Government is great for older employees (50yo +). Having been in the private sector, I don't see many private companies bending over backwards to hire older people. In gov't, at least they're protected.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I recently went from the private sector to government. In my field, I really wanted the government experience and also the work/life balance. I took a 100K paycut, and don't really see how the benefits are much better in government (unless you are on the old pension plan and/or plan on staying at the government for the majority of your career). As a new employee I also contribute more to pension than anyone else who started earlier (I think prior to 2013?). Some things are great, as in you really get to take your vacation and you have dedicated sick days - but there's also no official maternity leave, and dealing with the bureaucracy is driving me pretty insane. It's all a trade off I suppose, and maybe I see the past with rosey colored glasses, but I do miss many aspects of the private sector, and will likely go back in a few years.

Wow-- that's a big cut. How much were you making?

Big law to government, so mid 200s to mid 100s.

Anonymous wrote:OP I think it also depends on your situation. I am looking to have kids in the next few years and the feds have no maternity leave or short term disability. If you switched to a job that had either it would be a huge advantage. I figure if I had a baby I would have to take 8 weeks LWOP for each since I don't have much sick leave saved up.

You could enter into the Voluntary Leave Program. You wouldn't need to do LWOP.

Anonymous wrote:Only reason for leaving the Fed would be, if you are under 30 and have career that is in high demand.

You do not want to leave the Fed after a certain age. For most Feds, the job security trumps them all.

I was considering a move a few years ago and now that I'm 32 I'm staying put.

I took parental leave shortly after I started with the government. My office was nice and let me go extremely negative in leave amount. But that kind of kicked the can down the road because it would have taken me years to both get rid of the negative leave and acrrue new leave necessary for a second kid. In theory, I like the flexibility of the government's universal leave, but I would have been better off with a private employer that gives a set amount of dedicated parental leave.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Under the FMLA I can take my 20 plus vacation days plus home leave plus the 480 plus hours of sick leave i have accrued snd potentially get 530 hours total to use for maternity leave - that's nearly 116 days or nearly four months!

At my federal agency we can only use 6 weeks of our sick leave towards our 12 week FMLA. The problem is that you often have 2 babies when you haven't worked very long (5 years?) and many doctors appointments during pregnancy to exhaust your leave. All of my Boomer coworkers have 2000+ hours of sick leave, but it doesn't help much when you're 30 and pregnant.

Yep, I'm about to have my second kid and it's been hard rebuilding my leave from the first one. I will be lucky if I can save enough leave to cover two months. Meanwhile my mom was able to use her short term disability which her private sector job pays for to take six months off when she got ill. She has the best health insurance also, it covers all types of things that most government insurances policies don't like Lasik.

My friend also works at a company with a nice sick leave policy. They are able to go to any medical appts without using leave as long as it isn't over 4 hours. So she's been able to stack a ton of leave as a result.

Anonymous wrote:Under the FMLA I can take my 20 plus vacation days plus home leave plus the 480 plus hours of sick leave i have accrued snd potentially get 530 hours total to use for maternity leave - that's nearly 116 days or nearly four months!

At my federal agency we can only use 6 weeks of our sick leave towards our 12 week FMLA. The problem is that you often have 2 babies when you haven't worked very long (5 years?) and many doctors appointments during pregnancy to exhaust your leave. All of my Boomer coworkers have 2000+ hours of sick leave, but it doesn't help much when you're 30 and pregnant.

I think it's a lot easier to have this discussion if you narrow it down to occupational field. For example, I think being a fed is the best balance of comp, benefits and work/life balance for lawyers and probably accountants too.

Under the FMLA I can take my 20 plus vacation days plus home leave plus the 480 plus hours of sick leave i have accrued snd potentially get 530 hours total to use for maternity leave - that's nearly 116 days or nearly four months!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I'm not a fed, here's what I get :

7.5% 401k match
Unlimited sick (take what you need)
Unlimited vacation (but realistically 5 weeks)
ESPP at 15% discount (capped at 15% of your salary)
Deferred comp plan with 7.5% 401k match
$1,000 FSA or dependent care match
Company cell phone
Telework 3 or 4 days a week

This outshines the FEDS. And, what is ESPP?

Employees Stock Purchase Plan- great perk when used sensibly.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. I'm not a fed, here's what I get :

7.5% 401k match
Unlimited sick (take what you need)
Unlimited vacation (but realistically 5 weeks)
ESPP at 15% discount (capped at 15% of your salary)
Deferred comp plan with 7.5% 401k match
$1,000 FSA or dependent care match
Company cell phone
Telework 3 or 4 days a week

This outshines the FEDS. And, what is ESPP?

Anonymous wrote:OP I think it also depends on your situation. I am looking to have kids in the next few years and the feds have no maternity leave or short term disability. If you switched to a job that had either it would be a huge advantage. I figure if I had a baby I would have to take 8 weeks LWOP for each since I don't have much sick leave saved up.

On the flip side, when I had a baby, I was able to take 4 months paid leave (combo of sick, annual, and advance annual) as well as another month of LWOP with nothing but support from management. Could easily have taken another month of lwop. Not all private sector jobs are tolerant of 6 month maternity leaves.

Some private sector jobs are great, some aren't. My husband worked for 4 different private companies before going fed and not one of them offered any kind of 401K match. All of them started at 2 weeks vacation, with no ability to roll days over from year to year. They did all however pay 100% of medical insurance (for employee only, family plans were not free). Anyway, my point is that I don't think there's a magic number that holds true for all jobs--I think you have to evaluate each job individually--benefits, commute, expected hours, how interesting the work is, etc.

I am private sector and my husband is federal. With two small children, it works for us as I can never leave to pick up a sick kid (he can) and he uses almost all of his sick/vacation for kid/family-related reasons. He has turned down private sector jobs mostly for the flexibility/vacation. In another 5 years, we might feel differently about this.

Other things like benefits and job security are a wash, in our opinion. However, I think my company makes uncommonly good contribution to health insurace and 401K.