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Higher Pay For U.S. Federal Computer Jobs
nemo writes: "The United States government is giving a raise of up to 33% to all workers employed by them in the tech industry. The are apparently doing this to lure younger people into these positions and to compete with private tech companies. Read more here." Still sounds like a substantial salary gap, but the benefits of a Federal job can be pretty sweet incentive. Anyone out there on a Federal paycheck care to comment?
I don't know (m)any Government workers who put in the 'standard' 60-100 hour work week that seems to be the norm in Silicon Valley. I do know people with Gov't jobs who work 40 hours a week and less than 5 days a week, tho.
Come to think of it, maybe a 33% pay cut for a 40% hours cut isn't so bad.
Actually it's all our own faults that companies have come to assume that workers will put in 60-100 hours a week. We did it once, so now companies think we can continue to do it eternally.
But there are a few problems:
- the dot.com gold rush is over, and reality is setting it about get-rich-quick schemes. People's motivation for working long hours is decreasing
- IT workers are maturing. Someone straight out of college with no significant other may *like* working 80 hours a week, but take someone with a family and they probably would rather spend their time at home with their children
- there is no labor pool. Vacant positions go unfilled for months, and companies have stressed their staff out to the limits for too long. Now the *ENTIRE* industry is getting collective burnout all at the same time
One of the major reasons for this action is the aging of the federal workforce. Currently, the federal government has had such a hard time attracting tech employees that the average federal employee is approaching retirement age and there just aren't any younger workers in the pipeline to replace them.
This isn't the first action taken to correct this issue. Up until last year, retiring military officers (young when compared to the federal workforce, around 42-45) lost about half their military pension when they went back to work as federal employees. This was overturned last year to encourage more retirees to take mid grade federal jobs.
The situation is actually pretty bleak for attracting federal tech workers. Programs like internships to attract college graduates are few and far between. Add to that the cumbersome federal hiring system and lower wages and the inflow of new workers becomes a big issue. On top of that, the good workers who do hire on are often forced to worked with some senior employees that have long since reached obsolesence before retiring because its hard to fire a federal employee regardless of performance and letting even a substandard employee go only exaccerbates the problem.
This will help but probably won't solve the problem.
Not sure if this is something new, but when I was in college the best paying job on campus was working in the Computer Labs (the school kept a decent size lab with about 18 computers in about half a dozen locations for the student body, 8 PS2s and 8 Macs, with 1 each for the lab attendent to play on^H^H^H^H^H^H^Huse).
:)
:)
Trust me, they advertised that they payed best, but they were still having problems attracting CS or EE majors to help work in it (think 'First and Second line tech support where your in the same room as clueless users'
I think I was the only CS major who worked there, the rest were all English and Poly-Sci.
Of course the best part of working there was that your student ID was keyed to open the doors to all the dorms so you could get to work in any of them (which made it easier to visit friends) instead of just the one you lived in, but I remember being amused that it would unlock the janitorial closets also
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As a computer science cooperative education student at Drexel University currently on fall/winter coop, I just went through the process of hunting for jobs (and getting a LOT of rejections, this is only my second year in school and my first "real" job) and had a very relevant experience.
I received a job offer from the Navy that was awfully tempting: a chance to learn and practice CGI programming, Java/JScript, IIS, Cold Fusion, and program handheld devices. The salary? $300/week.
I also received an offer from a private-sector company that would basically be IT gruntwork, and maybe a chance to do some C programming for the set-top boxes the company is designing. Not as attractive as the Navy, which would have put me on track to be a successful web developer. But the salary was exactly double what the Navy was paying. Needless to say, I took the private-sector job.
A higher salary would definately help gov't jobs seem more attractive to people like me who have trouble seeing past the $17k tuition due in a few months. Unfortunately it appears that these raises in salary are not across the board, which is what the government needs to do to keep attractive the best workers.
-the wunderhorn
-the wunderhorn
#define OH_YES_INDEED 1
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
I think that governments should compete with private industry in pay scale. You don't want industries ever monopolozing something that a government needs - just think of all the ghastly consequences of that.
-*-*-*-
I'm a little segfault short and stout
this is my handle, this is my spout!
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
There have been several columns on this in the Washington Post over the last few weeks.
Federal Personnel Offices have several drawbacks. . .like not getting back to a candidate at all, or waiting 6-8 months to tell him/her that they have got the job. . . Even with up to 33% more pay (and this is targeted mostly at the entry-level IT types. . . Hell desk and such. . . )
Now, I work as a contractor to several Federal agencies (we have a number of contracts), and I don't see this measure doing much at all: 95% + of all the IT is already being done by Contractors: most of the Feds, in my experience, are in Sr. I.T. Management.
IMNSHO, another proposal full of sound and fury, but in the end, signifying nothing much. . .
Being one of Uncle Sam's current wage slaves (except that I wear a uniform) I can say without a doubt that this will have little to no effect because any techie worth his salt won't work very long for the government. Why is that, you may ask? Because government projects that involve computers are almost always administered by someone who knows nothing about them and is more interested in servicing their own career at the expense of the system they're dealing with.
For example, I'm currently a sysad for a system that's had $25 Million dollars poured into it and we're still not even close to being fully operational and we're lucky that this thing works at all. If you want a good example of the people that the government listen to for their computing needs, check out Mitre. These guys are renown for designing crap (they're the ones who came up with the brilliant idea of keep all the user directories on our busiest file server, not to mention running 900GB through a single OC-12 card on a shitty ATM network under WinNT).
The government mismanges ever piece of silicon they have and until the culture of management changes, even money won't be enough to keep talented people around.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
This country needs a non-profit to produce the software to run this country... Mostly for municipals and states.
Think about it like this:
We have greedy contractors producing software for one state, keeping the copyrights, and selling the same technology over and over to other states. A non profit, can pay techies $100+ an hour, and produce free software for all the states/cities to use. End the duplication... and the waste of money.
Anyone game?
Point being, even if you factor in the incredible benefits and the new higher salaries, it still would not be enough to make working on a government job worth it. Not unless along with the new salary policies they fired the vast majority of the current federal employees to make room for some people who actually cared about the work they were doing.
My wife is a dedicated public employee. She works at a local agency whose mission she believes in. When she got out of her (prestigious) grad school, she went looking for a job in public service, not because she wanted the benefits of public service, but because she had skills she wanted to employ for the public good. Unfortunately, the standard joke around the office is when somebody asks "So how many people work around here?" to answer "About half." A fraction of hard working employees have to do the work of the rest.
Of course, this is also true to a lesser degree in the private sector, but the question is, how do you expect things to get better if you tell people that if they care they shouldn't participate?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Unfortunately, the standard joke around the office is when somebody asks "So how many people work around here?" to answer "About half." A fraction of hard working employees have to do the work of the rest.
This is an endemic problem with working in the government sector. It is nearly impossible to fire anyone, and management has their hands tied regarding compensating their staff: They simply are not allowed, in general, to lower the salaries of those who don't pull their own weight, and they cannot compensate their outstanding workers adequately. In the end everyone gets paid (roughly) the same regardless of job content and performance. Furthermore, unlike in industry where a poor manager can get axed if his or her team doesn't perform, government agencies often have few reliable metrics by which to determine whether a team and a manager are doing their jobs.
Salaries for computer people here are a joke. My wife and I (both programmers, mid-to-late thirties; both "retired" from the Bay Area since '94) routinely get calls from headhunters offering 2-3 times what we make now. Not including stock, of course.
Then there's the bureaucracy. We struggle to get work done despite the cretins who try their utmost to grind you down.
No money. Almost daily hassles from the Work Preventers. Why do we stay? The area, for one. Los Alamos is our ideal retirement community. But a close second, surprisingly, is the work. Many people here are brilliant, highly competent, and fun to work with. My job -- analyzing data from various & sundry Earth satellites and Deep Space exploration missions -- is exciting and challenging. Finally, I don't have to work 60-80 hours just to keep pace. A regular work week lets me excel (I'm not the type who's satisfied with mediocrity) and still have a life.
I'll get fired one of these days, most likely. The rules I have to break in order to get work done are often firing-level offenses (stuff like neglecting to fill out paperwork or ask for permission before doing some things). Or maybe I'll just get fed up. I'm pretty close right now anyway, after a 4% raise. After LANL, you can be sure it's back to the Real World (industry) for me.
Oh, and those "33%" raises? Hah. My wife is in a Computer group, so she'll get one -- but the word from up high is for noone to expect more than 10%. I'm one of two lone programmers in a Space Physics group, and we both expect to fall through the cracks.
I was a contractor for the US Army Corps of Engineers for 2 1/2 years. I was making a ridiculous amount of money (in the 6 figures) which was only a third of what the Corps actually paid for me. With all that I still quit the job because I couldn't deal with all the political crap. I've seen a 50 BILLION dollar project get pushed through even though tests said it was unneeded but the Corps needs a mission to keep the "Good old boys" around. I've seen the Hardest workers put down and blantantly lied to about benefits they would recieve which eventually destroyed 4 years of there work life and put them in a worse position then when they left college. I've seen so much crap from this government and now I have to choose one of these pricks to vote on and people feel that wasting more taxpayers money on a 33% increase in pay for n house computer sepecialists is going to help? I have news for you.. 80% of the IM force in the corps of engineers is contractors and each one costs +300k. I would never in my life work for the government again. Or not until Nader sits in the oval office.
I think they're worried that the federal workers are going to realize their stock options are worth nothing and jump ship for someplace more profitable. :-)
--Kai
--slashsuckATvegaDOTfurDOTcom
I had a contract with MITRE in NJ. They were total liars. I was told it was a 5 month contract; it was really a 4 month contract. Four weeks into it they started pressuring me to go full-time, at HALF my consulting rate. (A rate which they determined, BTW.) I finished 2 projects in 10 weeks and they whacked me, supposedly because the NSA didn't want a contractor working on their project. (They loved my work though.) I was told later by EDP/Source (the company I went through) that they were no longer working with MITRE because they did that to other people, in one case after the guy had come from California and already taken an apartment and moved stuff. When an agency won't take your business, that's pretty bad.
They made NO backups, ever.
The "techs" (that would fix their aging Macs) were two former secretaries who were extremely dangerous with a screw driver and bitchy as hell. I couldn't touch the machines, and actually had to leave the room a few times as these women essentially beat the poor Macs with the blunt end of the screwdriver.
When I got out of the meeting where they made me the full-time offer, the woman I worked with (who had a recent CS degree but tons of security policy experience) asked if they offered over $50k! She was making about 40. Everyone I ran into bitched heavily about pay, except the managers. The people there were basically cool, but management was twice as evil as usual.
Three months later they called asking if I had made backups of my stuff because a disk died. (I had stored the projects in about 3 places because there was no real tape or disk backup available.) They wanted me to help - for FREE. They explained they were using my 10 wks of work for their entire year-long NSA contract.
The work WAS interesting.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
As a prior employee of the Federal government, I can tell you that a raise of $7,000 - $10,000 is nothing. Most engineers I worked with made under $60k and Senior Admins made under $50k. Most left within 4 years (4 years working for 'the man' always looks good on your resume). After they left they could almost double their salaries in the private sector. Thats what I did. Not to mention all the HASSELS you don't have to deal with (i.e. random monthly drug testing, extensive background checks, way overboard security policies, meetings, OH the meetings!). One thing you will learn right away when working for the government is: they don't worry about wasting all day in meetings discussing whatever people want to talk about (I remember once we renamed a directory on our web server where we stored some older acrobat forms, fifty of us spent three hours discussing it - a meeting where basically nothing was accomplished, but if you do the math, it cost about six grand in time for the labor there, of course it's not like they are worries about loosing sales or NOT making a profit in the next quarter). Working for the government bites. The pay really bites. A minimal increase in pay will do nothing for them. I mean, if I have the choice of working in a near militaristic environment where you have to beg for money to upgrade RAM on the servers while getting paid less than average while working in an old delapidated building when I could work for a hot new company with a vision and goal, people my own age group who are wide open and not stuff old government persons, in a nice new office park, making almost double, and not having to worry about the time I got arrested taking a leak in a parking lot in college (which I might add almost cost me my job when they found out), I mean, is it REALLY that hard of a choice?
-Sternn
I will not be seeing a raise like this this year, although I do know a fair chunk of people that will be seeing a larger than average raise. I am probably one of the few people out there who thinks his salary is pretty fair. I don't live in the bay area. The cost of living where I live is low (2 bedroom, 1100 sq ft for $550/month). Granted, it's not a cultural mecca or anything, but my spouse's salary plus mine is way more than enough. The gov't though does have a salary problem. I make the same as a person who is in a much more expensive part of the world and in the same gov't position.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
"Hey, look, extra money laying around! Yay! We made it! We're not going to sink along with the dot coms! Quick, pay people more before they disappear."
.startup offered me $60K plus stocks plus guaranteed $10K raise for five years.
.economy tanks, I've still got a job. Here in Boston folks are still skittish from 7-10 years ago, so that's a big deal. Right now jobs are so easy to come by, you think you can just lose one and pick up another, but when there are less jobs than people...
You better bet I'm worth it, too. My job's federally funded. I'm a "Network Coordinator" for an NIH-funded research nonprofit in Boston. Started two years ago at pretty low salary, but not bad for an English major. This year a
The company I work for offered me near $50K to stay and I took it, since the startup had some inconsistencies in their job description. There are some benfits that startups (I got lots of offers) couldn't compete with: 4 weeks vacation, 4 weeks sick (which I can actually use), a week of personal time, 0 interest loans for a new computer, no dress code (I mean some of the coders show up in their pajamas), set your own hours, no deadlines, full medical, dental, and I'm insured and invested every way you can imagine. Plus everybody goes way out of their way to get along, there's very little politics, and most importantly: if your new
I learned everything I know about linux and unix and perl and c and java and NeXT and BeOS and even a little win2k registry stuff just during the slow periods (read: when I have everything running efficiently and no one breaks anything). We're slightly understaffed for some stuff and there's a lot of non-IT people here who don't have it as easy as I do, plus some of the larger IT decisions are made by folks a little behind (everyone is still using Word Perfect), but overall, I've had a bunch of tech jobs (state gov, fed gov, private sector, nonprofit) and this sort of pseudo-fed job's the best, the pay being the only issue (and one I can live with).
-jpowers
-jpowers
They simply are not allowed, in general, to lower the salaries of those who don't pull their own weight, and they cannot compensate their outstanding workers adequately.
There's a theory that says that therefore there aren't any outstanding employees, because they cannot be monetarily incented.
I believe that people in the public or private sector who give over and above do it for other reasons -- professional pride, technical interests, and a plain habit of excellence. The pay issue is just an insult.
But this theory does makes public employees a convenient whipping boy. My wife spent last week at a scientific conference that she had to attend because of her job. She had to pay for it herself, because of a state policy making it illegal for her agency to pay out of state travel. This policy was put in place because the politicians were caught taking junkets funded by lobbyists during which they attended none of the meetings. Notice that neither the people who misbehaved (the politicians) and the problem (their being bought by the lobbyists) are addressed by this policy.
I really get irked when politicians attack IRS employees. Sure, there are overzealous, lazy and corrupt ones, but most of them are courteous and professional. And more to the point, it's the tub-thumping politicians who need to bring pork back to their districts who create the incentive to predatory behavior, through their tax code, their budget, and their decisions about staffing levels.
Furthermore, unlike in industry where a poor manager can get axed if his or her team doesn't perform, government agencies often have few reliable metrics by which to determine whether a team and a manager are doing their jobs.
My wife likes to say "waste plus fraud equals a constant". The simplest things -- hiring or disciplining an employee or selecting a contractor for a very basic job, requires people in government to handle huge volumes of documentation and complicated auditing procedures to show beyond any reasonable doubt that they are being fair and unbiased.
The problem is that in the private sector, the only thing that really matters is getting the job done for a reasonable price. If I just call up my brother-in-law to get something done, my employer won't care so long as he gets the job done cheaply enough and well enough. If I do this in government, it (rightly) is considered a crime.
Here's the catch-22 of government spending. You are supposed to be completely fair and documentably beyond reproach, which requires an expensive and complicated procurement process. On the other hand, if you are less efficient than the private sector (which doesn't require this), you are somehow morally inferior.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm a US Marine in a tech job (computer specailist), and I tell you what, this is one area that won't be getting these raises. At $1450/month base pay for an E-4 with over 3 years in (read: someone about to get out), the lure of any half-decent paying tech job is almost irresistable to the lure of re-enlisting, something that technical Marines (and other service members) aren't doing: in droves. They wave stuff like bonuses ($30,000 max), jump school, "guaranteed" duty stations (nothing's ever guaranteed here), and other stuff at us like it was cool...but we keep getting out. 33%? That's a joke. How about quality of life, better training, and other "real" incentives that might auctually retain us. Instead, its..."10 more months and I'll be home, drinking beer and pissin' foam....."
After Congress moved to raise the President's salary to $500k and the VP's to somewhere in that territory, the federal salary structure finally got some relief. Federal law says you can't make more than the VP, and he's been making $175k. COLA's [Cost Of Living Adjustments] for the Supreme Court and some members of Congress were pushing the salary structure to the breaking point.
Working in a tight labor market [Huntsville, AL] with a high-tech workforce, I've seen federal salaries jumping a bit in an effort to grab people from the private sector. The pay's not what you'd get on the outside, of course, but the job security's usually pretty good. Also, as a contractor employee, I can tell you that the Federal guys rarely put in more than 40 per. Wouldn't that be nice.
--
-- Geof F. Morris
This is an endemic problem with working in the government sector. It is nearly impossible to fire anyone, and management has their hands tied regarding compensating their staff: They simply are not allowed, in general, to lower the salaries of those who don't pull their own weight, and they cannot compensate their outstanding workers adequately. In the end everyone gets paid (roughly) the same regardless of job content and performance. Furthermore, unlike in industry where a poor manager can get axed if his or her team doesn't perform, government agencies often have few reliable metrics by which to determine whether a team and a manager are doing their jobs
Another problem is that government bureaucracy tends to reward failure. If the situation isn't improving, obviously there's not enough money being thrown at the problem. For instance: the drug war, the DEA keeps getting bigger and bigger. Government education is another, the department of education keeps growing.
If I'm near the top of one of these big bureaucracies, and I get more money to play with, more people to boss around, and generally more power when the situation gets worse... What kind of incentive is that ? Say I'm in the DEA, if the drug problem went away, I would be out of a job! Job security is supposed to be a perk here, isn't it ? ;)
-Snoot
You can bet this means your average IT contractor won't be seeing an increase in pay. And in the end, this means those organizations who rely on contracted IT won't be seeing an increase in quality IT workers.
If anything, those Government agencies will continue to loose their IT staff. The company I went to has been raiding government organizations across the board. We can provide benefits and training well beyond the budgets of most Governmental agencies.
So in all... what does 33% do for the average US Gov't IT worker? If you're one of the current dedicated workers, you might be lucky enough to get a raise. But will it attract additional staff? I doubt it.
I spent about a year working as a contractor at a government institution. After my first month on the job I had finished two of the seven projects that I was hired to help with and several of the fulltime fed employees came to me and asked me to not try so hard. The entire time I was there I fought constantly with the fulltime federal employees, because they were more concerned with not rocking the boat and eventually collecting their pensions then with getting projects finished on time and under budget.
When my contract was over my supervisor offered me a full time position, which even at the much lower salary then my contracting rates was very tempting because of the incredible benefits
I turned them down out of fear of becoming one of the suspender wearing status quo'ites that already filled the offices.
Point being, even if you factor in the incredible benefits and the new higher salaries, it still would not be enough to make working on a government job worth it. Not unless along with the new salary policies they fired the vast majority of the current federal employees to make room for some people who actually cared about the work they were doing.
No, I am not bitter; I just taste like it.
;)