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Public vs. Private Sector?
yusing asks: "Public sector or private sector? Which would you rather work in? What are Slashdot reader experiences like? What are the differences in work environments? What are the frustrations of each? This person chose private sector after working in public. This article argues that the public sector should be expanded. There are definitely political considerations in this choice (bigger/smaller government for example) but I'd like help deciding which would be more appropriate for me. Where can I find quality reading to help me decide?"
Many have chosen public/governmental because you are very unlikely get get laid off. After all, there's no end to taxpayer money.
And then once you're in and want to switch jobs governmental agencies will give you preference over someone who's not working in the public sector. This is why a friend of mine is looking to land an airport screener job. He doesn't really want to do that for the rest of his life. He just wants to get in and later on move to some computer position elsewhere.
eTrade SUCKS
better money in private sector
Why not just do what feels right by you?
Sheesh, asking a website for it's opinion just makes you look weak.
But, in recent times, that has been a hard find. Govt jobs are at the mercy of what ever administration is in charge. Private jobs are at the mercy of the CEO and if he want to increase the stock proce by RIFing you and 1000 of your cow-orkers.
Michael Loves Me!
Personally I chose working in the public sector. Basically for the stability. With a family to feed in an slow economy like this, working for the government doesn't seem such a bad idea.
Besides, my health has already went all the way down hill after pulling the countless overtime in the private sector. I need to take time and recover quiet a bit, and the resonable working hour is just great for that.
private sector: big $$$
public sector: long term employment (in most cases)
bad things(tm)
private: volatility of company standing
public: PHB's up the wazoo, and less $$$
I worked in government contracting for the department of defense. It was not a pleasant experience. As a consultant, you had to allow your books to be audited by the DOD and you were limited to a 7% profit margin. I imagine the same applys for government employees - here's your salary and the best raise you can expect is a cost of living adjustment.
Truth: If it's not one thing, it's another
Much better pay, equipment and training in the private sector in my experience. Will be interesting seeing some other reactions.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I enjoyed working in Academia more than any other sector, though I'm not certain whether a BIG 10 university is considered Public or Private. (Since it draws a large amount of funds from the Government) Whatever it may be considered, it was terrific for me. The flexibility you have in when you do your reasearch and how you choose to conduct it is unparalleled.
.02
Just my
Jedimom.com, ph balanced, for women.
StrategyTalk.com, PC Game Forums
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Personally, I liked the university. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been in the private sector. They expect *results*.
...take whatever the hell job you can find, cause there isn't squat out there right now. Not many people have the luxury of pondering such questions these days.
Slashdot = alt.religion.windows.mpaa.riaa.sucks
Those who can't DO, TEACH.
Those who can't TEACH, MANAGE.
Those who can't MANAGE, GOVERN.
-Alanism-
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
You should work in at least one small, on the edge company for some period of time when you are young and can take more risks. These are the types of places you really learn and grow without having your fate defined by a strictly defined job definition.
This type of question is likely to be answered by all sorts of people crapping on the private sector because of the job situation out there. Come on folks, markets recover. Taking a risk on a smaller company when you have no dependents and no long term debt (like when you are first out of college) is a must.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
If you don't want to judged on your work performance and get away with all sorts of employment misconduct, by all means, take a civil service job. Its almost impossible to fire a Government employee compared to an employee in the private sector. That's why Government is completely inefficient (idiots survive easily) and why President G.W. Bush does not want typical civil servants running the Homeland Security Department.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Being at a .com on the public market during the boom, you received tons of nice little benfits. We had kegs every friday, tons to eat during the all hands meetings, more computer parts lying around for the taking. But now that everything went in the shitter, everything got cut back. No more friday kegs, no food at the all hands, no extra computer parts lying around. I'm sure the private sector changes too, but it can't be as much when you have to please investors.
These days, the choice seems to come down to whoever's hiring.
If you're the kind of person who really shines, who likes working hard and wants to impress your boss, stick with the private sector. If you just want to get by until you retire, and you'd rather do your more challenging work in your spare time, then work in the public sector.
What's your damage, Heather?
i am interning for a government agency right now and i love it! my experience may be unique, but i find i am given the freedom to do interesting new research at work. also there is no pressure to get a product out the door, and no crazy un-attainable deadlines. of course the pay is probably less than i would be making in the private sector, but for me the increased freedom, and reduced stress is worth the pay decrease.
http://www.schwer.us
Added to which, to be frank, from my experience you will end up working with the most mediocore people the market can bear. Sorry, but many government offices are staffed by the otherwise unemployable. Do you really want to work with these people??
It really depends on what kind of job you are looking for. I, as a researcher, am pretty much tied to public/non-profit, since I like the flexibility I get. If I went to a for-profit company I would not be able to direct my own research, and would pretty much be a monkey boy for my boss ( at least until I get my Ph.D. ). My roomate is thinking of switching out of a BIG computer company and going to a non-profit, so that his job is more interesting.
In your own head. What rewards you? Is it money? Is it scientific fame? Is it making products used by millions? Is it doing something ethically good? Is it long lasting research work? Is it the ability to change work-description quickly?
I have no idea where to find good reading on this, but I have my own anecdotal experience. In the private sector, everything is based upon relative merit. Those who have wealth and power control things, those who do not are inconsequential. My job was clear: service those with wealth and power. When the CEO screamed, we jumped. We were paid well for what we did. The job security sucked, but there was always another job. This is turned on its head in the public sector, where each minor functionary has their own storehouse of power and can stymie your attempts at doing your job through the use of simple intrangisence or procedural issues. We liked to say when I was working for the military that you don't care what you look like to the General. You care what you look like to the lifelong government employees, because the General is long gone and reassigned, while the lifers are going to be there forever. I find the public sector to be immensely annoying to work for, and there is the very great risk of being 'captured' by the system and becoming another functionary obsessed with procedure. Left to choose: private sector, every time.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
What about public vs state schools?
Public sector people may disagree, but I believe if you desire to work in a truly competitive market, where you earn yoru pay, and if you wish to work with the most motivated and motivating (good and bad) people you need to work in the private sector. However if your looking for security then the public sector is best. I have a friend who is a sys admin for a gov facility and his job is so easy, no stress, they are all unionized. And there is never ending breuracracy.
If you wish to make any sort of change it has to be approved by ten different commitiees. ten commitees who know nothing about the technology. Where in private sector is driven by demand and performance.
What the heck is this? Someone can't figure out what to do with their life, and comes to the general population of the world for advice? What in the world does this have to do with news?
You know, there doesn't have to be a new article every 10 minutes or so. Can wait for like..real news stories, or things that people might be interested in.
working in the public sector is frustrating, and thankless. Working in the private sector is less so. In fact, for some people, working in the private sector is actually rewarding. Being in IT in the public sector isn't. Red tape like MAD. It really is true that the space shuttle still uses 386 chips all over due to all the hassles they'd have to go through to change the design.
Private sector also pays better. On the other hand, you're far less likely to get fired in the public sector. So if you suck, and have no plans on improving yourself, work in the public sector. Otherwise, private.
there is, of course, a seperate option...one that some one say is one or the other, but the culture is definately different enough to warrant its own category - Academia. Depends on what you want to do.
and isn't "it depends" the answer anyway? Yeesh. Its like you're asking "which is better to do this task I haven't defined? Assembly, C, perl, or java?" Well geeze...who knows? What are your skills? What do you want in life? How important is money to you? Is IT a career thing for you, or a job? There are far too many factors.
what a silly "article." Bah
I work for the feds in a small regional office. However, I'm the kind of person who likes to have input on all the big IT decisions, so for me, this sucks!
All the decisions are made at a National level with very little chance for the regions to comment or even make suggestions. If your IT folk at the national level are not great, your job gets harder. We have a lot of inhouse developed solutions. However, they rarely work properly when a new version comes out, and there is very little documentation (read: none, except install instructions).
Also, a lot of the time the public sector doesn't have a lot of control over the products it uses. For example, we're preparing to rollout Windows 2000 for our server environment (with Exchange, MSSQL, etc.) without ever making a choice on looking at other OSs. Why? Because, they decided to contract the job out. So, basically lowest bid that meets the requirements wins. They don't bother to look at other options, like taking the money to pay the contractors and instead training up people to implement the solution.
Yes, I'm bitter, and slowly starting to find contract work to get myself out of this job. But what I have to say is still valid. If you like being in control, or at least working close with those who are, make sure you work in the top of the pryamid office. Of course this doesn't just apply to public offices, I'm sure large private sector corps aren't much different.
Big public companies are chock full of nasty politics and can be frustrating at times. They are secure, and promotions are easier, but being someone the company cherishes is harder.
Small private companies keeps you free of politics and its easier to be recognized, although, it is usually more difficult to move up the chain (promotions) when in a smaller company.
Personally, I enjoy the small companies, because I hate company politics. I do plan on changing in a few years (after my MBA and some project management experience) to get more responsibility and more cash.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Academia. Working IT at a public university lets you do pretty much what you want, decent pay, and you don't have to sell anything.
MORTAR COMBAT!
... I think, is to interview people who are in each, and some who do both.
I have worked in both public and private sectors, and there are, as anywhere, good and bad of each. I don't have any experience in a startup, though, so that might affect some things about the private sector.
I currently work for a huge worldwide corporation, and have some stability and certainly higher pay, but for less decision-making authority and less work environment control than I had in the public sector. I have access to much better benefits, more up-to-date hardware (in some cases, hardware that's not publicly availble, even from other companies), and a much larger budget than in the public sector, but less leeway with what I can and can't do with them.
Other people's experiences may vary, but I would say this: In general, public sector work is a great place to get started, in just about any field (not just IT/MIS/software/whatever), and can provide a richness both in breadth and depth of experiences, often at lower (much, sometimes!) pay, and with smaller bene packages. Private sector work is a good place to get paid, to get your teeth fixed on the company's dime (more or less), get some brutally repetative, but nevertheless deep, exposure to a handful of experiences, and get those conference passes and flights to/from them for free, or pretty close to it.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Is that it is actually in most cases harder to get a job in the public sector. The government has very strict hiring practices and if they say you need a degree, they tend to not accept equivalent work experience. Sure you may not get laid off working for the government, but in most cases, if you were working in the private sector you could save enough money to handle being laid off. Sure you get nice hours, vacation working for the government, but again working in the private sector (especially as a consultant) you can save more money to take vacation, or even take a couple months off. Sure working for the government you might not have to work as hard and be as skilled, but you won't be learning skills and using your skills, so you won't be advancing your career either. Weighing it out, it's any easy choice for me, if I'm going to work for the government, I'm going to be a marine so I can kill people, because that's about the only real benfit it has, (aside from stability which can be countered by money, because money = time)
You really should be looking in all sectors. Why decide to focus on just public or private sectors? That can severely limit any prospects for gainful employment.
Sure there are some benefits in either one and also cons in either one. However, those exist regardless of any job that you take and every action that you peform in life.
Limiting yourself to one sector, IMHO, has far more cons then pros.
In the end, it is your decision to make. My only advice is to never limit your options. Both sectors can be rewarding in a number of ways.
-.-
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I work with a major company who's prime source of contracts is with governments (US, UK,some china)and its the best/worst of all worlds.
THE BAD: Since all government contracts start as bids, your company will invariably underbid. That means a death march. Tight schedules, reduced resources. Some marches are more livable than others. However, becuase the SW development field is so young, I think you are going to find death marches everywhere.
Additionally, you are a servant to many masters. Those paying, those managing, and those who will eventually get your product. However I find politics to be quite fun, especially when you outperform (See above comment) and your adversaries "fall on their ass" (its an industry term...)
THE GOOD: Everything you heard about public sector jobs, but with better salary. Whoo hooo!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I'm sure i'll get flamed to a crisp, but what the hey......
In my first job outside of school i was working for a consulting firm where we did a lot of work for the government (setting up networks, computer security, etc etc etc)
After that experience I would say that I will never EVER work for the government myself, nor will I ever have much respect for those that work in government.
Some reasons:
-well, it was the government. Slow moving people mired in burocracy.
-minimal accountability. The amount of $$$$ that was being spent on stupid stuff, plus the amount of $$$ being wasted by incompetance was just sickening.
-institutational paralysis. Try to get anybody to make a freaking decision? Forget it - we're gonna need three comittees and a dozen meetings to make the most trivial decision. I think this is part of the government mentality - it's part of the job security.
That being said, there are good people working in the government. But i'll never go anywhere near that sector again. My self respect couldn't take it.
Wow, you're blatant misoginy and sexism is refreshing. Maybe when you hit puberty, grow up a bit, move out of your moms house, you too could have a girlfriend.
I think it depends on your goals.
The public sector, and I'm speaking as an employee of a large land grant university, is less volitile but with less opportunities. I'm pretty confident I'll have my job 20 years from now. That's what I want: stability. But this is without sacrifice. I make less than what I could in the private sector. And it looks like I'll have to wait my turn to move up the ladder instead of using backstabbing manuvers to kill of the competition.
On the other hand, the public sector is the place to go to make lots of money fast. If you have the desire and the will, you can be CEO before the end of the week... which is what everyone else is doing, so you have to watch your back.
These two sectors have completely different missions. One is self-serving, existing only to make money. The other was born for the betterment of society where profits are not the objective.
I'd a lot depends on the general "public vs. private" sector arguements in the country you're in, and how politicians, decision makers and the public generally respect these sectors.Depends what you're trying to get out of it as well - security? money?
I'd make a guess you'd be better off working in the public sector in a northern European country (scandinavian social democracy model) and the private sector in the USA (laissez faire free market policies). I guess the surrounding working condition issues offered by those countries affect both private and public sector workers. Not sure what I'd choose in former soviet countries, probably working for the mafia... :-(
Working in the public sector (I assume federal, rather than state) gives you very good job security, reasonable pay, strong benefits, and the potential to retire young with a nice pension - allowing you to either live frugally and well or take another job afterwards with extra gravy courtesy of the feds. State governments are generally similar, but the workers are more prone to layoff if the budget crashes.
Public sector employees, though, often have fewer opportunities for advancement, no ability to get things like bonuses, and less flexibility in some of the "little things" you might encounter (like flex time , for instance). Also, if your boss is a moron in the private sector there's a chance they might get canned. If your incompetent boss is a civil servant, it's likelier that they'll stick around and make you miserable.
In the private sector, there's more opportunity for talented people to advance rapidly, more competitive and flexible pay scales, and in many cases, a workplace that's open to change.
But the downside is little to no job security, a less generous retirement plan (at most companies), and less time off.
So you need to decide what's more important to you. If you like stability, and/or aren't supremely confident in your abilities, then you can perhaps get on a career path with the feds and have a nice, solid, middle-class life. You'll probably get to keep working there through thick and thin so long as you're not a total screwup.
But if you think you really have the ability to go be a star, stick to the private sector. If you're really good, there's at least a chance of getting the appropriate reward. Just keep your resume up-to-date.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Public sector "job security" robots are cowards. They will never achieve anything worthwhile in life because all they want is for someone else to take care of them so they don't have to take care of themselves. That's why public sector agencies are chock full of flaky loser employees.
If you have any combination of motivation / ambition / competence you will never be satisfied working in the public sector. It will frustrate you to death.
you dumbass you cant even spell.
I more or less was considering the same thing coming out of school. Research all you want but the only real way to know is to just do it.
I ended up taking a job as contractor (well contractor to contractor to contractor) on a large federal contract. This experience was enough for me to realize that working directly for the government was not for me. I stayed a consultant for six years (on federal contracts in the DC metro) and enjoyed it.
After the economy went to hell after 9/11 and my contract ended a few months later, I began to wonder if perhaps being an employee would be a better fit. I did a temp to perm deal, and now I know I don't ever want to be a regular employee again. The stabillity of being an employee is not real IMHO and the restrictions are annoying. For good or ill, I may soon be free of my obligation to the project and back on the market. I know I will never try for employee gigs unless I become truly desperate.
My advice would be to try each of the things you are cosidering in rough order of the things you think you would like most paired with opportunity. It's not like you cannot change your direction after completing a project and tying up the loose ends.
Ramble, ramble. YMMV.
~~ What's stopping you?
I've been working as computer support for a large state university for over a year and a half. Tomorrow is my last day. I'm leaving to go back to school full time. Why am I quitting?
My pay is 25-35% lower than people with my same job in the private sector. And there really isn't any less stress at this job, unless you are a brain-dead slacker who could care less about enabling people to be productive. If you're interested in sitting on your ass all day and not helping people, and are reasonably sure your supervisor won't be willing to file the stress headache of termination papers for you, then the public sector is right for you.
Yes, public sector is stable. But the lack of money takes away from that. I can't afford a house, a new car, and I can barely keep up with my student loan payments. How stable is having to eat a dinner of rice and beans several times a week just to make payments on things you can't afford?
And public sector jobs depend heartily on funding from government. I've had plenty of experience lobbying the legislature of my state for funding for the past few years. If budgets need to be cut, the "bloated infrastructure" of a university looks is a mighty easy target for legislators.
Yes, it's a student's life and graduate school for me. Stick to the private sector if you can. Just don't get caught up in the lifestyle of extravagance, and you'll be fine.
I have worked for both and there are pros and cons to each.
.gov then you really dont have to worry about job loss, well you do but not as much. The one complaint that alot of my co-workers had was that they wernt given the chance to try new things and branch out. In some cases if you are in the bleading edge dept. then you can but usually no, they still use ada for christ sake! One good thing was that the specs were fantastic for the projects I was involved with and the pace was easy. We really didnt slack but the deadlines wernt the slap in the face that the private sector gives you.
.gov the deadlines are years in advance and everywhere else it is a race to market.
.gov workers are lazy. well in my exp.
As one poster said if you work for the
With the public sector I have the freadom to try out new tech and see if it fits in with our buisness model. The specs I have recieved in most all of my exp were terible, changing all the time and in alot of cases just plain unreasonable. Time to deliver is a joke as well. I say a month and my sales people say 2 weeks. Well what can you do.
With the
I liked both and wouldnt mind working in either sector. But if you work for the private sector remember that some companies have a notion that all former
Hey dont flame me for my spelling!! I know I suck already so you will just be waisting your time.
If I were only smart enough to accomplish the things I dream about.. Or maybe too dumb to care.
A great band once said:
Yes there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There's still time to change the road you're on
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The national labs typically have the latest equipment, best training, and real job security.
Sandia and Los Alamos are great examples of this.
However, for these 2 you will have to LIVE IN NEW MEXICO.
(your living standards may vary, I just like "real" cities)
Sandia
Los Alamos
The private sector is typically faster and more efficient than the public sector. Private companies need to be nimble in order to remain competitive in a changing marketplace, and of course they have to keep a close eye on the bottom line. Conversely, the public sector has a responsibility to make thoughtful, conscientious decisions through due process.
As for pay, "everybody knows" that salaries are better in the private sector, but the difference is smaller towards the bottom of the org chart. Laborers, techs, and line managers don't make that much less in the public sector than their corporate counterparts. There is a huge disparity in executive salaries. It is fairly common for people to gain initial experience as civil servants, then make the jump to private organizations for the better pay later on.
Some people simply feel better about working for a public organization. Many civil servants have a sense of duty to their community. This drive is probably responsible for the high rate of burnout among civil servants. The average turnover among public managers, for example, is 18 months.
I enjoy the stability and rewarding nature of my position in a municipal government, and I don't plan on going back to the private sector any time soon.
--
irb(main):001:0>
The second article mentioned (the one where the person claims security jobs belong in the public sector) assumes that only the private companies themselves will always audit their own security. Does anyone else see anything wrong with this, the concept or the assumption itself?
I'm comfy in my stable IT based state job. I have seen the typical stereotypical government worker in BOTH sectors.
...but there are a bunch of those jobs in the PRIVATE sector too. The grass ain't greener on the other side, it's pretty much painted dead grass there too.
While there are some backwards, misdirected, IT shops in the state, OURS isn't one of 'em. I'm proud of the work and accomplishments my fellow cow-orkers and I have pulled off on a small budget and not enough people.
I appreciate the stability, and the pay has actually jumped up to equal the lower pre-dotcom network admin salaries. I appreciate the 40 hour work weeks, and the flex-time/place work environment. But I also know that my position is a unique one and there are a WHOLE LOT of state jobs I wouldn't want to have.
Will I be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs this way? Nope. But I'll have plenty of time to watch my kids grow up and _assist_in_that_process_.
I've learned reciently that being rich ain't all that. I'm pretty happy with slightly more money than I need to live on comfortably.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Unfortuntately, we have a sizeable budget for hardware, software, and support contracts. What does that mean? The prevailing philosophy is to buy something off the shelf rather than developing it in house. Even for simple stuff like messaging systems, content management systems, etc. As a result, I have to look elsewhere during my spare time in order to learn new things (e.g. XML and Java to name a few). Like any other programmer, if I'm not learning new things, I'm not worth much.
This is great if your on the management side of the equation. CYA can't get any easier. Something doesn't work? Fall back on a fat support contract or buy software and hardware.
This sucks if you're a hack with a curious itch looking to take your game to the next level. Your proposals are going to be trumped by your department's need to "spend the budget or risk losing it come the fiscal new year."
My suggestion: If you're young and excited about learning new things and doing more with less, run don't walk from a gig with the government. If you've lost a step as a hack or are management material, get on board, ride it for twenty years, retire to Guadalajara, and sip tequila sunrises until your liver explodes.
Having worked in both public (DoD, DoI) and private sectors, I must say that I greatly prefer private.
The public sector is not as stable as one might think. New administrations tend to undo what previous ones did (even if they are the same party - the transition from Reagan to Bush caused a number of shakeups). RIFs and reassignments are dictated by the political climate and public opinion. And if the majority in Congress happens to be of a different party than the Prez, and Federal budget gets delayed, you don't get paid (and retroactive pay is not guaranteed).
Private sector is far more volatile, but the opportunities are also greater. I'll accept the higher-but-manageable risks of the private sector.
IF you are an innovative person. If you are constantly trying to fin new and better ways of doing something or are interested in efficiency at all then you will be utterly miserable in public work.
I spent 7 years in it... The supervisors are idiots, their managers are morons, and the people that run the city are scumbags. (city managers) Add to that the usual UNION workforce that is interested in making sure that you DO NOT make your job more efficient. I shaved 10 minutes off of a proceedure while increasing it's reliability.. the union filed a grievance against me for trying to change my job profile.
If you are innovative or highly skilled... you will hate public work.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Find a happy medium: there is something between public and private... the non-profit. Contrary to somewhat popular belief, non-profit doesn't mean non-pay. Most large non-profits realize that to get the best people they have to compete with both public and private sectors simultaneously ... so you end up with a salary structure that is a little less than full private sector, a little less secure than a govt job. (Conversely, it pays better than govt and is more secure than private.) Given that this AC is mid-30's w/ wife and 2 kids it's a good compromise for me.
Additionally, non-profit refers to the bottom line. That doesn't mean the org's aren't out to generate revenue via patents and licensing, just that they spend it too. In fact, many non-profits have pretty good IP royalty sharing schemes.
It's been a simple opinion for me.
But, there's something else even more important that being what type of job you have. For a typical slashdotter, the most important thing is finding a job where Internet Access isn't monitored or restricted.
The other thing is, the only one truly looking after you is yourself. With that said, I've basically advanced my career/skills through my spare time on the job. Find a job with plenty of spare time and be sure to take advantage of it. I had a three month non-busy spell a few years ago and studied my ass off in Java, got certified, within one year, was making $25k more and still making it.
Govt. is under too much political scrutiny. Some locals find out we're paying public employees to browse the net, and it gets shut down for the workers. Shit man, browsing the Internet on the job should be a civil right!
Some of my friends in govt. actually have to walk to a different floor of the building to send an email to the outside world. I aint kidding, this is a fairly high up job.
Local munie? Well that's another one. I would never, never work for a local municipality. This is the absolute bottom of the food chain. I know this is an ugly steatement, but I've never seen a fatter bunch of duffers than when visiting my local county office to pay some tax, or fill out a form or whatnot. Not even the DMV is as bad.
Teaching? All the teachers I have adult converations with seem to have no sense of what the real world is all about. Part of them regresses back into childhood (or to whomever they teach their subjects to).
Private Sector is fractic by nature. It'll keep you from becoming obsolete. You may switch jobs, but you'll be a smarter/stronger/richer person of you can roll with punches.
Work Hard Play Hard
It goes without saying that for job security, the public sector is the best. The variety of positions available within the public sector is also much better.
:-)
However, the stereotype is that a job in the public sector is mundane.
After many years of working in the private sector, I am now working at Health Canada in the development of a public health surveillance system. I went in with apprehension because I had heard so many stories of public servants sitting around their desks doing nothing - not my cup of tea. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the group I'm in was very sharp and very professional. No two hour lunches and half hour coffee breaks here.
I started wondering why and began to realize the reason behind it all. Given that there have been many layoffs in the private sector, the public one has benefitted greatly from the pool of talent that has been made available. These people have brought with them skills and a level of professionalism that has changed many government departments for the better.
Note, however, that this hasn't applied to all departments. I guess I'm just one of the lucky ones.
I've worked in both and I'll take private.
I spent 10 years in the public sector doing municipal engineering, and 6 years in the private sector doing various IT work.
The public sector definitely has the appeal of stability, after all, the city/county/state/federal government isn't likely to pull up stakes and move to Mexico where the labor is cheaper, but with the stability comes stasis. There just isn't that much to be gained by taking risks in government.
The private sector has greater risks, but as every economist knows, with risk comes reward. Of the three companies that I've worked for in the past 6 years, one has been acquired by a European conglomerate occassioning a major cultural shift, and subsequent loss of morale in the general employee population, one just folded without warning (a month after I left, luckily enough) and my current employer has been slashing the head count steadily since 6 months after I started.
That has all been balanced by the fact that I've learned twice or three times as much in the past 6 years than I did in the previous 10. In addition, my first private employer picked up the tab for my Bachelor of Science, relieving me of the need to take out $15,000 in student loans, not to speak of the interest.
There is a place for public employment, my father spent his entire adult life working for Uncle Sam, first in the Air Force, then in the FAA, and then in Customs, and is sitting on a pretty nice retirement packageme. I'm not sure I could do that though. I haven't worked anywhere that I wasn't ready to leave within five years simply because there was nothing left there to maintain my interest.
My girlfriend works in the private sector (magazine publisher), I'm public sector (research scientist). Her joke is that her job is to make money, my job is to spend it.
:-(
She likes private, because it's fast moving and you have to actually do stuff. I like public, because I have lots of money to spend on toyz, not many deadlines, and a lot of freedom.
She's paid 3x more than me though
What too many Americans don't realize is exactly what is being pursued under the "small government" rubric. Are the number of civil servants going down or remaining flat? Yes. Is total government spending going down? No. Where's the difference?
What's called "private sector" is all too often government contractors. We, your government contractors, aren't bound by all the government's rules, restrictions, or protections. We can be laid off or fired relatively easily. We can use private databases to watch you. You can't see us, because we're private. But we can contribute to PACs, to keep the money flowing to political campaigns. We call it "access" and as a result your elected officials pay more attention to our lobbyists than they do to you.
As one of my previous bosses put it, "Our company has no problems that cannot be solved by more growth."
There was an excellent article on Canadian research on the BBC website re what best for the patient; public or private healthcare. One result that you have a better chance of survival in a public hospital. One of the reasons is because the staff is better educated / qualified.
So if quality colleagues is a factor..
Want back stabbing, gossip, alliances and enemies? Join the ranks of academia! If you are a prof you get amaazing leeway to abuse your grad students and use them for free labor. Thats if you can survive the constant oversight of the head of the dept. If you are a grad student, bend over and lube up. You are free labor and you have no rights as a worker. After a while you will notice that it is no coincidence that your advisor won't let you leave. Why would they? You are a well conditioned mule. Letting you graduate would mean your advisor would have to break in another.
Public sector: the works of Ayn Rand. Public sector: The works of Karl Marx and history books.
Having worked in both, I can say that there are definite advantages and disadvantages to both, and it would depend on you.
In private sector, you can do all kinds of cool stuff if you can show that it will make money. The heydays tend to be sweet, but when it's over and the company shifts its direction, you can be quickly out of a job. Unless you get in with a really great company and work up to lower/middle management, you're more than likely on your own to keep your skills current and prove that you're worth keeping. Most of us are not unionized so as soon as you become obsolete you're out the door.
Public sector, for the most part, by definition doesn't make money so anything new is simply looked at as another cost. The services you provide are usually decided for you by the powers that be through the departmental mandate. Where you can really get noticed, though, is if you can save money. In public sector it's all about the budget. In contrast to private sector, public sector employees are usually either unionized or are a member of a non-bargaining class so there doesn't tend to be a lot of wage negotiation, rather you negotiate your classification. The upshot of all that is when the departmental mandate changes, you can usually get retrained so you upgrade your skills for free.
That's been my experience anyway. YMMV.
In addition to other benefits of working the public sector already listed, I enjoy 40 hours/week = 40 hours/week. This isn't true for all positions, but if I need to work more than 40 hours, I either get overtime or comp time.
Promotions are also a more regular thing. They are usually based on time served and exams rather than your ability to suck up to the boss.
You are also generally allowed the luxury of not having to push a product out to meet a profit timeline. You can make sure it is done correctly and you don't get fired if my findings show that a project is not feasible.
I also find it is easier to get a public sector job that you can believe in. Something that makes you feel like you make a difference in the world as opposed to just making money.
And it is harder for your pension to get raided.
Now the cons.
You do have to deal with the occasional person who matches the sterotypical model of a government worker. Someone who knows they can't be fired easily and so they do the minimum of work and will try to take credit for the work of others.
Also there isn't a "get rich quick" option. No stock options or profit sharing.
Another drawback (at least for California State workers) is that every year, you become a political pawn in the budget process.
YMMV
Brought to you by: "Al"toids - the curiously weird mint.
There are different types of public-sector employment. I'm a municipal worker, and can't imagine being swallowed up in the county/state/federal system. Some municipalities (such as Los Angeles) might be as intimidating to me as a federal position too. But my city employs about 1500 people, most of which take a great deal of pride in their work.
It's true that the pay often doesn't match what the private sector offers. But as an IT employee I'm still earning more than the average American household, so I don't care that I'm not getting the maximum amount that my skills could provide on the "outside." We do have good job security, and our pay rates typically resemble a straight line with a gradual slope upward. (My private sector pay rate experience looked more like a sine wave.) Our city manager believes that it costs the organization more to re-hire and re-train people than it does to retain them during economic downturns. That doesn't mean we can just show up and collect a paycheck. It means that when we come to work we can focus on taking care of city operations for the citizens instead of looking over our shoulder wondering who's next to go. I also work with some very talented people. Most of us have pursued technical hobbies well before we were able to get paid to do it. (CBM 4032 with Headmaster system, anyone?) It's not like we suddenly became incompetent by virtue of being government employees.
I guess like anything else, it all comes down to balancing your priorities. I don't miss the BS of the private sector. I don't miss the profit motive. I don't miss the high turnover rates. It's nice to be surrounded by predominantly good people who take pride in what they do, and are not intimidated by the thought of losing their job at the whim of a knuckle-headed boss.
Of course, this is my experience at my various places of employment. YMMV.
I have been a public snivel servant since '76 and the answer as to which to chose is "it depends". ... oh except for you top 10% people. Everything's cherry there, right?
It depends on where you work and what the job is and that goes for private as well as public.
I would argue that the monetary rewards are greater in private as opposed to public. On the other hand public gives you more stability.
I get aggravated by the neo-con neo-lib "smaller government" wheez. In a democracy (such as it is) YOU are the government. You don't get your say in a board room and maybe you can't buy a politician but you can at least toss him/her out. And don't give me that crap about responsibility to the shareholders. You don't need things like Worldcom to prove dollarocracy sucks
You want to get government "out of the way"? You are getting democracy (such as it is) "out of the way". rant
I worked in a government position for two years, then switched to a private industry job. I can't recommend any books on the subject, but I can relate my experience.
Government Job: Pros- Deadlines were meaningless
- Very low stress level
- Projects were unique and interesting
- If you really need something, money is no object.
Government Job: Cons- Lots of paperwork
- Limited salary
- Unmotivated peers
- Politics
Private Industry Job: Pros- Good Pay
- Good Equipment
- Competent Peers
- Good Benefits (insurance, perks, bonuses)
Private Industry Job: ConsEvery work environment will be different, so don't take these items as a hard and fast rule. I'm sure others in this thread will have widely different experiences from my own. Private companies that do work for the government (Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup) will act more like government jobs, and conversely, government labs (Sandia National Labs, MIT Lincoln Labs, John's Hopkins Physics Lab) will act more like private companies. Finding the right fit is a trial and error process that everyone must go through. I've found that I prefer to work for a small, private firm where I have more influence on my job, but at the same time take on quite a bit more stress and responsibility.
Whatever job you decide to take, a good idea is to first define what your goals are. Do you want a job that requires you to spend long hours, but rewards handsomely? Are you looking for a job where your tasks are well defined? What is your tolerance for stress? Do you prefer to work on a team, or alone? Do you want to perform research into new areas? Ask yourself these types of questions, and when you are sure of what you are looking for, ask your prospective employer about them. If you have a chance, ask the existing employees. Compare what the job has to offer against what you want from the job, and you will have a better chance of finding a position that is right for, regardless of whether it is public or private.
I started out working for a small software company in a small western town and we had to be very cost conscious- stretching the life on servers and workstations, skimping on licenses where we could (don't call the SBA!) all the time. When I moved into a county government position in the same town I was floored at how much I was allowed to budget for IT expenditures in a similarly sized network.
This is completely due to the fact that so many people who control the purse strings at this level of government have ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what we do and therefore it's generally very easy to get approval for more and more expensive IT initiatives.
the worm is the spice.
Making a decision like this with the input of people who have been there is a good idea but since this is such a personal choice you'll have to try 'em both. Jobs are not a forever thing in this field/economy. Try one sector for a few years (or less) and then switch.
Having worked in the public sector, I'd choose private. Public sector puts you at the mercy of the taxpayers, and ANY attempt to secure money for ANYTHING is met with derision and scorn from the people paying your salary, the taxpaying public. Given a choice, I'd remove myself from that sort of scrutiny and go private. Example: If a company wants to send you to a convention in Vegas, no one cares. The public enterprise, in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, has to send you to a similar conference in Fresno. Ugh.
The concern about "big" versus "small" government is not a political concern. It's a political talking point primarily, a shorthand for "I'm with you," or "they're against you."
When looking at the reality of behavior and decisions made by proponents of either meaninglessly vague philosophy, it becomes clear that few have any moral compunctions about inflating the size and influence of programs that benefit their constituents or ensure a constant flow of political capital.
There are things that governments, accountable to many people, do well or, must do because they are programs or tasks that cannot be carried out by groups that are accountable to the very few, or who cannot take long-term losses. Likewise, there are many things government is not suited for, such as short-term profit, specialized R&D, or rapid deployment.
It's sad that "government" becomes synonymous with "waste," but the fault for that interpretation lies at least partially with those who think that government and the private sector are interchangeable. Extreme libertarians and extreme authoritarians are deluded in much the same way, mirror images of each other.
Personally, the comments of the person from the private sector seem most valuable for someone trying to choose between the two. The other article seems mostly a cautionary tale of what goes wrong when orgs with not enough oversight are given too much responsibility.
That's the best way to describe working for in the public sector. I worked for a private consulting firm until I was laid off 6 months ago. I am currently (temporarily) working for state government until I start with a different consulting firm next month. I'm 25 and single. I don't care about job security. I want career advancement and intellectual stimulation. I definitely do not get that working for the government.
Also, keep in mind who you're going to work with. At the state we have a lot of people who come in at 22, sit on their ass for 35 years, and retire from a middle management job. Don't get me wrong, there are capable and intelligent people in the public sector. They just don't stand out against the sea of drones putting in their 40 hours * 48 weeks * 35 years.
from the where-would-you-prefer-to-work dept.
How about from the I'll-work-where-I-can-right-now department?
I can count the number of job openings in the Boston Globe in the computer industry on ONE hand most days.
At my public sector (state) job, the head of IT was a typical PHB. He
- knew little;
- believed vendors, their salespeople, and consultants over his employees;
- Had no vision and worse, no plan;
- and he would not speak to his employees about any of the above.
I actually had asked my boss once what my purpose was in being there and she didn't know. A group of us asked her if this "CIO" would sit down with us and help us figure out what our roles were, what his vision was, and what the 5-year plan was. Her answer: "No. He doesn't like confrontation."Then I asked if I could speak to him one-on-one so he'd be less intimidated. Her answer: "No. You can schedule a meeting with him, but it will be cancelled."
Now, I was going through a difficult time (divorce) so I was looking for my job to have some meaning. It didn't. I was intent on using all those sick days they gave me (state jobs do have good benefits but it was actually a problem that I used the sick days) and my boss sits me down in her office and says: I know you have nothing to do (no active projects) and are struggling with having no purpose here, but it would be better for you to come in and sit at your desk playing SOLITAIRE ALL DAY than to take another sick day.
Basically, in my experience, in the public sector you are treated like furniture. They may not use you at all, and they want to shuffle you around (...constant reorganizations make you look busy, you know...), but by God you'd better be where they put you day in and day out 'cause when they're ready to sit on you, if you're not there they get pissed.
Working in the private sector, I've been laid off four times, three companies I worked for went out of business, and I've never been with any single company more than three years. AND I LOVE IT.
But sometimes, now that I'm older and have a family and kids and all, I think: Those sit on your ass all day, do nothing, government jobs would really help my blood pressure right about now.
YMMV.
As an employee of a large University, I feel I've got a pretty good gig. The #1 reason for this is the "alternative" work arrangement. I work 30 hours a week with very flexible hours. In many private companies, there exists a culture of rigid work schedules, workaholism, and corresponding disdain for people more interested in a life outside work.
My employer is just the opposite. I'm an aspiring musician, and my job allows me the time and flexibility to work on music in addition to making a living. If tech were my life, and I didn't have an aversion to work-stress, I would get a 40+ hour/week job at a private company and make 50% more money. But past a certain point, TIME is more important to me than money. This has been mentioned in previous threads, but I point it out again because at least at some Universities, job expectations are different, and you don't have to be at work every day at 8 a.m. The other big benefit here is 4+ weeks of vacation time. The reason for this is my academic staff position is in the same general category as professors, and 4+ weeks is standard for them. (If the University wants to keep them, they have to be competitive with other institutions).
We've seen the predictable comments that public sector is low pay, but better job security and private is risky and demands results. We've also seen the typical trashing of public sector employees. A couple of comments:
1. Public sector is no longer immune from layoffs. Tax revolts across the contry are squeezing public sector like never before. To save $3.47 on property taxes voters will cut public service to the point where they start cutting services! Somewhere someday somebody is going to have to come to the brilliant conclusion that if you want a service, you have to pay for it. You want it more efficient? Cool! Let's do it, but if you demand deep cuts, then fix your own potholes.
2.) Public sector employment has a very wide range. Working for the federal government is its own kind of world that I suspect has no equal in terms of faceless bureaucracy. Working for a big city you're likely to face unions that demand overtime for breathing. But there are those jobs in the public sector that can be very rewarding.
For example, I work at a public library that is autonomous in terms of budget, beholden directly to the taxpayer, not a city council or some other group. It's been a very rewarding career with plenty of room for growth and encoragement for innovation. We have been extremely concerned with efficiency and have never purchased a cadillac when a chevy would do. We've been frugal and careful with our money and as a result have been able to cushion the low years while providing an increasing level of service to the public. Internet? We're the only group that gives it away free to the public. Just walk on in here and use a PC. Wi-Fi? Sure, even in the parking lot. We want you to connect and don't keep you out. Value? If you had to buy everything we loan or give to you per year you'd pay $100 million instead of $7 million.
Free e-mail? Sure: PPP, webmail, whatever you want. $0.00 per month.
Oh, that last? Sorry, it's going away. We have to cut $100,000 from the budget. It'll save you, on average, 71 cents on your tax bill of what is probably on the order of $2400 per year (depending on school district, etc.)
So you can go buy Internet service for what? An average narrow band of $20.00 per month, so $240.00 per year. You can apply the 71 cents to it. Good for you! be smart! Cut government.
3.) It's easy to get fired in public service. Just screw up one more time.
The great thing about generalities, is that they generally don't apply to individuals.
The general response is:
Public Sector: Boring, Safe, Less Rewards
Private Sectors: Exciting, Scary, Better Pay
Then a flood of responses from people that are in one category but have the properties of the other.
I've done both, currently in private, all my relatives in public (I live in DC). I can't work for the public sector anymore. I need to be able to look myself in the mirror each day.
Sleep is for the Weak
Very true. While both have red tape, the corps are less likely to get bogged down in it. Corps are driven to make a profit and red tape costs money. Governments however do not consider the bottom line as much as they should. A nice happy medium between between the fanitic corps' persuit of profits and some governments total lack of business sense would be ideal.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
IT resumes are worth more as shit squares than they are for distinguishing talented individuals. Buzzwords have rendered them absolutely useless, because anybody and everybody splatters everything inside the margins with them. An IT staffer might as well sort IT resumes by weight or coloration than by reading them. If you reduce yourself to your resume, you're one of hundreds if not thousands of applicants for most jobs. Disco will be wildly popular again before you get an interview. If you get an interview, pangea will occur again before you get a callback. If you get a callback, species will evolve before someone will make a serious offer to you.
Another decent alternative I've come across to resumes, are well-written letters to companies stating what you believe they can accomplish and how you can help them achieve to that end if they give you gainful employment. You show initiative and interest in the company all in one shot.
I switched to private sector because I was sick of working for an organization that didn't have a focus, consistently shifted direction, believed firmly in status quo (although rhetoric could have fooled you) and had little $. Where I'm at now we can spend $10000 on a server and not have it be 1/4 of our budget. I also like the fact that our goal is to make $, not make a statement.
I worked in government for many years, now I work in private industry.
There is "big" government, where you work in a centralized bureaucracy, and "little" government, where you work in a tiny little outpost that nobody cares about. A large city might have some agencies that are "big", and the Feds have some agencies that are "small". Private industry has the same concept. For the IT worker, you want "big".
In most (but not all) cases, private industry salaries are better than government. This can be used advantageously by young people who want to build experience. For any given skill level, you can get a "better" job in government because the salary structure locks out most of the highly-skilled competitors. So you work in the public sector and establish yourself in a job you wouldn't have otherwise, then switch to private industry to make real money.
Government work can be enjoyable, but supervisory positions are to be avoided at all costs. It's hard to motivate anyone when you can't do anything good for the good people or do anything bad to the bad people. Since the good and bad get treated pretty much the same, mediocrity is par for the course.
All the other things (training, advancement, benefits, stability of employment, toys to play with), are really functions of big/little more than private/public.
With so many tech-types unemployed right now (in the US at least), its probably not the time to be too picky. I know many programmers who would take any job right now, even "tape ape"-level stuff.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
I manage the Info Systems Department for a local government. I ended up here purely by chance. I wanted to leave a very large, Plano, TX based outsourcing firm (didn't want to move to Plano) and my current employer was hiring.
Here are the lousy parts of government:
1. If you are fairly bright and motivated, you will likely be working with a lot of folks who aren't.
2. Government is about accountability, not profitability. Things happen very slowly in government primarily because you have to document exactly how every penny is spent and why it is spent that way. Government will gladly spend thousands to select a product that costs $10 less than the competitor, just so any citizen or the press won't fry your ass if you made the wrong decision.
3. Remember your spending taxpayers money! Forget about bonuses, nice office furniture, big training budgets, or any other perk found in the private sector.
4. Because of 3 above, you will find that there is little reward for doing a job well. You'll likely get the same raise as the guy who hasn't put a line of code in production in years! Your average citizen would rather have you doing nothing than make more money than he does!
5. Forget about getting rid of poor performing employees. The documentation required isn't worth a managers time. Want to be guaranteed a job for life? Blow the whistle on anything you even think might have been done incorrectly and call the local newspaper!
6. Budgets are pretty much fixed yearly. If your priorities change during the year, you're screwed til next year. Just keep doing nothing.
I intended to jump back into the private sector last year, but the employment market sucks.
If you really don't want to work and don't mind hanging out in a drab government facility 8 hours a day, it may just be the right career move for you.
I did a 4 year degree with the aim of working in the public sector. I worked in various government positions for a few years. Eventually, I left to get involved in the IT industry. I'm looking at small business as my focus. Here's why.
The people who work in the public sector are, by and large, INSANE. Part of it is just the fact that you're embedded in a large bureaucracy, and part is specific to government bureaucracy. A business has specific goals, and limited resources. They think about what they want to do and how to do it. My experience in government, however, is that the organization as a whole has no clear goals; but individuals do. So, your project might be driven by the politician's desire to look good, or by a senior manager's whim. I worked on a DB project that cost over $3 million before it ground to a halt. Watching that money get burned up for no good reason was the last straw for me.
I need to feel that my work has some meaning. That what I'm doing will produce tangible results. If this sounds like you, steer clear of the public sector!!
Sad, but true in my experience.
----
Not to be confused with Col.
>While both have red tape, the corps are less likely
>to get bogged down in it.
No offence, but what's the biggest company you've ever worked for?
True story from my days at Very Big Oil Company: At my office, someone bent over to pick up a pen, and when they stood up, they bumped their head on a thermometer mounted on the wall. This was officially written up as a "safety incident", meetings were held, and the thermometer was remounted to a higher position on the wall.
Dilbert isn't a comedy, it's a documentary of the Fortune 500.
I worked for a government health care organization for 4 and a half years as a programmer. I really grew to dislike the place for unexpected reasons.
I can't complain about the usual things that people bitch about. They treated me great. My wages were a bit low for my title but they were reasonable and I had awesome benefits. My boss was superb - he had worked with a lot of big names at AT&T back in the day. I just couldn't deal with the pace of business. The work wasn't very challenging. There were no real deadlines to meet. You really had to walk around every day and take everybody's pulse to make sure nobody had passed away in their cube. I'd also say the average employee's age had do have been near 50. I was one of 2 twenty-somethings out of 130+ employees. It was mind-numbingly boring most of the time. By the end of my time there, I was showing up for work at noonish, leaving by 4:30pm and spending most of that time working on personal projects or surfing the web because there wasn't enough work to keep me busy for more than a few hours a week.
Now I'm one of 8 or so developers running a very high-profile e-commerce site. The pace is completely insane. We have unreasonable deadlines to meet. There are always 1000 people pulling on us from every direction. We have a rotating on-call schedule where your turn comes up way sooner than you'd like. I like it though. The day goes much faster and when you have 10 times the quantity of work, you're all that much more likely to find some challenging stuff to do here and there. I've found it to be a much more rewarding and enjoyable environment. I enjoy a certain amount of tension and stress in my day job.
i'm a programmer. i've been a programmer for 3 years, and i've had some interesting career experiences that apply to programmers for both the public & private sector.
in the private sector, i've worked for a small startup, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me, all the way through. the reason being: i knew that what i did really mattered to our survival. if i helped make an application better, or made something more efficient, if i made things that pleased our clients and got us more work through word of mouth, i knew that i was seriously making a difference. i knew that everything i did earned us money with which to keep going and enjoying our work. i left that company with the highest spirit, knowing that i made a difference.
in the public sector, i currently work at the ministry of education for the province of ontario (canada). in the government, you will not make a difference. efficiency and enhancement are not the order of the day. you can't campaign enough to improve a system for (virtually) any reason. it seriously is a rut, because no-one cares to have their budget cut, and showing how you can cut costs are met with people too complacent to change things for the better, just to "expand". the only motivation you will have in government is to keep moving, keep making money, keep doing what you're doing, so you better LOVE what you do, or you WILL be miserable (unless kissing ass for no reason is another of your favorite pasttimes).
for me, the only plus is the security.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
All union growth has been in the public sector for the last ten years. Therefore, for unions to avoid further shrinkage, they must necessarily encourage growth in the public sector.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If we're talking about IT (I can't speak for other fields, you'd better be open to possibilities from any angle. It's not like theres a shortage of available workers out there. Even if you have to temporarily take a job in whichever sector you weren't looking for; more than likely you'll be jumping ships within a year or two to a better job/employer. Just make sure what you do will have a positive effect on your resume. And keep your eye out for possiblities even after you get your job. Keeping an good resume in the job search engines is a good thing to do, even if you're employed. (Ex: I got called with an nice offer hours before finding out I was about to hit the road, it pays to be visible)
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Or -- If you're really clever - you can avoid any involvement with puffed up, angry, castrative snap traps (who likely want to be yer mum !) and you can then spend far more time participating in and enjoying your own life. -- Re: employment sectors -- "It's all layers of B***S**T" (quote from the movie HERO). You just have to decide which one you can live in with the least whoredom, boredom, etc. and the most benefit to yourself and others you care about. I prefer being self employed -- helps keep me farther away from the herdy devotion to mediocrity and social/emotional inbreeding.
Having done both this is a tough call. You need to look at the pros/cons, regardless. After many years as a DoD contractor job security and glass ceilings were the biggest issue. I was lucky and never found myself in the unemployment line, but far too many of my friends did. The job cycles are just too unstable if you are relying on contract dollars. Before that it was insurance. That was the worst. Crabby Dilbert zone all the way. Much back stabbing and clueless management. If you are in tech, and you are getting paid out of over-head dollars in either of these areas, your job will always be at risk, and it doesn't matter how much technology ppl have invested in their company.
:). Both have political games that basically parallel each other. You've gotta know which ass to kiss in either market. (now you have a lab, you have to make it work for all its worth. Great projects must come out of it. This means training teachers and helping with curriculum. Now you have something to fight with at school committee meetings for more $$ so you can buy a real lab) It's a constant battle - but the rewards were immense.
I finally left for public schools, and it was the best thing I ever did - sort of. Fair pay, good benefits, lots of vac time, but severely cut budgets to the point where you are almost immobilized. No books, no training, couldn't even get a pen! It's a think quick environment where you have to make something out of nothing all the time. (no computer lab? call and beg every local company in your area for any piece of computer junk they have. Put it all in a room, grab a bunch of high school kids, buy a few spare parts with your meager budget - a few weeks later - a lab
After a few years there, I found myself at a crossroads - political battles had exhausted me and I was ready to head back to commercial. But schools wanted me to stay. It was a tough choice. This new school had a great budget and had a team in place. From router to desktop and everything in-between, both jobs had decent pay and budgets, plenty of training, books, magazines, laptops/toys (little perks add up, and shouldn't come out of your own pocket) and most important, better management. For me it came down to vacation time (2 weeks vs schools=5 weeks, and every holiday), and at schools I would be able to work with kids and teachers. And of course public is fairly recession proof. So I stayed with schools. Now I have a hefty budget, and if I think we need a lab or a video editing station, or a new DV camera, I just get it. But I've had a good rest and now I'm bored.
I recently moved into public sector after working in a pretty hard core dot com. There I did java server development, wrote API's, control protocols, low level server stuff. Now I'm in a small (3 person) funded org, where I'm the webmaster, web developer, IT, DBA, help desk guy. It's quite a change, where I go from 100 hour weeks to where my boss kicks me out at 7. If you can cut through how slow everything works, then by all means, public sector is the way to go. But to me it's like going from the Marines to the boy scouts. I'm continuously having to drive myself, I'm heavily underutilized. And the busywork I am given drives me nuts. It's like asking a brain surgeon to mop the floor. Ok maybe I'm exagerrating, but it's quite annoying. So to me it depends on the type of person you are. If you're happy living the life of easy work but still can drive yourself forward with your own work and moral ethics, then I'd do it. This job actually lets me have more free time to work at church and also work on outside software development. But good luck to me finding a real job in the real world again.
I did a temporary stint at a local government IT shop. Some of the practices were utterly silly. For example, every single database change had to go up through the hierarchy and back down to the DBA even in a project that was not in production yet. I like databases, but that kind of red tape makes flat files look appealing. Worse yet, the DBA did little to correct others' bad schema designs (I least I think it was them, because I rarely dealt directly with them). They seemed obsessed with their goofy naming conventions rather than the structure and logic itself.
Second, I couldn't just go and ask a specific expert a question. I had to go through the "chain of command" even for a one-time quick question. It is true that people there a long time build up buddy-buddy ties such that they go directly to each other. However, the rest have to go through the proper channels.
If you have to depend on other people to finish their part before you finish, then you might as well find another project to work on while you wait and wait and wait for the other party to deliver their part or approval. Everybody is highly protective of their "turf" and not making political waves is given a much higher priority over getting anything real done. If you are late to finish, the penalty is usually a minor chewing out (unless a critical system), but if you make your uppers look bad, watch out!
Before you start work with a gov entity, rip out the part of your brain that likes to see real progress on real projects, for you will never use it, or get into trouble when you do. You have to be happy to go with the flow and navigate the maze of politics and rot-heads it contains.
Perhaps they can't fire you for complaining about stupidity, but they can make your life miserable if you piss them off. Also, there were hints of people being framed so as to get rid of them. Thus, officially you cannot be fired for complaining about bad practices, but in practice you probably can if framed or they find some small infraction on your part that they can use against you (sexual joke, surfing slashdot, changing official desktop settings, etc.). Remember, they know how to "use" the system, and that includes aiming the system's barrel at you. If not canned, then at least moved to a closet or a Siberia-like working environment.
The stress is not relentless technical deadlines, but dealing with relentless politics and silly obstacles. Maybe other places are different, but from the grapevine it appears that my experience is not unique.
One other thing: it can be difficult to get hired on in the government. The hiring system favors interns and graduates because newbies are less of a career threat to union members. Thus, it is rigged against age and experience. I am surprised that there has not been huge lawsuits over this.
You have been warned. You may get a paycheck and benefits, but leave your soul at the door.
Table-ized A.I.
Private-sector, duh! Anything with the word "government" in it means incompetence, mismanagement and waste. $300 toilet seats and $200 keyboards, maybe they should spend more on procurement management and analysis instead of throwing money at problems.
As for working conditions in government jobs: lower pay, lower morale, less flexibility and more paperwork and bureaucracy than typical equivalent private enterprise jobs. Then again, some big businesses are run as horribly as governments.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
I went from a medium-sized (20-30) private internet start-up company to a webmaster position for a provincial government in Canada. I moved for security.
:)
My biggest fear was no control, a dinosaur-like management and very little variation. I was completely wrong. There are some old goats set in their ways but, overall, because of the nature of the internet, my boss(es) are quite open minded and I intend to stay. The salary is good (25% higher than the start-up) and I can still go up another $10G in the next 5 years or so, plus union-negotiated, cost of living increases as well.
My only complaint? Microsoft shop. I've somehow managed to squeeze a Linux server beside my desk though
I've recently moved from the private sector to government as a systems administrator.
My previous employer was a small, very high quality software consulting firm. They took pride in their work, had a good management team (from an engineering perspective) and a great culture. They were ultimately victims of their own overaggressive growth plan coupled with the market collapse. I was laid off in September, in the first of three waves of cutbacks.
I now work for the superior court in my county in a systems administration/desktop support role. I've got two words: CULTURE SHOCK.
However, I really like the job and am actually finding it challenging. The only reason I'm finding it challenging though is because they are in the midst of modernizing everything and they are actually going to implement fairly leading-edge technology.
Anyway here's a short list of what I like and don't like about working for the government.
PROS
1. Stability. This is especially important for me as I had to live off of a credit card for 3 months following my layoff. Yes, that's ENTIRELY my fault but it does enable me to truly appreciate stability.
2. Benefits. I work in a closed shop, and while I don't exactly agree with the union philosophy, it does net me some great benefits. And when it comes down to using those benefits, such as vacation, you don't get denied because it might impact a project.
CONS
1. Beaurocracy. Lots of red tape. Lots of paperwork. Lots of "That's not my job."
2. Things happen very slowly. Deadlines get blown by without a second thought. People will take WEEKS to do the simplest tasks if you don't keep checking up.
3. Politics. This is probably the worst thing about government imo. I'm in an agency that used to be a county department. This means anything we do autonomously is met with skepticism and outright stonewalling by the county IT department.
Overall though, the pros outweight the cons for now. When my current project is implemented and my job reverts to just server ops I'll probably be looking elsewhere for work.
If you are the type of person who gets a great deal of job satisfaction from helping others, the public sector tends to offer more opportunities than the private sector in that regard.
If you are good, you have the opportunity to advance in the public sector as well as in the private sector. The biggest difference is that the attached pay raise might not be great.
About 18 months ago, I took a Graphic Design job at a local non-profit county agency. It's been the best job move I've ever made. I've got a corner office (no windows, but it's still nice to have an office), nice equipment to design on, and best-of-all, respect. At me previous job, I wasn't really a graphic designer, just a glorified printer jockey (my main job was printing other people's work to the large plotters...not very challenging.)
One of the really nice thing is not having to (ahem)donate to Social Security anymore (PERS is much better). Even though the pay wasn't much higher than my previous job, the perks definately make up for it (an understanding boss who lets me leave early if I need it, paid medical for me and my family, etc.).
-Ed
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There are assholes and idiots pretty much everywhere you go, so the more important question is: "Of the places I've seen and interviewed, at which one would I be the most comfortable, happiest, and productive?" Remember, interviews go both ways, so be sure to ask enough questions to ensure you are making the right choices. And the hardest thing: only you are qualified to make those choices, we can't make them for you.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
While unlimited job security in government may have been a thing of the past, it is not anymore. Recently, my ex-government employer decided to outsource almost *everyone* that was not an engineer. And by everyone, I mean *everyone*; security, maintaince, computer support, librarians, etc.; only a few VIPs would remain to supervise the winning contractor(s).
Low and behold, there actually are companies that specialize in taking over a variety of tasks in this sort of manner. A single firm bid to do all of the things I listed above, and then some. The winning bidder (Johnson Controls World Services, Inc.) tentatively has a $60 Million, 5-year contract. Approximately 250 jobs will be downsized and/or replaced at this single, government location.
Mind you, the facility I worked at already had outsourced HVAC, groundskeeping, and several other tasks, so the lost of jobs is somewhat minimal. But if 1,000 government facilities all decided to do what mine did, the lost of jobs and/or salaries could skyrocket.
Please pardon my skeptism with outsourcing; the two other cases I've seen of outsourcing have involved people fired from $30K salaries to be replaced with minimum-wage workers. Somehow, the prices still manage to go up, and quality goes down. In one case (a school cafeteria), prices more than doubled. So either the school was selling things too cheaply, or the contractor has seriously marked things up.
Finally I realized memetic systems defining reinsurance networks in terms of kin-selection were the most natural way to make stable technological civilizations because other memetic systems (those that deny the importance of kin-selection) merely evolve hypocrisy at an unconsciuos genetic level rendering rational thought, communication and action nonviable.
Seastead this.
"The government has very strict hiring practices and if they say you need a degree, they tend to not accept equivalent work experience."
That depends on which part of the public sector. A state IT job a friend recently applied for said "College Degree or equivalent years experience." Also, at least in Texas, you can submit a resume to a website, and you will get emails about all jobs for which you qualify. Actually getting the job may be harder, but don't forget about nice things like health insurance. Health insurance through the state is MUCH better than anything the private sector can offer, and seeing as I have a long term disease, I need that health insurance.
The worker safety laws are badly abused by some. Documenting as much as possible can help prevent this kind of fraud.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Whatever you do, don't choose this one. You are supported by the table scraps from both the other sectors...
I work for the Texas Dept. of Human Serices as a "Regional Systems Specialist" and I've got to say there are some major good and bad points to working for the government. First, is job security. This is both a good and bad thing. It's good in that you don't have to worry about being downsized, but at the same time the people that need to be fired usually aren't. This leads into the second point. Your co-workers will probably not be geeks. They tend to only know what is needed to do their job and have no real interest in computers. I would still recommend a state job though, because I get to leave at 5, get TONS of time off, and am NEVER on call. The work load is also drasticly lower than in the "real world". So in summary, if you're willing to take a cut in pay, and work with non-geeks I'd say give the government a try.
Keep Austin Weird!
2) Public sector jobs are subject to the whims of the voter. A few years back, EVERY California state employee got an across the board pay cut. (I think it was 10%).
3) There are little or no metrics to measure performance of public sector. Combined with employee unions, this means everybody gets the same raises, regardless of competence.
Bottom line: If you are competent, you'll do better in the private sector. If you are incompetent, you'll do better in the public sector.
A few years ago at a job fair, the recruiter for the state of Oregon came out of her booth and tried to drag me back to apply for a job. "Wouldn't you like to work for the state?" she asked. "I'd love to, but I'd have to take a 50% pay cut to do so!" I replied. This was literally true, since at the time I was making twice as much as a contractor as the state was willing to pay me.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Eisenhower started it, but Bush wants to make it hurt. They can open up any federal agency for competition. Workers have to get together and bid for their own jobs against outside contractors who know how to lowball. Surprisingly, the current federal employees win about half the time, because they know their jobs well and no one else wants to do many of them cheaply. But about half lose and get bounced out. Currently, the entire Department of Interior is scheduled to go through this exercise. Disney might get the national parks.
I'm a young person. I took the first good job i could get when I re-entered the workforce after college. When you are a recent grad, apply to all industries, not just one. YOu can always move on later when you have a lot of experience.
I could move on now (3 years total experience now) but I love my job, it pays well, and it's very secure (as far as private industry goes).
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Holy crap, this is a big subject!
I'm a Unix sysadmin for a large bureau. I work around a few developers and more front-line support folks. We all have roughly the same work experience.
Disclaimer: I love my job. Read what follows with that in mind.
Let's start with the pros, in no particular order.
First, you get to serve your fellow man. Now, stop laughing and think about that. I know that my job directly supports people (I used to be one of them, out in the field, knocking on doors and finding people who didn't want to be found, so I know whereof I speak.) who are enforcing important laws that we, as a society, absolutely need to ensure that anarchy is kept at bay. I help create in the lives of lawbreakers those significant emotional events that cause them to change their behavior. There is no monetary compensation (short of "make me super-rich so I can be a full-time philanthropist") that could possibly equal that kind of ultimate job satisfaction.
Of course, I've reached a level of maturity where I don't consider my success to be a function of how much my car costs. If you, too, are smart enough to realize that true satisfaction comes from within, you can knock down the *big* psychic wages by seeking employment at a government agency that does something you think is important. There are lots to choose from; just do a little research.
Second, the pay is not necessarily all that bad. In high-rent locales, it sucks. But you get the same (base) pay in rural Mississippi. Examples? The entry-level salary for a 334 series grade 9 coder (a reasonable entry level in the HQ of a big agency in DC) is $43K. (What's a 334/9? Off-topic - go check opm.gov for more info.) If you choose to come on board at a much lower level, as you might have to do in the sticks or at a smaller agency, you'll do no worse than $29K a year, but you'll get up to that $43K a year level in two years.
I don't know about you, but I can live a decent life on $43K a year. If you can't, then maybe govt service isn't for you.
Third, much of the private sector bullshit is gone. (It's replaced by public sector bullshit, but I'll cover that below.) I've had private sector experience and I would never go back to places where management can jerk you around or effectively fire you at will like in the private sector. You see, civil service employees are hard to fire. That's important and a very good thing. If not for civil service protections, for example, when a democrat is elected president he could just fire all the republicans. Or vice versa. Such things were the norm in decades past. No longer. Along with protection against politically-motivated personnel actions came protections against just plain stupid personnel actions. Your boss can't say "Cut your hair or you're fired!" It doesn't matter if you're a cross-dressing tattooed biker with a purple spiked mohawk - if you do your job well, you are compensated and promoted according to the rules. And that's the bottom line: there are rules, you know them ahead of time, and management can't change them to screw you over just because they don't like you.
Next, there's the actual work to consider. Personally, I find it a challenge to keep things running because I'm a tinkerer. Our tech is rarely cutting-edge, but it still needs work. How that work is done is different at each place, but if your inquiries into the type of work you'll be expected to do sound interesting to you, then don't let the fact that you aren't bleeding-edge get in the way. Wanna be a Perl guy? Sheesh, we *need* those guys to tie things together. Wanna work on Oracle stuff or put web front ends on Informix database applications or support some of the biggest email systems in the world? The US govt is a good place for those things. Insist on staying right on the bleeding edge? The opportunities are fewer, but they exist. Look carefully.
Where to start looking? Go to Government Computer News at www.gcn.com. Browse a bunch. See what we do. I think you'll be surprised at the variety and levels of involvement and just all-around neat stuff that you'll find if you take the time to search.
Next, perks. There's a 40 hour work week. Not a wink-wink-nudge-nudge 40 hour week, but a REAL 40 hour week. (Does listing this as a perk make me a wuss? Maybe. But I think it mainly just means that I have a life outside work.) When you *have* to work overtime, you get overtime pay. And double pay on holidays. There are more than a dozen holidays a year. You earn 4 hours of sick leave and 4 hours of vacation leave for every two weeks you work from the very beginning. And after you've been here as along as I have, you get 8 hours of vacation time for every two weeks worked. The insurance is usually decent, though private industry, with all its variablility, can often be significantly better. When you have to travel on government business, it's easy to tack vacation time onto your trip. (The government has to pay you to fly there, stay there for the duration of business, and fly back. If you want to insert a few days of vacation time between the end of your business and the flight back, no big deal. You'll just have to pay for them.) Due to recent changes in the law, you even get to keep your frequent flyer miles, though you do have to sit in coach (unless you can get a doctor to certify that cramming your body into a narrow seat is a health risk, in which case you can fly first class), but I travel *very* frequently for the government. Over the last few months, I've done a week each in Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Oklahoma City, Austin, Nashville, Indianapolis, Chicago, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and somewhere I'd rather forget in the middle of New Jersey. As long as they don't send me back to Jersey, I'd hit the road again in a heartbeat.
More perks? Your union can be good to useless, but you're never compelled to join or pay dues. A willingness to be mobile just about guarantees quick promotions of competent people. I could go on and on, but I won't. Going into too much detail can be misleading, since these things vary widely from agency to agency. Check for yourself.
Now, the bad stuff.
First, low pay by some people's standards. I work 40 hours a week for $50K. I wouldn't work 80 hours a week for twice or even 5 times that amount. YMMV.
Second, the tools. This one bugs me. Most agencies enforce on all tech workers a standard set of tools. At my agency, for example, if you need to script something you use the shell or Perl. Wanna use Python just because you like it? Forget it. It's not the standard. If you want to be a coder, make double damn sure you ask what tools you'll be required to use. If you don't like them, don't take the job.
Third, public attitudes. People who don't know crap about government service assume there must be something wrong with you if you work here. I work at an especially hated agency. Once I was called for jury duty and during the selection process, I was interviewed in front of everyone. If you've ever been through voire dire (sp?), you know how it works. Anyway, my employer was mentioned. At the first break, a fellow jury panel member made a point of telling me, in front of witnesses, that he'd kill me if I came near him. Not fun and an extreme example, but you'll have to learn to deal with negative reactions. Some places are worse than others, of course. In Washington DC, it's no big deal. In southern Idaho, you lie when people ask you where you work. You just have to learn to deal.
Fourth, the rules. Remember those work rules that protect you against politically-motivated or just plain stupid personnel actions? Many similar rules will constrain your behavior. To avoid an appearance of impropriety, no accepting gifts over a nominal amount. (You'll hesitate to accept a cup of coffee.) No speech at work that could be interpreted as offensive. This one is especially touchy. You *can* say pretty much anything you want at work and that's OK. As soon as someone gets offended, you're in trouble. Want an extreme example? I got on an elevator once with a secretary (roughly my work level in the organization) and a Division Chief (roughly 87 levels of management above me and a different division, to boot.) In response to the usual "hi, how are you?" greeting from the Chief, I said "It's a gorgeous Friday afternoon, I'm about to get off work, and in the meantime I'm locked in a small room with two beautiful women. Life couldn't get any better!"
The Chief formally placed me on warning for sexual harrassment. You'll find idiots like that at every agency.
Fifth, deadwood. This one will bother you if you have any conscience. At nearly every agency, there are some employees who have "retired in place," doing the absolute minimum necessary to get by. They're a pain. In fact, they often make more work for others than they do themselves. Now, don't let anyone fool you. Those same people work in private industry. In govt service, though, we just seem to have a few more. NOT a lot more, but a few.
Sixth, the bureacracy. It's generally huge and frustrating. On the other hand, I deal with vendors frequently and I've observed much the same thing in the private sector. It's just a bit worse in the public sector.
Finally, the law. This, I think, is the main thing that drives people out of govt service. As a govt employee, everything you do is designed to support the mission of your agency. That mission is a direct result of laws passed by Congress. And Congress frequently screws up, requiring things that simply shouldn't be. In my agency, where we do work that is essential to the very existence of government, we still have to deal with a stack of laws and a library full of regulations that have been authored to try to help us meet those laws. Many of those laws and the regulations that proceed from them and the work processes that proceed from those regulations are grounded in some special interest (or just plain incompetent) legislation and are frustrating as hell to deal with. If you can't stand asking "Why are we doing this stupid thing?" and being told "Because Congress said so." then you should flee from govt service. For all the good govt agencies do and all the satisfaction that comes from working for them, this negative is always present to some degree. When you have to code a back door because the Inspector General wants to spy on employees, when you have to include some ungodly tangle of code to produce some report some idiot congressman got included in your budget, you'll have to ask yourself if it's worth it.
Pick your agency carefully and you may decide, as I have, that it *is* worth it. It's a decision only you can make.
Hope this helps.
I'd take into account the fact that if you work for the public sector you are getting paid with money taken from people at gun point. There is some possibility that working in the private sector means you derive your income from voluntary interactions with fellow human beings.
I have worked in both the public and the private sector in the UK and Europe, and I have to say that both have their advantages and disadvantages.
However, one thing I do believe is that, at least in Europe, the competition for public sector jobs is much higher than the private sector, and the standards are much higher.
You wouldn't believe what you have to go through to get a graduate level job in Brussels at the European headquarters. Microsoft like to boast about how difficult their selection process is, but I bet it's not half as difficult as the EUs process. I didn't get past the first hurdle.
The first step is an exam which is incredibly difficult. I consider myself quite intelligent, and got a good degree from a good university, but it was the hardest exam I have ever taken. I don't know what my score was but I doubt it was above 40%.
Then you have to do written and oral exams in two different european languages, and you are expected to be fluent in both of them.
Only after that do you come to the interviews, and then I think there were a couple more stages after that.
I eventually got a job in uk government, but for that I was competing against 200 others for a single position.
I have to say that getting a job with a fortune 500 IT company was very much easier.
Work for a Non-Profit Organization. I'm a database developer at an NPO. The benefits typically are good, you get more of a feeling of actually accomplishing something, or at least working for an org that is accomplishing something, and if you're a techie, everybody loves you because they can't turn on their monitor, much less create a simple Access Query.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
(* At this point in the economy, I think you should take whatever you can get. *)
I am still getting rejection notices from local and fed jobs I applied for *14 months* ago. (I later realized that I did my application "wrong" back then. There is a certain reviewer thinking pattern you have to cater your application to, and I am still learning the tricks.)
By the time a gov job pans out, the economy will probably be back on its heals (unless the 1930's are repeating).
I am not saying, "don't try", but never expect/plan-on "soon" from the gov.
Table-ized A.I.
Farming is the best job. Grow some things, maybe get a few cattle and be your own boss.
or.........
You could go on welfare sit back and suck on the govmnt tit for a while.
I'm comfy in my stable IT based state job. I have seen the typical stereotypical government worker in BOTH sectors.
...but there are a bunch of those jobs in the PRIVATE sector too. The grass ain't greener on the other side, it's pretty much painted dead grass there too.
While there are some backwards, misdirected, IT shops in the state, OURS isn't one of 'em. I'm proud of the work and accomplishments my fellow cow-orkers and I have pulled off on a small budget and not enough people.
I appreciate the stability, and the pay has actually jumped up to equal the lower pre-dotcom network admin salaries. I appreciate the 40 hour work weeks, and the flex-time/place work environment. But I also know that my position is a unique one and there are a WHOLE LOT of state jobs I wouldn't want to have.
Will I be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs this way? Nope. But I'll have plenty of time to watch my kids grow up and _assist_in_that_process_.
I've learned reciently that being rich ain't all that. I'm pretty happy with slightly more money than I need to live on comfortably.
``Hard money'' is the career goal of most young scientists, regardless of field. Those two words mean that your salary is paid regardless of what you do. A traditional way to get hard money is to work through the university system and become a tenured professor somewhere. The other main way is to become a civil servant at a government research lab. Once you're in, you're in. As a scientist, you're essentially bulletproof: it's very hard to fire a civil servant, especially one with as nebulous a set of responsibilities as a scientist carries.
But there are drawbacks too. With the security of a government job come responsibilities ranging from the trivial (such as not being allowed to eat the free doughnuts at a meeting) to the ludicrous (I went to a meeting held at the 1998 eclipse site on the island of Guadaloupe. My civil service friends were required to book hotels 25 miles away to save a few bucks a night -- but then they discovered that their hotel was on another island!) to the onerous (e.g. it's difficult to travel, get equipment, or hire help).
I ended up taking a ``soft money'' position at a nonprofit research institute. The downside is that I have to find sources of income (grants) to support myself. The upside is that when I want a book, I buy it; when there's a meeting I should attend, I go to it; and if I have an idea for a new instrument or analysis technique, I can just implement it. Management is very supportive.
Civil service is great -- but on the other hand, the people who are most attracted to it are the people who value security above opportunity. That fosters a CYA culture and makes it difficult to get things done (such as science). Although tenure and absolute job security in principal make it possible to explore unpopular-but-important ideas (and many civil servants are very productive!), they also make it possible to relax into a not-very-productive rut.
The entrepreneurial spirit of soft-money research labs, ironically, makes it easier to have (some kinds of) bold ideas, simply because you have to do something to keep yourself going. That small-but-significant frisson of worry about the future keeps people on their toes and thinking creatively. Ordinary entrepreneurs must get it in spades.
What does working for a private company that has its fair amount of government contract work count as?
I prefer being unemployed, but that only works for so long.... so self employment would logically be the next step.
On the private sector side, if you want less stress, choose your industry wisely. A friend switched from investment banking to insurance here in NYC, and, guess what, insurance is still the same old lazy industry it's been for centuries, quite resembling the ideal government backwater, for those attracted to such locales.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
In many cities, privatization has invaded the public school system, threatening the quality of our children's education in the pursuit of private profits says the article to stop privatization.
Actually up here in MN public schools are drastically behind private. Interestingly enough, over in Wisconsin they are neck and neck with private having a SMALL advantage.
Capitalism: unequal distribution of wealth
Socialism: equal distribution of poverty
in favor of public sector jobs?
Are all you people idiots or something? I have always worked in private sector, well minus my tour of duty in the Navy, and I have never, and I mean never, had to worry about job security. Sure, the economy bounces up and down. Businesses startup and fail. But, if you are good at what you do, and diligent in your work, you will always have work.
It seems to me that those so concerned with job security need to spend a little more time on their work ethic and productivity.
Like many others, I've worked in both. Bureaucracy, and the paperwork overhead that goes with it, are typically much worse in public sector jobs. Although, it can be bad in both.
Those who can't GOVERN, threaten to invade IRAQ.
ANY SECTOR. are you crazy? the market is flatlined. this thread belongs in '99.
and found that
/. readers may not be considered to be very long. Also I have only worked in 1 public sector organization and 3 private sector companies.
Public Sector:
1.) Has better job security
2.) Has better benifits
3.) Has lower pay scale
4.) Has higher IT budget
5.) Get's low end technology due to need to bid high dollar items and go with lowest bid. Unless it can be proven that the item desired has features or benifits that are only available from the manufacturer or make then, it is considered to be sole source and can be purchased without a bidding process.
6.) Has lot's of red tape. It is difficult to make changes. Adding staff is difficult, getting approval for and making purchases is difficult. Sometimes approval requires going before a supervisory body for approval.
7.) More training received due to higher budget.
Private Sector:
Pretty much the reverse of Public sector with the following exception
1.) Still often times has to get bids for many high dollar items with the exception that there may not be an obligation to accept the lowest bid.
This is just my experience however, I gave it since that was asked for in the original question. I'll admit that my view is narrow because I have only been working in this field for 8 years which by the standards of many
So far I've seen a bunch of generalizations (though not all) which, at least for me, wouldn't be very helpful (particularly the (unfortunately) everpresent ill-informed statements). Really, you have to look at the opportunities and decide what you want to do and whether the public or private sector better meets your needs. At least in the case of professional positions, there's usually a (substantial) difference in your job duties between public and private sector positions. Of course these duties often vary depending on where you live as the division of public/private tasks will vary. Really it will be unique depending on your situation. (I'm currently looking at both public and private sector jobs trying to figure out which would better suit my professional desires).
[Of course if you want to make generalizations, probably, in my experience, the biggest difference is that, by the simple fact that we have a public/private split, the public sector tends to require employees to be a bit more of "generalists": because they can't easily change staffing so they try to make due with what the employees that they have (particularly in these times of budget shortfalls). Private sector on the other hand, usually fills a particular market niche. So while you may work on a wide range of projects, each one different from the last, your business will likely have its area of expertise thus tend to attract similar work from one job to the next.]
Of course, as others have pointed out, there are other factors that go into the mix, such as salary, benefits, stability, etc. which depend a lot on your field, geography, point in your life, etc.
It is 100% true.
Do I like the idea of job security? Absolutely.
Do I like that my pay is lower on average? Not really, but that I'm willing to take based on my circumstances (new house, wife and small daughter)
That to me is the nicest, stable job and benefits, plus I have time to do side work to make up (actually make out better) for the difference in pay. And still have time for myself/family. The side work I can control, so if I want to relax a few months, no problem!
Kinda take the best from both worlds...Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
The RIGHT question is:
How the Hell am I ever going to get a job?
This
First, Your property value would plummet - who wants to live on a tree farm? The money you think you will make on lumber is swallowed by the loss on property value. Secondly, you would have no scale. Do you think you can compete on price with forestry companies who process in bulk and often get the raw materials for nearly free? Your unit costs are going to be 10x theirs at the minimum, and US companies can't even compete with foreign suppliers. Canadians have been undercutting the most cost effective suppliers for years - think you can do better? Thirdly, once you are done, you will have to spend a fortune tilling up the soil so you can get to planting again right away.
I work in the public sector.
The reason I love it is the exact same reason I hate it.
Love: because working the public sector frees you from the vagaries of the business cycle and crude metrics, such as
Hate: Just because your organization is free from the tyranny of the bottom line doesn't mean you're free from politics and various fronts of appearances your management wants to put up.
Pick your poison. If you go into the public or private sector, stay with smaller organizations, screening for psychotic management, of course. They usually can't hide too well there anyway, compared to a large organization.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
>Documenting as much as possible can help prevent
>this kind of fraud.
No fraud in this case, i.e. no time off or anything, this was a non-issue.
But once something gets reported, the paperwork starts, and things get silly.
This is an easy question. When you're young and you have the stamina and motivation, work your ass off and try to get as much money as possible.
Once you get older, and need the stability, and don't have the drive, then go work in the public sector.
I used to work in semi-public sector companies when I after I graduated, and I could get away with working 6 hour days. Everyone there had "lifer" attitudes. Then I moved to Silicon Valley, and have been working 14 hour days and I love it because I'm actually doing something. But I know that I won't be able to keep this pace forever, so I'm looking into getting back into the public sector once I start heading over 40 years of age. But I can probably leverage my experience in the private sector substatially if I do, atleast I'm hoping that I can.
In the public sector, most positions are governmental beaurocratic functionary and enabling positions, which only contribute to the ability of the government to kill people. Moreoever, they offer little hope of meaningful personal advancement, and consist largely of endless office politics -- much like a large corporate job, at an IBM or a Sun Microsystems. Anyone who has a conscience is likely to run into strong demands to violate their conscience in a very immediate and visceral manner, but on the plus side, it's a sinecure, and doesn't eat your life. 8 hours, and *ding*, you're outta here.
I always keep coming back to small-enterprise. In the entrepreneurial environment, the upside in employee ownership is much greater, there's little of the political backside-covering toady gerrymandering of large organizations, and a great deal of opportunity for your personal contribution to shine, if you have initiative and intelligence. Also, the pay is much better, if you have desirable skills and a resume to back it up. On the downside, you can and will get terminated due to changes in management, business failures, and the occasional period of non-performance that everyone experiences from time to time.
Best of all, if you can hack it, is out-and-out entrepreneurship. Be your own boss. Earn the benefits of your labors. The risks are big, but the upside potential is enormous. If you can deal with your own bizdev or find a suitable partner who can, I think this is the way to go. You can do much more to benefit society if you gain wealth and power than you can if you wimp out and do your 9-5 tasks in a powerless and ineffective NGO. If you are prone to self-aggrandizement and disinclined to charity, please ignore my advice, or better yet, invert it, because then I want you to fail.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
in this rough economy I would pick government consulting. naturally your not going to get the inflated salary as some here experience doing the dot.boom days. However you will get stability. Right now unless you are working for a heavy invested company or a big machine like apple or ibm I would not look for a private sector. Chances are your going to get a skeleton crew and double the overtime without pay...
"To I.T. Professionals:
"With great respect, I thank you for your contribution to mankind.
"If you are employed by agencies of any political government, however, or if
you are employed by private companies who write software or who manufacture hardware for any political government, I ask you to think about your own personal responsibility for what happens to mankind.
"Will political government open the gates to individual liberty? Or will it
close those gates?
"Will political government guarantee the security of our lives and
property? Or will it steal both?
"Please find your own answer to those questions. The future of mankind is
in your hands."
- Robert Klassen
I believe the public sector should be expanded - and expanded greatly - the line about "less goverment" typically really means "different government", with responsibilities and arenas of influence shifted to different levels (preferrably easier-to-influence smaller governments, state or local, if you're a part of Big Corporate America), as Noam Chomsky has pointed out.
Besides, despite the collapse of Eastern European Communism and the supposed triumph of capitalism over socialism, the capitalist system proves itself a failure time and again; regular billion dollar corporate bailouts, major accounting scandals, major agricultural subsidies every year and the fact that the western economy can be brought to its knees if consumers stop buying crap (remember last year, post 9/11, when it was patriotic to go out and spend big for christmas, to spend spend spend in general? quite a change from the WWII patroitism of making do with less and general rationing) - all this points to more government, not less. Major corporations demonstrate over and over that they can't be trusted to police themselves, so governments must spend tax dollars to constantly peer over their shoulders. Yes, socialist governments have shown corruption and general idiocy, but I'd rather see corruption and idiocy performed in the name of the general population and not in the name of the shareholders.
I am not for full-blown surrender to commmunism, but I believe we should face facts and accept that the government, the freely elected government, needs to play a greater role in the economy and in providing services to the population.
Having said all that, I think I'd prefer to work in the private sector - I prefer an informal small-business setting and that is unlikely in the public sector; the type of work I do typically flounders in a large, structured, hierarchal environment (corporate or public).
RTFM; please, I beg you.
As the property is for retirement, having the value plummet is a good thing. You don't want to sell anyway, and it lowers the taxes. You may even be able to use it as a captical lose to offset the initial cost of startup. Setting up a small company is not hard, and can have significant tax advantages even if little revenue is generated. An accountant and a little book reading is all that is needed. Obviously the onous is on the land owner to determine if the revenue from stumpage will cover the expenses in both time and money.
The idiotic advice is to leave the property sitting idle when it could be making money.
What's going on??
Oh, my. Oh my! You've got my head on backwards!
And put that blaster down. You're going to hurt somebody with it!
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
( oh shit. wrong article!) No wonder nobody seemed to have made the obvious reference.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
In 1999, after 25 years of Public Service, at the height of the Internet economy, I "retired" and went to work in the Private Sector. I worked then for a few years at a very large system development company, the economy tanked, and I got laid off last fall. Now I am back working as an IT Project Manager for Uncle Sam. .
Unsurprisingly, I found little or no difference between the two sectors in the levels of expertise and attitude exhibited by my fellow workers. I pretty much found equal amounts of incompetence, gold-bricking, can-do attitudes, and amazing expertise in both Sectors. People are people and they act the same everywhere. (See notes below..)
One of the best and exciting things about working for Uncle Sam, the states or a local county or city is that you can actually make a real positive difference in someone's life or lots of someones lives. IT engineers and techs often take lower pay than they would prefer to stay supporting local law, fire, and rescue personnel. (Not that they wouldn't mind the extra...) Many Scientists (including Nobel Prize winners), Engineers, and Technicians at laboratories in Agencies like NOAA, FEMA, the Coast Guard, NIST, the FDA, and others feel like that are doing some awesomely helpful things with your (and their) tax dollars. I am not a big fan of NASA's priorities, but you won't find many places with more highly qualified and motivated people from the top to the bottom.
You might also be interested to know that lots of people get fired from federal service every day. Fed Employment and Trends by Year & Month Check out the Seperation Data. (I am not really sure how to interpret the data.)
You might also be surprised to learn that experienced IT Project Managers can make $75K/year-$100K+/year. IT Program Managers can make even more. (Max. Salary for Non-Politically-appointed IT Execs. is currently ~$135K.) Fed. Pay Tables w/locality adjustments
Every job, just like your life, is what you make it. It's what you want to DO, not BE, that counts. Good luck and have fun.
(Notes:
1. The Private Sector:
a. My Project Manager ran his own personal business from his company-owned workstation while he pretended to actually work for the company. I think he spent half to three-quarters of his day responding to e-auctions bids and submitting his own. We eventually lost the contract (or rather the follow-on task was not activated) because he and the company Program Manager never could be bothered to actually talk to the customer and ask him how things were going or what he wanted. Hence the lay-offs. I was one of the last to go.
b. It seemed to me that the newbies were not getting paid very well at all & they were the first to go in the layoffs. The VP's, however, made really big $$ & rarely had to deal with layoffs.
c. the senior managers really did not impress me at all. Mostly marketing fluff.
d. I was surprised at the level of bureaucracy in a large system development firm. Not a lot of difference from the federal sector, really.
2. The Public:
a. There is a Dept. HR Program Manager across the hall from me is overloaded in the paperwork that it takes to get people fired. It is, granted, a tedious process, but it happens and it happens a lot. )
b. There are lots of people-shaped speedbumps here, too. If you are motivated, you will learn how to find what you want to do and to get it done. Whenever I have decided that I needed a change of career in the Federal Service, I have (eventually) been able to find a way to make it happen. I have been a telecomm. tech, a network engineer, a web developer and am now a Progject Manager. I imagine opportunities are made by the individual, not vice-versa. Motivated people seem to "find" those "lucky" breaks. Good Luck!
Being in the "public sector" means more than working for a cash-strapped university or in the IT department of a free clinic. There really is a decent wage to be made in the public sector; the key is to make sure that the government is your customer as well as your employer. I'm talking about the incredible world of government contracts.
If you work for a gov't contractor or you bid on gov't contracts yourself, you have excellent chances of being paid top dollar for your position. You're kind of a hybrid cross between public and private sector; the government is your "employer," so you often get many of the perquisites, especially if you network appropriately; however, you're a private company, and once the contract has been fulfilled, you can move on to something else, if you'd like. Defense contracts can be especially attractive, and once you have a gov't project under your belt, you can be fairly confident to find future work.
I've worked in both public and private sectors and prefer working in the private sector. I want to work on interesting projects involving cutting edge technologies. Working the the public sector in general they are on tight budgets so you don't see much current technology. Sometimes large corporatations give public sector sizable discounts, but it's not that common. I also like getting paid well and public sector doesn't pay well, the benefits are usually better, but the pay isn't. Another difference that some like about public is there is less stress. Public sector projects usually have longer timelines, and your job usually isn't on the line if miss deadlines.
That's how I see it.
It all depends on the type of job you are looking for. Some public sector jobs will not be very exciting or very good career choices especially if you just become a cog in the big machine pushing paper. However research positions are the jewels !
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
...mega corporate federal contractor. The differences are huge, and here enumerated:
.com : Dial in every morning, if you can log in, you're not fired...for 1 more day.
.com : "Man do we need more Configuration Management!"
.com : Ship it! Ship it! We need to get paid!
.com : Open Source, it's free? Wuhoo!.
.com : Post to Slashdot at will.
MCFC : I've only got 2 warning letters, I get 3 more before I get 1 weeks suspension.
MCFC : So many levels of CM you can't imagine the software every getting released.
MCFC : We just got our 3rd quarterly payment for working on requirements.
MCFC : Must use Clear Case, Rational Rose, Oracle, WebSphere. Whatever's most expensive, that's what we want.
MCFC : A can't remember everything I swore loyalty to in my security clearance, I better post as an AC....
Exploitation of the universities is hurting a lot of people. A lot of college graduates have recruiting events which they are begged to attend. I, an accomplished/experienced SysAd, can't get more than 4 responses per 100 resume submissions.
What is the deal !!!???!!!
Again, zoning would probably keep you from doing it anyway if you live in the burbs, and if you live in the sticks you already do something with your land that makes a hell of a lot more money than tree farming...or you don't need the extra income.
The metallurgist's article is more germane to the actual question. The union article addresses a much broader topic, whether or not certain jobs should be public or private. The first article is mainly personal opinion, and as such I have no dispute with it. The second article has some points I disagree with, which I'll discuss briefly.
Some of the author's criticisms about privatization are quite correct. The problem is, the public sector isn't necessarily any better. While corporations are interested in their profits, the government is primarily interested in satisfying the political ambitions of Congress and the President (who control the bureaucracy, more or less). You know what this is traditionally called? Pork. It's why the military maintains so many bases in podunk places. Ditto with highway construction funds and research grants. Corruption in the form of handing contracts to favored companies is really no different than funneling cash to pork barrel projects, it's the just people who profit change (the politicians always profit). Moreover, the bureaucrats in the system have their own interests, both individual and as a community of bureaucrats assigned a particular task. Neither the private nor the public sector really has the interests of the public in mind, and I don't know how to create a system which does.
I love this quote: "As privatization takes off, many unionized public sector employees are in danger of replacement by lower-paid, nonunion corporate employees or anonymous profit-driven technology ." (emphasis mine) That sounds like traditional union rhetoric. It especially galls me when unions (in a very short-sighted, selfish manner) impede the use of technology to increase efficiency because efficiency means fewer workers or lower salaries. The effect is similar (though less direct) in the case of artificially increasing wages. However, I would never expect anyone to act differently, because all people and organizations act in their own view of their best self-interest. What bothers me is the hypocrisy of not mentioning one's own biases.
Also, a brief commentary on government workers. Back during the era of civil service reform, when they were busily dismantling the political machines and ending the patronage system, laws were instituted which made firing government workers hard. This made sense back then, because if you didn't have such laws, politicians would have no hesitation about firing government employees and replacing them with their cronies. The problem, of course, is that if you make people hard to fire for political reasons, they also become hard to fire for incompetence. Now, another issue: government wage scales. All government pay is set to be less than the pay for members of Congress (excepting the President, who gets more, and the SCOTUS justices, who I believe are paid equivalently). Then, as you go down the bureaucratic hierarchy, each level is paid proportionately less. The problem with this system? It awards seniority and hierarchy, not competence or whether an employee's skills are salable. Congressmen currently make $141,300 a year. Of course, being politicians, they also have lots of perks they don't have to pay for and other sources of funds from favor-seekers who sneak their way through the corruption laws, so their actual compensation is much higher than that. However, the bureaucrats in the hierarchies generally don't have those fringe benefits of power, so they aren't overcompensated relative to their actual salaries. Thus, jobs which in the private sector are very well-compensated (say, sysadmin) are not usually very well paid at all in the government, because the high end of the wage scales are reserved for senior management bureaucrats. What's the result of restrictive firing practies and low compensation? Hordes of incompetent workers. Don't get me wrong, there are many fine people who work for the government. But I believe the percentage of incompetents is much higher in the government than in the private sector, because the private sector pays close-to-market wages and screens out incompetents somewhat more effectively (not that the private sector is any bastion of competence, as too many Dilbert-esque examples show).
Anyway, I think the second article is pretty much wrong-headed. I don't have solutions to the problems I cited, though, so I can point out another point of view on the issue of government employees
I work for my church. I came here from a brokerage to help another guy with some programming for a few months. That was 6 years ago. I may still go back to the private sector, but here's some of what I like about it here (and most would apply to most non-profits):
1 - Everyone works here because they want to and believe in The Cause, not to make money.
2 - We're all friends
3 - My direct supervisor and friend worked in the Private Sector at a position I where I would never have interacted with her (big fish in a big pond). Yes, she's Real Smart (tm).
4 - Satisfaction that what I do actually makes a difference in someone's life.
Mark
I have never worked in the public sector, though I have known and worked with many who have. I used to consult with State, Local and Federal Agencies, and I can offer you the following from experience. Most Government employees lead less stressful lives than private sector individuals. They get to go home on time. They take all of their vacation.
Most are strictly bound by codes of conduct and work rules that Small business people find intolerable, but people at BIG companies also routinely put up with (It's Bureaucracy and not public/private that is the enemy of us all).
Contrary to what some on this topic believe, if you are dealing with a civil servant, most of the time they are dedicated and competent, if they are in a technical or supervisory capacity - it is the front lines of Customer Service where you get the lifers with attitude.
What Agency are you working for - avoid the INS, the Child Services Department of the State of Florida, etc. And certainly avoid a conflict with your own moral code - don't join the CIA to change the system from the inside &c - you will only waste your time and make yourself unhappy.
Most of all - what would you be doing? If you are an astrophysicist and NASA calls, answer! If you would be happy with the job in the private sector you will be happy with the same/similar job in the public sector... and if you would be bored to tears...
I've done both, worked at two startups after graduating (phd, EE/CS). Both startups were
fun, fast paced, and smart people. Both ran
out of VC funding, and laid off the entire
satellite office.
Now I work at a gov research lab. The pay is definitely lower, but not heinously so (cost
of living where I am now is lower). There are dumb
people, smart people, lazy people, motivated people. It's a mixed bag.
One thing I have to say though, I do enjoy
the stability as well as the freedom. That's right, freedom. I guess it's because I have a phd, but my supervisors basically let me do whatever I want, within reason. I even spent a summer on a different coast, teaching a summer school course at night and telecommuting during the day time. I dont think I would have been able to do that even at the most enlightened startup.
Regardless of which you choose, it really is what you make of it. Gov life has the added cushion that if you decide tomorrow to stop thinking and cruise until you retire, you have the option. But if you are motivated and a go-getter, you can do amazing things as a civvie.
fuck the man
Is it just me or are these ask slashdot questions getting stupider every day?
I prefer working for large criminal organizations and insurgent rebel groups internationally. Does that qualify as public or private sector?
Do you want money or security?
Private = Money
Public = Security
And they are mutually exclusive.. I speak from experience
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The question never is and never has been "public vs private"; rather, it is always does THAT SPECIFIC JOB match your needs, goals and personal style? I've worked at both and probably will continue doing so (currently, its private).
Two other comments: (1) I've found that the size of the organization has more bearing on the style than whether its private or public. Large organizations are almost always fairly bureaucratic, smaller ones tend to be much more familiar and dynamic (and riskier to work for) (2) I find the stereotype of lazy/incompetent public sector employees very misleading: there are idiots, a**holes, and various types of difficult people everywhere. Identify them, and avoid (or quit, if they are your boss or otherwise unavoidable/unbearable)
Since the public sector doesn't produce anything, but instead provides services for the country, if everyone worked in the public sector, there would be no one left to pay these people's salaries. Although this is an extreme example, it does point out the cost incurred by taxpayers in supporting people who work in the public sector.
Vote for Pedro
In my experience, there isn't enough difference
to justify saying "private only" or "public
only". In the public sector, you've got a lesser
chance of losing your job, and you won't get rich.
Everything else is up to the people and the
politics.
Yes, I've worked with people who should never have
been promoted in the public sector, and were
essentially unfireable. I've also worked with
people who were unfireable due to office politics,
or because they got the company started with
massive code-and-test efforts to get mostly
usable (although undocumented) software.
I've seen both private and public shops where
the bosses were power-hungry idiots in it for their
own ego, and where they were good guys and worked
hard at letting people do their best. Ditto with
shops where you couldn't get anything new and
shops where you could get new stuff and experiment.
So, I'd suggest that you keep your mind open, and
learn about each individual workplace, assuming
you can get a choice in this job market. Avoid
workplaces where there are large numbers of Dilbert
cartoons on the walls, since they are probably
there for a reason. Avoid workplaces where there
are none, since then management probably had to
ban them.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've been looking since January, as have a number of my friends with similar experience, and I'd be happy with a Help Desk position right now...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Since this was asked on /., I assume you are talking about IT work in the U.S. If so, get a government job as soon as possible.
Ironically, through the H-1B program, the government has given the private sector free license to replace any U.S. resident IT worker. Read the trade rags like Computerworld and Infoworld for a while, and you'll quickly learn that the CEOs and CIOs sit around in their $600 suits and discuss how to milk a nickel by outsourcing their IT work overseas. The only safe place for people who wish to work in IT is with the government. Wish I could get there.
So public sector employees pay no taxes?? Whoa, heck, I'll go over there...
I'll have to remember that after I get that grad degree.
Public Sector employees pay taxes on money they received from other taxpayers. Therefore, if everyone is a public sector employee, there will not be enough money to pay the salaries of the public sector employees unless the government keeps going deeper into debt or the employees pay 100% tax.
Vote for Pedro
Imagine if you will a group of hard working employees dedicated to their assigned task and duties. These are part the contractors providing some service, and part the government workers receiving and utilizing such service. Now back to reality, lets throw a bunch of red tape in there... keep on piling it on! All this crap requires organization, so... forgetting that the actual purpose of the red tape is lost to time (the purpose is coordination, tracking/continuity, and collaboration to increase efficiency) we will assign people, systems, forms and policies simply to oversee and administer the red tape. However, this administration (systems, personnel and policies) will itself require administration if it is to be sucessfull.
Enter the problem here. Its not that the contractors or the government employees like this crap, no it is actually they give in often. Process improvement is akin to the hall monitor and spit and jeered at. The result of this is a situation to where the end users of a system do not every get what they want or need while the developers not only cannot produce pride enabling (and productivity enabling) systems, but the crap they end up having to work on is predictably a failure except for one very specific, hard coded feature/requirement. This crap is why you must get raped of your income. If efficiency and results mattered, much less people were competent and ethical then they would understand this VERY consistent and reoccuring problem and start to fix it by evolving the processes dictating it.
It is painful how many times I come across people that when asked what is being done to help fix the problem of gross negligence and inefficiency with some process or project, they first respond by admiting it is bad... but then immediately get this glassy far away look as they spout policy... often policy that they damn well have the authority and DUTY to improve and evolve. Hell! Why put effort into something when you can merely blindly throw money and time at it and then be too busy patting yourself on the back at your favorite 18 holes while the end user throws their hands up in disgust and says, "What the hell where these idiots thinking that made this? Why did they bother polling us if they were not going to LISTEN to our suggestions, complaints and feedback?"
I definitely recommend the private sector, and to NEVER partake in government contracts. I also recommend that if you value a strong military, efficient government and ethical, competent stewardship of your tax dollars then you DEMAND that some spring cleaning be done in the government. Get these incompetent baboons out of their positions and put in people who care about results more than blindly following policy. FIX THE PROBLEM.
... period.
/. to throw out there:
I cannot stand these story post about "Ideal work environments" and "If you have a choice..." bullshit.
Here is a good
"If you could get a job, would you be the best damn ___________er that company has ever seen, public or private?"
Sonova!
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Government has the perks, pension, steady pay. Private has some insecurity, maybe better pay. But for job satisfaction, private is the way to go. It may depend on the field or department, but you are working for a disfunctional bureaucracy. You may or may not have a decent manager. I had a stupid one. Essentially saw myself losing my production capability. Rule #1 in government is nothing matters. If it does, see rule #1.
I love what I am doing. Work for a small outfit. Build my own business and contacts. Respect my employer who is smarter than me. Make decent money.
Derek
Hey, 30 yrs in the Public Employee Retirement System (PERS) in Oregon and you can retire at a cozy 106% of the average of your last 3 yrs pay.
So if you started at 18, at 48 if you aren't a complete and awful stooge, you are making $60k+ easy, probably for not even working, THEN, make even more for doing the same thing!!
Also, even in this economy, you are GUARANTEED an 8% min return in your retirement account, REGARDLESS of the fund performance.
Aren't taxpayers great!!!!!!
I work in scientific research, and I must say that I'd choose the public sector any day.
In the private sector, it's all about making things better and faster as quickly as you can manage. There's always demand to beat the competition and it's stressful as all hell. I first worked for a start-up biotech company, and it was intense. We had meetings every week to update/improve our plan, and results had to be perfect every time. If there were problems, they had to be solved quickly. Investors had put lots of money into what we were developing, and when they're not happy, nobody's happy.
Now, I work in research at a university, and it's all laid back. The things I discover are new to both myself and my PI, and there's never pressure to make things work. We investigate things that are interesting and useful to humanity, and the data takes us to each consecutive step. Also, publishing papers gets you famous.
Of course, in the private biotech sector, salaries are way higher. Thousands higher. The potential to make even more is there with stock options and IPOs (for new companies), even these days. So that's the trade-off: more money for more stress amd less notoriety.
Hell, I'm posting this right now from work. Thanks taxpayers! (you'll be thanking me when my research saves lives)
...And as an employee of a nonprofit which laid off people a couple of months ago, I can tell you that security is not guaranteed anywhere! However, it depends on what motivates you to work, and where you feel comfortable. I am motivated to work at a nonprofit by a mixture of factors. Not a big risk-taker by nature, and strongly disliking the corporate experience I have had, I've preferred the slightly funkier atmosphere in the public sector. Moreover, helping a company sell more widgets isn't that exciting for me, but working for a place that has a more altruistic mission is. As for pay...you have to figure out what you can afford to work for. I was extremely lucky and got offered a salary that seemed, and still seems, generous, but unfortunately that's pretty rare in the nonprofit world, unless you're a grantwriter or something. For more information about life in the nonprofit world, I'd suggest visiting www.philanthropy.com or www.techsoup.com.
Try reading "For The New Intellectual", by Ayn Rand. That should give you an idea of whether or not you want to work for the public sector.
I have worked in both. Both have pros and cons, but I feel the public sector is different than what people think. First of all, almost all of the people who bad-mouthed working for the government were government contractors. To be clear, you were *not* working for the government. Contractors, both in the private and public sectors, get shit on. They are temps who make more. We currently have contractors in working and *they* are the ones who can't meet *our* (government) deadlines. If you work for a small private company, you have zero opportunity without leaving that company. Typically, you are hired, get periodic mediocre raises, and do the same thing day in and day out. No opportunity for advancement, and no training budget is available for you. I find government offers more training, the benefits tend to kick ass, and there is a ladder to climb.
Personally, I would never want to work in the private sector again. I think that the dot-com boom was good for government employees. To be competitive (esp w/ Tech), government hiring agencies had to become nimble, flexible and offer things that the private sector was offering. However, when the economy tanked, the private sector stopped offering all these great benefits, but the government didn't.
Furthermore, a bad manager is a bad manager. They exist on both sides of the fence (in abundence). It is silly to interview for a job and not take into account who will be your boss. If you wind up with a bad manager, you are free to do something about it (leave).
And right now, the private sector is laying off all those high-payed IT people and hiring cheaper replacements. I feel that the private sector has lost all sense of employee loyalty, and views workers as a commodity that should be bought at the lowest price possible. This view is not pervasive in government, which I think values the investment they have made in their employees.
Personally I enjoy killing people and blowing buildings up. Seems like the government is my only option if I want to reamin legal.
Speaking as a person who contracts with the public sector, in view of the politics, the waste of money, resources, talents, and people, the bureaucratic approach to everything, and the stigma that goes with it, I miss the private sector. The government is an increasingly big employer in this country, but friends don't let friends look for careers in government. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Very cool thread. This is all I can add. In the private sector, decisions/action can _always_ be boiled down to/forced by money. Public sector (esp. acedemia) is much more murky and all decisions have their own internal dynamic. Choose the paridigm that suits you.
"I can tell you with certainty that by waiting until you are 35 to get a mortgage means you are wasting huge sums on rent that gives you back no equity, with less time to recoup the housing cost on future sales and rollovers. "
Actually the corporation that manages my apartment complex, has an equity program. For every year you live here you get a certain amount of equity you can apply to a new home. The home has to be built through a contractor they have an agreement with. That's not a bad thing, because you can always sell and move over to something else once you have your foot in the door, which is always the hardest part for any first-time homeowner. Also most states do have a line-item deduction if you're renting.
Thinking jobs that require creativity and new ideas to problem solving don't seem to work well in a military setting.
How incredibly wrong you are! Creative people with new ideas excel in today's military. Entire units, and even entire bases, exist to try new things in a "laboratory" setting (in quotes because sometimes the lab is a muddy forest!) If you were in the military, and I mean no disrespect when I say it sounds like you weren't, then you obviously had the misfortune to have a short and dull career. Such an experience, and the resulting attitude, is like working at JPL for a year and complaining that all you got to do was install hard drives. And if you're talking about developing new equipment, then yes, of course, not much of that is done in the military. They are the end users for the most part. Duh?
Evil is the money of root.
1. Private, public...A far more relevant discussion is whether to be an indentured employee of a large corporation, further enriching the pockets of the rich by renting your labor out and surrending control over your destiny, or be an entrepreneur and/or work for an entrepreneurial enterprise (for-profit or not), where you can share in the ownership and decision-making and responsibility for success or failure.
2. It's a sad commentary on our self-centered contemporary culture that most of this discussion revolves around $$ and benefits and security, and so little mention is made of doing work that actually contributes to society, that is fulfilling and enriching on a personal level, and that one can be proud of performing (all of which can be done in either sector).
As an engineer, you can build bombs or bridges. Both are intriguing intellectual challenges. But the choice of which to pursue matters a great deal.
Ultimately, as I am fond of saying:
"If it doesn't make a difference, what's the point?"
Flout 'em and scout 'em,
and scout 'em and flout 'em;
Thought is free. - Shakespeare [The Tempest]
A few variables need to be filled in here, at least for the public sector bit.
What country?
Local, state, or federal?
Large or small organisation?
I work in a small (25 employee) state government authority outside the US. It has plenty of flexibility and innovation. We get to work on interesting projects - like building large data base systems in PHP for other agencies. Almost all the systems staff run Linux desktops, with VMware for legacy applications.
The staff are all well-qualified (half have Masters degrees and half have Bachelor degrees), we get to experiment, are rewarded and praised fairly for coming up with new programs, and so on.
It depends on where you work. I have known great places to work, and great places to leave, in the public sector. It is not homogeneous.
I am anarch of all I survey.
The article does not say the public sector should be expanded. The article says government should not move safety related agencies into the private sector.
Its also an odd choice for an article, because it does not make a case for going into a public sector career. Its a union resolution attacking privatization of government agencies.
Why do I smell editorial engineering, or the desire to propagate a point of view?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
Please moderate the parent as funny.
Do Enron, Worldcom, Xerox, dot bomb ring any bells?
There are good private companies and there are many inneficient ones. Actually I believe most companies go bust.
The efficency of the private sector is a myth. If there were not inefficient companies the free market would not work...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
There are pluses and minuses to both. You will generally not get poor working in the public sector. Most positions have been around for a while and are specialized enough that union representation is quite common, thus benefits and salary are usually adequate. Private sector, on the other hand, loves dishing out minimum wage in lower end jobs, such as retail and food services, and even in higher paying jobs union representation has become much thinner.
You will never, it should be noted, get rich in the public sector either unless you rise near the very top. Nobody cares that the CEO of a major corporation makes millions. EVERYbody cares when you get a 2% COLA on your contract in the public sector, because it's their tax dollars, damnit. You are a public servant and you should serve out of the goodness of your heart.
One thing people don't think about is that there are currently a lot of advancement opportunties in federal government IT. Low pay/antiquated procedures have created a talent void. I know some pretty inept people who are promoting rapidly. The trick is that you have to move -- if you stay at one place you have to wait for your boss to retire since jobs can't be created in place without extreme difficulty. Some of the supervisory positions are not financially lucrative (though I wouldn't sneeze at 80-135K), but have large staffs, large travel budgets, plenty of money for toys and projects, etc. It's very true about some of the bureaucracy and roadblocks but if you have the right bosses above you (the key is finding the right boss rather than the right job -- they can easily change your job description or ignore it) you can create and implement cutting-edge projects. And there are good benefits and no hour pressure -- it is very easy to work 8-5 with clear weekends and even an occasional vacation. Training opportunities are often excellent (though harder for key people).
For programmers, however, you have to manage to get high pay. Most programming work is now being contracted out (and thus creating more government managers) because you can't pay people enough in nonsupervisory jobs like programming. Thus you get good junior guys and good managers but the senior programmers can be problematic. You'd better feed them a lot of toys and "interesting" projects if you plan to get useful work.
Private Sector: Better Pay (especially for non-managerial IT and top execs)
Public Sector: Family-friendly with high promotion potential for those who can live with not getting rich.
Testing sig.
See my Canberra Aikido ANU site
I agree that, if you work for the government, the advancement opportunities are much greater. But government contractors can vary greatly in this regard, so ask a lot of questions during your interview.
As for what is better, public vs. private, the question is a lot more complex than that. First off, many of us don't have the option to choose right now. We take what we can get.
Second, some private companies are really fun to work for, while others are really stuffy and b.cratic. And while public sector jobs may prove more bland, structured, and run-of-the-mill, sometimes the work load can get really slow; which could be good or bad thing, depending on you personally. And in my experience so far, contractors are much more fun to work for, but don't offer dependable advancement. Working directly for a medium-to-large company can offer great advancement, but can be drag to work for.
In the end, interview for jobs in all sectors and industries, and use your gut to pick the most appealing workplace that offers the pay you are looking for. Balance happiness with pay, always.
Now, a more interesting question to discuss here might be: What industries are the best to work for?
I have worked in non-profit, biotech, federal contractor, travel, and now DoD. The biotech was probably the most interesting, while the company I worked for doing federal contracts was my favorite workplace (the pay simply sucked at the time). I like non-profit, but hated the travel industry, and don't seem to be adjusting well to DoD.
How about you all?
Anytime you get into a big organisation, be it public or private you are going to get int to all of the office politics crap. However, working for a smaller organisation gives less earning potential from the start. Luckily for me I learned early that a job can't be measured by the digits on a paycheck. I have gladly turned down job offers paying 20% more money in return for long hours and a hostile work environment.
Not to mention that in a company with a small IT department you are often treated very well since you know how to make the information flow and replacing you would be a major nightmare for them. In effect you become a single point of failure for the IT department.
Oh yeah it's nice to have the owner invite you to his weekly golf games.
I believe that "less government" should be less direct government on a federal level. Easier-to-influence smaller governments is the exact point, because humanity is too dynamic for a static or archaic government. I think that federal government, rather than policing the citizens, should exist only to police the smaller governments, and to see that Big Corporate America, the Mother Church, or other alternative forms of government don't take the "Power of the People" away from the people. Each state and municipal government should be basically soverign, to be controlled as the citizens see fit, while under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Constitution, and the Feds enforce compliance of the local gov'ts.
Your second paragraph points to the current state of affairs, which is highly reflected in an overly executive federal government - it provides a single point of failure, for the corrupting influence of powerful entities who would take power away from the citizenry. Big Corporations, the "Moral Majority" and other corruptions of the U.S. Government would have a much harder time usurping power if its efforts had to be distributed over a large and diverse distributed government, in which the the federal government's only role was to monitor checks and balances without direct action against the population. This would prevent any $multi-billion corporate buyouts like the airline rescue packages or federal abuse of citizen's rights like federal persecution of individuals who maintain their right to consume cannabis according to the laws in California. Each state should be free to police corporations how they see fit, then the insulated federal government should be the watchdog to monitor for any abuses. The problem of corruption and general idiocy is not inherent in capitalism or socialism, but in large clumsy monolithic structures in general. Distribution of governmental power would address the problem, and allow for socialism and capitalism to co-exist under the Umbrella of the Republic of the United States of America.
I am not for full-blown laissez-faire capitalist government, but I believe that we need the federal government to take a step back from the brouhaha and perform a more supervisory role for smaller direct governments - to ensure the proper seperation of church, state, corporation, sovereignity and individual. Then each smaller sub-government would be free to play a greater or lesser role in the local economy or service industry as each local population sees fit. The national economy, much like the global economy, is too poorly understood for any universal legislation to guarantee sanity. Let the people be heard, in their respective domains. In a crowd of millions, nobody can be heard.
I think your last paragraph is the strongest indirect rebuttal to your post in general. A small-business setting (corporate or public) can specialize itself to your type of work (or private lifestyle) better than a large, structured, hierarchical environment. (Remember, you are unique--just like everybody else!) That large hierarchy would be a powerfully effective set of guidelines extending from the Federal Constitution to provide a means of sanity-checking for smaller governmental organizations of any kind, be it pseudo-Marxism, anarcho-capitalism, tribal-democracy or benevolent-dictatorship.
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--- Off-topic and Off-beat ramblings follow ---
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Perhaps a Theocracy might even be possible under this system, as long as a democratic means of representation were preserved. Or perhaps I am dreaming a dangerous dream here.
Dissolution (not radical-revolution, but perhaps through gradual campaign- and tax- reform attrition) of the Federal government would also be an effective way of preserving the civil liberties of Americans, and repealing archaic imperialist behaivor that has tarnished the U.S. reputation on the world stage.
Again, still dreaming, here's another idea for discussion. If the Federal Government is every properly reformed as I describe, eventually membership of the United States might eventually be opened up, so that our territories might be granted the option of proper statehood through some mutual electoral process. If this relatively small scale experiment panned out, then the option could be offered to Sovereign States that are currently considered Foreign Nations. If the benefits of falling under the jurisdiction of the U.S. constitution prove to be a compelling trade off, maybe the U.S could become what the United Nations never was.
Of course, that last paragraphs should be disregarded as pure poppycock or feverish half-baked ejaculations. It seems doubtful that federal corruption could ever be dissolved to any significant degree in my lifetime. The federal government would have to be both declawed against violation of individual freedoms and bolstered to protect minority social elements from oppression, both homebrewed and alien.
The National Libertarian Party's efforts in their "Incumbent Killer" program are a source of hope, even if I find their general platforms to be too extreme for my taste - their hearts seem to be in the right place. I would have been interested to see what happened if Pat Buchanan didn't hijack the Reform Party. While John Hagelin may have been a slightly offbeat pseudo-religious yogi, I somehow find that preferable to the blatant Moral Majority partyline spewed by Buchanan cronies - it seems that the has transplanted the worst part of the modern Repblican party into my once future hope.
I would be much more likely to have voted for Hagelin under the Reform Party ticket than under the Natural Law Party ticket, for the very same reason - less pseudo-religious influence would have been likely permissible. I voted for Ralph Nader despite not identifying with the Green Party, purely as a protest vote. Alas, it seems the only visible legacy of Perot was to bring the pomp and farce of Professional wrestling into the disturbingly similar political arena. Frankly "the snake" is too generic a term for Ventura's current peers, including Hillary, and hopefully not Ed Rendell.
Pennsylvania, vote Mike Fisher!
Ahem... sory about that last bit.
I'm non-partisan, honest!