Why is it a surprise that employees who are essentially unfirable don't perform well? Aside from a very small percentage where the hiring culture is exceptional, it's almost universal. This is a problem with governments across at all levels in almost all countries.
How many times do we have to match this movie before realizing that just increasing the salaries won't make a difference, and instead will be wasteful.
This is a great example of that political dogma: notice that you’ve accepted as an article of faith the trope that government employees can’t be fired or disciplined or that this is not true of contractors, despite neither of those being true?
If your goal is successful projects, what you’re looking for is accountability and managerial discretion. The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either, and without technical staff they won’t have someone they can turn to for advice who doesn’t have a financial conflict of interest.
Nice strawman. It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree?
Just look up at-will employment law that doesn't apply to government entities. Looks like you're the one following political dogma and accepting articles of faith and tropes.
Otherwise why would ignore that a very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees?
> The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either.
Where did I say they cannot? Please stop with the strawmen. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.
Let’s see, so it’s not a straw man when you say government employees are “essentially unfirable” but it is when someone corrects you?
It is harder to fire govt employees than to fire private employees. Disagree?
At-will employment law doesn't apply to government entities.
A very consequential law is different for private vs govt employees.
> The managers you think can’t direct civil servants directly aren’t magically more capable of selecting and overseeing contracts, either.
Never said in my comment they cannot direct civil servants. They just don't have enough incentive because it's very hard to fire them, unlike managers in the private sector.
I mean, were you not attempting to make an argument when you said that government employees were “essentially unfirable”? Your argument just sucked/was factually incorrect and you want to steer away from the “interpersonal” aspect of someone pointing that out.
It’s gauche to point this out on HN but you aren’t engaging in good faith here - wnd when someone else engages you in actual good-faith you fall back to juvenile debate-club attempts to frame them as the wrongdoer.
That’s highly rude and a bad attitude and approach to bring to this community. Act better and take some accountability for your own misbehavior.
Sad that both you and the other poster lost the argument so hard that you have to resort to ad hominems and make it about me instead of the topic. Thats very telling. And also look up the meaning of the word essentially.
A government needs employees right? One way to attract and retain employees is to offer competitive wages, another is to offer a relatively low workload and high job stability. Government worker salaries are easy targets and the people who set them are elected officials, so its not a surprise most governments today lean on job security over wages.
It certainly has something to do with it.
The market rates for engineers was distorted because FAANG had a lot of money to throw around, so therefore hiring staff at government pay rates is quite difficult and is subject to the General Schedule (https://federalnewsnetwork.com/pay-benefits/2023/12/biden-fi...).
Contractors work from bills and projects, where the money is carved out; I agree it’s terribly inefficient.
The other issue is how difficult it is to get into government vs getting in as a contractor.
I tried the former many times without success; the latter? Easier than FAANG or finance.
Politics enters the picture because the pay cap is derived from the salaries for politicians rather than what expertise is valued at on the open market:
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
GS in general cannot grow when the market pay was distorted by both lack of tax funds; and when those driving market pay has a disproportionate amount of wealth to corner the labor market, in order to prevent the hiring of engineers by other industries.
This has nothing to do with it. Contractors cost notably more, so if the goal was economizing it’d be an obvious step to cut out the middlemen by hiring staff directly.
The problem is that there’s an entire political ideology holding that government is inherently wasteful and its adherents will oppose any attempt to track market salaries because that allows them both to say they’re saving money at the time and later to cite the struggling/failed project as proof that they were right.