15yrs ago I spent 6 months as a contractor doing IT support for the Corps of Engineers. Altho I've decades in the military, this time with the Corps was my first exposure to Civil Service. It was unbelievable. I've never seen such complete dysfunction. I've never seen so many people get so little done. I've never seen a "system" so diabolically designed to ensure it got the least out of folks.
Sure, there's hard charging civil service types. But they are hard chargers DESPITE the system that they work in. A system that makes it almost impossible to fire someone, a system that perceives very little value in efficiency and thrift, a system that isn't much for rewarding strong performers.
Human nature hasn't changed much in 100k years. I cannot for the life of me understand how we came up with, and continue to live with, a civil service system that ensures we get the least out of folks. Once a person figures out that rewards for terrific efforts are rare, and they can be a slug pretty much w/o consequence, 99.9% of folks will turn into slugs. The kind of work environment that gets the most out of folks, where slugs are shown the door and strong performers are rewarded, isn't rocket science.
The Corps of Engineers building that I was at had an civil service IT section of ~30 folks to run the network. Not user support, but run the network. But all they really did was shuffle paper and go to meetings. In reality, the 5 state network of prob 5000 folks was run by 2 overworked contractors. One of the 30 civil service types was such a problem that they long since removed his Domain Admin rights and just left him alone to surf the web all day. Getting rid of him would have been so difficult that it wasn't worth the effort.
When I needed to get from one end of the large building to the other, it took forever to get there because I'd get trapped behind wide slow moving employees that shuffled around at a snail's pace down hallways. Almost everyone you talked to radiated apathy.
I had just gotten out of the Army. In that time frame I was knocking around ideas re. getting into some kind of Federal law enforcement or something similarly interesting. But the bureacracy and inefficiency of the Army had been bad enough. That experience with true Federal Civil Service at the Corps of Engineers made it really clear to me that I needed to stay clear of civil service. At work I want to be surrounded by smart hard-chargers that hustle all day long. I need to be in a system that allows me to get rid of slugs, gives me 100% control of hiring, and allows me to reward fabulous work. If I worked in an environment like what I saw at the Corps, I'd throw myself off of the building.
Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart
Sure, there's hard charging civil service types. But they are hard chargers DESPITE the system that they work in. A system that makes it almost impossible to fire someone, a system that perceives very little value in efficiency and thrift, a system that isn't much for rewarding strong performers.
Human nature hasn't changed much in 100k years. I cannot for the life of me understand how we came up with, and continue to live with, a civil service system that ensures we get the least out of folks. Once a person figures out that rewards for terrific efforts are rare, and they can be a slug pretty much w/o consequence, 99.9% of folks will turn into slugs. The kind of work environment that gets the most out of folks, where slugs are shown the door and strong performers are rewarded, isn't rocket science.
The Corps of Engineers building that I was at had an civil service IT section of ~30 folks to run the network. Not user support, but run the network. But all they really did was shuffle paper and go to meetings. In reality, the 5 state network of prob 5000 folks was run by 2 overworked contractors. One of the 30 civil service types was such a problem that they long since removed his Domain Admin rights and just left him alone to surf the web all day. Getting rid of him would have been so difficult that it wasn't worth the effort.
When I needed to get from one end of the large building to the other, it took forever to get there because I'd get trapped behind wide slow moving employees that shuffled around at a snail's pace down hallways. Almost everyone you talked to radiated apathy.
I had just gotten out of the Army. In that time frame I was knocking around ideas re. getting into some kind of Federal law enforcement or something similarly interesting. But the bureacracy and inefficiency of the Army had been bad enough. That experience with true Federal Civil Service at the Corps of Engineers made it really clear to me that I needed to stay clear of civil service. At work I want to be surrounded by smart hard-chargers that hustle all day long. I need to be in a system that allows me to get rid of slugs, gives me 100% control of hiring, and allows me to reward fabulous work. If I worked in an environment like what I saw at the Corps, I'd throw myself off of the building.
Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart
Last edited by:
RangerGress: Dec 29, 17 12:01