Dear Mr. Gobster:
I don't know the status of government employment in your country, but I do know this: I worked for one of the more prestigious goverment agencies from 1975-1980, and at that time, the top75% of college grads wanted nothing to do with government employment (I chose it because I had no degree at the time - which made little difference with the Feds because I passed a test), and I wanted a job where I knew I would never have to work a minute of overtime while attending college (and law school) full time at night.
My coworkers were, in the main, profoundly mediocre. The "engineers" were people with generic degrees who had a couple science courses thrown in. The accountants (auditors) were bottom of the class grads, totally outclassed by their counterparts in the private sector. Pay with the government was roughtly 25% below what comparable positions were paying on the outside, and the ONLY incentive to go work there was you would never have to wrorry about being fired or laid off, and you could retire early (and who, at 25) cares about that?
and government workers in state and local governments were not as well-qualified as those working for the Feds, generally speaking.
Things have changed somewhat now (as with the teaching "profession") because the compensation, benefits,and retirement situation has reversed, with the government paying better, having better benefits, and all the early retirement programs that one might have seen in the private sector before have vanished. So getting in now is rather competitive.
But the ones who are recently retired and retiring now are the ones who were hired when government took (gratefully) the bottom of the barrel.
Which is not to say, "every one of them," of course. But the vast majority fit these profiles. Teachers, as well. The relative academic status of people entering the teaching professon in past years is quite well documented, and it is quickly evolving because recent grads compete for these positions quite aggressively.
Crybaby Frogs
Re: Crybaby Frogs
Back in the land of reality ...
'Government jobs' have traditionally been a step up into the middle class for people coming from the lowest rungs of society. Stabile and secure employment allowed them to buy houses, send their kids to college, and have a secure retirement all of those are rare benefits if you are starting at the bottom, familially speaking. The quality of the people doing these things was generally improved when civil service rules were mandated to suppress the exploitations of political patronage.
In my experience the quality of people working for both public and private companies varies a great deal but the chance of being rewarded richly for complete incompetence is a thousand times greater in the private sector. Witness Carly Fiorina, Ken Lay, Bernard Ebbers, Joseph Hazlewood, BP, and 10,000 more.
Demonizing people in government careers vs private business is pure horseshit.
yrs,
rubato
'Government jobs' have traditionally been a step up into the middle class for people coming from the lowest rungs of society. Stabile and secure employment allowed them to buy houses, send their kids to college, and have a secure retirement all of those are rare benefits if you are starting at the bottom, familially speaking. The quality of the people doing these things was generally improved when civil service rules were mandated to suppress the exploitations of political patronage.
In my experience the quality of people working for both public and private companies varies a great deal but the chance of being rewarded richly for complete incompetence is a thousand times greater in the private sector. Witness Carly Fiorina, Ken Lay, Bernard Ebbers, Joseph Hazlewood, BP, and 10,000 more.
Demonizing people in government careers vs private business is pure horseshit.
yrs,
rubato
Re: Crybaby Frogs
Was there a rebuttal in there somewhere, rube? I missed it.
Outside D.C., the top graduates of colleges and universities have always rightly shunned government employment. In five years with DoD, I never ran into one "Engineer" with an engineering degree. I never ran into one auditor who was a CPA. All of my "professional" coworkers were at best, bottom half of their graduating class. Those with degrees had degrees in English and History, Psychology and other subjects that indicated nothing more than advanced literacy.
We worked EXACTLY forty hours per week - not a minute of overtime. We took long breaks morning and afternoon (cafeteria in the federal building was more than half full between 9 and 10 ever morning and from 2-3 in the afternoon). I've never seen this ANYPLACE else where I've worked.
State and local government workers are about the same, except that there is nepotism added in. At least I never saw that with the feds. Although DoD had a large sprinkling of retired military officers in high-level GS positions, doing next to nothing.
Outside D.C., the top graduates of colleges and universities have always rightly shunned government employment. In five years with DoD, I never ran into one "Engineer" with an engineering degree. I never ran into one auditor who was a CPA. All of my "professional" coworkers were at best, bottom half of their graduating class. Those with degrees had degrees in English and History, Psychology and other subjects that indicated nothing more than advanced literacy.
We worked EXACTLY forty hours per week - not a minute of overtime. We took long breaks morning and afternoon (cafeteria in the federal building was more than half full between 9 and 10 ever morning and from 2-3 in the afternoon). I've never seen this ANYPLACE else where I've worked.
State and local government workers are about the same, except that there is nepotism added in. At least I never saw that with the feds. Although DoD had a large sprinkling of retired military officers in high-level GS positions, doing next to nothing.
Re: Crybaby Frogs
Blanket smears achieve and prove nothing, was my point Dave.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Re: Crybaby Frogs
point taken. But it's so much fun!
Re: Crybaby Frogs
No worries, Dave.
Good to have you on board, Jim was feeeling a bit lonely out there on the extreme right.
Good to have you on board, Jim was feeeling a bit lonely out there on the extreme right.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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Re: Crybaby Frogs
Uhh giving dgs a Teddy Roosevelt icon would be an insult to the man.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.