Career and salary growth can actually be pretty good in the federal government, assuming you don't already come in at the top.

First, as a PP mentioned, a lot of jobs are career ladder positions. For example, a GS-11 might have a ladder up to GS-13. In DC, that means going from about $72k to $103k per year—not half bad salary growth.

But the federal government is also one of the few places where step increases are virtually guaranteed (in addition to any cost-of-living increases that Congress deigns to pass each year). True, step ncreases aren't huge—about 3% per step—and don't happen every year after the first three years. But that's still better than what I've seen in some private-sector jobs, where raises can be very small or not happen at all.

What's true is that there's almost no salary growth at the top. If you're a GS-15/7 in DC, your salary is $172,500 and it's not going up unless there's an cost-of-living increase (and only by the across-the-board amount, not the locality pay) or Congress changes the cap (but they aren't changing the cap). But job responsibilities probably aren't going to increase that much at the top, either (unless someone gets wrangled into going from non-supervisory GS-15 to supervisory). And as others have mentioned there are often job stability, mission, and quality-of-life benefits to being a government employee.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After your probationary period (usually 1 year) it's almost impossible to be fired. So while there are few carrots there are also no sticks.

Is this true, even for those not in collective bargaining positions?

That's a myth.

It’s a myth that you can’t be fired. It’s not a myth that it’s far harder than in private, because it takes a lot of work to establish cause.