Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO.
... although that seems depressingly like it would also be the experience with new administrators being installed in executive agencies every 4 years, except they're slightly older.
By function a GS will ALWAYS be subordinate to a political appointee and there’s nothing they can do about it
I posted elsewhere that I left a govt career as a military officer precicely because of this reality. It’s like a old boring joke now that politicians are corrupt and worthless.
I will tell you from the inside that not only is it true but it’s 10 times to 100 times worse than you think it is.
I have multiple stories of operational systems, functions, whatever you wanna call them that we’re working exceptionally well had good backing, good funding and were completely wiped out because whoever became the deputy under secretary for that budget line decided they didn’t want to do it anymore. and completely shelved decades worth of work. Like literally I remember having to unplug a server that was running life-critical beacons for POWs because they weren’t being used enough.
As if that weren’t enough that same development problem then shifted over to some new hot organization that is in the politicians jurisdiction and then they start over from scratch with none of the learning from the previous admin.
There is no positive system that can be affected by the United States government
It does not exist, they cannot functionally or structurally exist, because the government of the United States but is not and has never been built on supporting citizens or the global community it is built and has always been built to support wealthy politicians and that’s all.
I’m not aware of how every other countries work but the ones I’ve seen the inside are the same
Going into the government for the “mission” is probably the most intentionally ignorant thing somebody could do given the plethora of easily accessible data proving exactly this
Somehow this country has managed to do big and bold things when it is needed. Those great systems that were dismantled got built at one point so it is theoretically possible to do good. Furthermore other countries seem to do a better job at serving their citizens so its not like effective government is impossible((look at how the EU at least gets some things that benefit their citizens even though most of it is a mess).
There has got to be some pathway to get back to that.
> a GS will ALWAYS be subordinate to a political appointee
It’s worth being specific about what is meant by “political appointee” here. That term has specific legal meaning in the context of federal staffing, and (as I understand it, not a lawyer) is not the same thing as “GS employee who was hired as part of an administration’s political agenda”.
> Nothing like putting in a multi decade civil service career and coming in one day to find a 20-something installed over you
GS grade does not correspond directly to manager/managee relationships at plenty of federal agencies. Someone getting hired at a higher GS grade is not automatically “over you” in the formal reporting hierarchy. That’s not to say this never happens (GS:org chart level is the case more often than not, I’d guess), but it’s not a given.
Now, if your issue is that agencies sometimes offer high (by the standards of current employees) GS grades to attract talented hires, then I agree that is a problem! The solution to that is to improve government pay scales and fix fed hiring more generally: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/dear-mr-kupor-please-fix-fede...
Until that is done, (good) policies like the Pendleton Act cannot help that much.
Not being dismissive of your experience (or that of a civil servant with 10s of years of experience). I have a deep respect for that kind of work and folks who give up more lucrative opportunities in order to serve their country and fellow citizens.
> whose primary qualification was being hired at a "friendly" tech company and making the right kind of joke around the CEO
That’s being awfully dismissive of the individuals skill set. Nobody gets the job by making the right kind of jokes around the CEO. Nobody. Getting in the door takes hard work, talent and some amount of luck.
For DOGE specifically? Would be interested to hear of those DOGE employees who truly deserved to be GS-15s due to their extensive experience in both tech and government.
The USDS and DOGE had completely different mandates. Non government experience makes sense when you’re trying to learn the lessons of industry to improve gov website accessibility, performance and ux.
On the other hand, trying to slash spending with no understanding of the agencies you’re working at- let alone any life experience for a lot of these folks- is a very different mandate.
... although that seems depressingly like it would also be the experience with new administrators being installed in executive agencies every 4 years, except they're slightly older.
Man, if only there were some way to retain talent in the face of political leadership transitions... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendleton_Civil_Service_Reform...