Keeping and attracting smart federal employees

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What smart person would want to work for this clown car of an administration?

Yes, leadership and culture matter, especially wrt this discussion — this administration has polluted what was previously a non-political and bi-partisan civilian workforce. I do hope there is someway for that to be corrected in the future.

[Anonymous]

Well we can start off with reinstituting telework for one. I get that RTO is/was a means to get people to quit, but at some point they will at a minimum need to retain and recruit people to carry out their agenda outside of ICE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What smart person would want to work for this clown car of an administration?

I don't work for this administration. I work for the people I serve.

I've made a couple of backup plans if I have to leave, but our team is already at half-staffing after dealing with wave after wave of COVID. I care about the people we care for, and I don't want to see them with even fewer services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PS:

Now your turn, "smart person." What do you do?

Anonymous wrote:I’m the PP who thanked you for your service. No need to be demeaning. There are many smart people here doing hard work that isnt broadcast.

My apologies, I thought the comment below was in dismissive tone. Did I misread?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we not want smart people in federal force? If we do then what are we doing to retain or hire them?

Put up some job specs and we’ll know how bored we’ll be or not.

Also put up the cv of who we’d be reporting too and how they earned their most recent promotions.

-thx,
smart person

Yes, I think some context was lost here. My read was that the poster was saying, given the current environment, let us know the leadership credentials of who we would be supporting in civil service and how they’re qualified to oversee (and value) our work so it isnt done in vain.

We could both be wrong though. Who knows.

Ah, so that was not you? My response was directed specifically to that person, not the general reader. That was the reason for quotation marks.

I think you might have an excessively charitable read on "how bored we'd be," but charitability is no fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What smart person would want to work for this clown car of an administration?

Only those of us who are really close to having either 20 or 30 years in, and then we are out.

Want to thank the pediatric doctor who posted for his service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do we not want smart people in federal force? If we do then what are we doing to retain or hire them?

Giving us the skills to make more in private.
Just give up, he broke it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don’t want that. They want loyalists or to break the government enough to privatize it

Yep. This. My old agency was a wonderful place to work until Trump took control. It was efficient, smart people, wonderful work-life balace, proven record og performance. Now it sucks. Former shell of itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we not want smart people in federal force? If we do then what are we doing to retain or hire them?

Put up some job specs and we’ll know how bored we’ll be or not.

Also put up the cv of who we’d be reporting too and how they earned their most recent promotions.

-thx,
smart person

My federal job requires me to resuscitate newborn infants and perform CPR on infants and children when required, decompress a tension pneumothorax (did that a few weeks ago), do spinal taps on newborns and older children, manage pediatric ventilator support, do the standard differential diagnoses for ill children (where we are, plague and hantavirus are always possible), perform various other standard office procedures, and participate in the pharmacopeia approval process for the entire hospital. And other stuff.

I'm a pediatrician. I intubate children a few times a year in clinic. We are very remote, and it is far from boring. You probably wouldn't like it, even if you could do it.

The supervisor who hired me was trained through Harvard with residency at Boson Children's, managed another country's HIV response and integrated a support program for childhood development to mothers with HIV. His CV is extensive.

You work abroad in third world countries’ hospitals? Or a U.S. military or govt hospital or facility?

Thanks for posting in DCUM in the middle of the night!

IHS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PS:

Now your turn, "smart person." What do you do?

Anonymous wrote:I’m the PP who thanked you for your service. No need to be demeaning. There are many smart people here doing hard work that isnt broadcast.

My apologies, I thought the comment below was in dismissive tone. Did I misread?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do we not want smart people in federal force? If we do then what are we doing to retain or hire them?

Put up some job specs and we’ll know how bored we’ll be or not.

Also put up the cv of who we’d be reporting too and how they earned their most recent promotions.

-thx,
smart person

Isn’t the subject How to attract and keep smart people in Club Fed?

No one is answering that question and there are 15+ federal agencies. And even more if we’re talking all govt agencies.

I had tmt friends try to get SEC or FCC jobs and the govt website application packet clearly only considered internal candidates with codified “KPIs.”

Is this still the case?

The public sector pediatrician ER story is fun and noble but has nothing to do with federal office jobs at the Dept of Education, Transportation, Commerce, HHS, Parks, Energy, DOJ, Interior, Treasury, State Department, etc.

1 in 6 federal employees are working to provide health care. You don't get to pretend they don't even exist.

Over 310,000 employees in the federal government are in an occupation in the medical field. The medical field encompasses physicians, nurses, physical therapists, pharmacists, dental officers, veterinarians and many other public health occupations.

https://ourpublicservice.org/fed-figures/a-profile-of-the-2023-federal-workforce/

Carp about federal employees all you want, but if you are going to generalize your comments, they should apply generally. Otherwise, make the caveat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone from the other 5/6s of govt non military federal workers want to comment on recruiting, hiring and retaining smart people.

We heard from the Native American Indian Health Services dept about the Day in the Life of a pediatrician there.

About 22% of the federal workforce is legal, investigative, or engineering, which requires advanced training, just like medicine and nursing. That gets you to 39% of the total, but it's not including other scientists.

That targeted percentage of yours just keeps getting smaller.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:lol….smart federal employees. Thats an oxymoron.

Are you MAGA....MAGA is an oxymoron cult

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don’t want that. They want loyalists or to break the government enough to privatize it

Yep. This. My old agency was a wonderful place to work until Trump took control. It was efficient, smart people, wonderful work-life balace, proven record og performance. Now it sucks. Former shell of itself.

Trump destroys everything he touches-sadly this includes America.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They don’t want that. They want loyalists or to break the government enough to privatize it

Yep. This. My old agency was a wonderful place to work until Trump took control. It was efficient, smart people, wonderful work-life balace, proven record og performance. Now it sucks. Former shell of itself.

It goes back to Trump’s first term- there had always been the fringe cranks and conspiracy theorists with their nutty theories about “shadow government” and with QANON that went mainstream and was embraced and weaponized by Trump, Bannon and others, morphed into “deep state” garbage. Federal employees have now been viciously slandered and maligned, whether being cast as unqualified lazy mooching DEI hires, or corrupt, evil and diabolical Machiavellian schemers holding secret meetings plotting to destroy Trump and America, with no oversight or accountability. None of this is really true for the rank and file, most federal employees are in fact highly qualified, experienced and good at what they do, following the Constitution and the laws of the land that they swore oaths to uphold, and dutifully carrying out the mission of the agencies they work for. They have no allegiance to party or President, their allegiance is to the Constitution and the laws that they are supposed to execute on behalf of their respective agencies.

But now we’ve seen federal employees subjected to these constant lies, slanders and attacks for almost 10 years now, it has been grinding them down, plus DOGE downsizing and gutting of valuable projects, pointless elimination of telework, plus the Republican run Congress pushing changes to benefits and retirement that would amount to a 20% pay cut, plus the slap in the face of bringing in underutilized, incompetent loyalists at GS-15 levels, not backfilling vital positions, it just goes on and on and on. Why would anyone want to work in suck an openly hostile environment? Especially when there isn’t really any genuinely valid reason for this hostility other than to pander to a base of egregiously misled and misinformed voters.

[Anonymous]

I think Trump and may DOGE have broken an entire Gen Z pool of applicants. I have heard from so many recent grads that they want nothing to do with federal service because of what a mess Trump and Musk have made of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They don’t want that. They want loyalists or to break the government enough to privatize it

This.

And having smart, good people doing good work interferes with their message that government is bad and feds are lazy.