTO. She said this way, if I needed, i could take LWOP for the time off and still break even. But most employers are not this good when they can't meet your time off requests during negotiation. After passing the 5 year mark, I am up to 4 weeks of leave, but it was still hard making do with less PTO, especially with kids.

Pension:
In my case, with the 401K and company matching, my retirement benefits are close to what I would get with FERS, although still not quite as good. Mostly a break even, but not quite. My spouse on the other hand has been with the federal government long enough, that they are on CSRS-offset (the brief transition plan offered at the change from CSRS to FERS for about 2 years worth of hires). The CSRS-offset is signficantly better than my retirement. But that's no longer available.

Health insurance:
One of the big perks with being a fed is that when you retire, if your spouse and children have been on your health insurance for at least 5 years, they are guaranteed insurance for life (children to age 26 if they are full time students, 22 otherwise) even if you predecease them. This was big for us. So a few years ago, we switched all of us to my spouse's BCBS plan for the guarantee. My spouse was qualified to retire about 4 years ago, but will continue working to maximize the pension payouts. But we are set so that at any time if they choose to retire, they can. It was close in 2017 when the administration changed; things got very difficult at work and my spouse considered retiring, but stuck it out and things got tolerable. Spouse may again consider in 2025 at the change of administration if things get difficult again, especially since they'll be within 2 years of maxing out retirement benefits.

But, I have the best of both worlds. I have the health insurance and the pension benefits of my spouse being a civil servant and I have the higher salary for being a contractor (I make about 20% more than civil service peers). I make about 20-50% less than my peers in the private sector, but then I have a significantly better work-life balance than they do. They pay for those salaries by being on demand for many more hours of work and needing to be available for emergencies anytime during normal work hours and many off hours. Not worth it for me which is why I've stayed in federal contracting for so long.

Feds always like to talk about how they work fewer hours. They act like all of us in the private sector work crazy hours. Of course, that isn’t true.

I work a straight 40 hours, and make $50K more than I was making as a fed. Same thing with my friend, who also had about 10 years as a fed (like I did). My leave package is comparable to what I had as a GS-13 fed.

Hey, if you are happy, I am happy for you. I must say though, I am not sure why you are trying to prove one is better than the other to total strangers. you do you bud

Well if I was GS 13 I would be in despair as a professional

I left a 14 to be a 13 at a financial regulator. The top pay at a 13 is higher than most SES were making at my previous agency. So, I don’t know that grade is the indication of happiness or success. Also, many people stay a 13 at one of my previous agencies because they prefer the hands-on work to managing projects and strategy. People actually have different preferences for how they work. I know, it is hard to believe it.

So you left Fed work and make more than $50k over that SES Scale? So like $300k? So you are in finance or law.

And if you list a pay scale, the default is GS; regularities are FR or something like that so please include that to be useful.

No. Your reading comprehension is terrible.

Where did you get $50K? I just said more than most SES at my previous agency, not more than every SES in the Federal Government. I do not make the top of my pay scale at the moment. I left for an initial $7K bump and a better benefits package and a higher earning potential to work at an agency with a good mission and a good reputation. I didn’t leave being a Fed because I work for a Federal agency.

My scale goes up to $180K at a 13. The SES at my old agency make around $175K.

I work in IT.

[Anonymous]

Maybe since last year they make like $180K.