The Living Dilbert?

AirmanTux asks: "Next march I will be separating from the US Air Force, after six years wearing 'the uniform', working in the closest thing to IT that the military has. For certain reasons, I've come to the conclusion that I will be more effective in serving the US public out of uniform than in it. There seems to be a common belief that the civilian sector is just as disorganized and mismanaged as the uniformed services. Do you think this is true? Are there any 'honest' places to work any more (where promotions/awards are based on work preformed and bureaucracy, and politics aren't encouraged to supplant the 'mission), or has America become one big living Dilbert strip?"

Comments

usajobs.com

[geekylinuxkid]

did you try searching for a GS job at usajobs.com? I plan on getting a GS job when my enlistment is over. if you have a clearance try clearancejobs.com. hope that helps.

It's not as bad as Dilbert.

[FatSean]

I work for a large organization, which as a result of it's size, has a sizeable ammount of beaurocratic BS. Perhaps I've been lucky, but I don't feel my management is as pathetic as portreryed in the strips...not even close. I think it helps to work for a company that takes IT seriously, as a genuine method for improving the business and not a dreaded tax to be paid like waste removal or maintenance. Unfortunately I have no insight as to how to determine this from the outside.

But, people are people. I might make a vague generalization about the personality types that join the military, but that probably won't be productive.

Re:Keep it small

[Jeremi]

Any organisation beyond a certain size inevitably becomes pathological in its behaviour.

Agreed... when the company is below a certain size, everybody can exist within the same monkeysphere, and several hundred thousand years of social evolution help things along. In much larger organizations, multiple monkeyspheres form, leading to indifference and inefficiency at best, or low-level tribal warfare at worst.