What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.
I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.
I'm a full-time employee. Managers and government benefits are a pretty big part of it. Work hours are very flexible (some roll in at 6am, others 10am), lengthy vacationable time, etc. Like morga3sm said, we want to do things correctly.
It has its downsides of course: getting a TS security clearance can be stressful, but that goes away afterwards; not being able to tell your SO what you do other than high-level stuff; career advancement and progression can be a long process and you basically know where your salary is going to go when you first start (because it is standardized); and so on.
I find that incredible (in a good way!)
My idea of govt organizations was strict dress code, clock in at 8 AM on the dot, leave at 5 PM sharp, unknowable bureaucracy above your head.
Yep, that was my idea at first too! But in the summer I see people in flip flops and shorts :-) Execs still wear suits, but us lowly engineers not so much.
It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility.
So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 paid holidays, and when you get home you are simply done with work until the morning of the next workday. It does not matter much if you do your job well or do it poorly, because there are so many other people working on it that you will never get recognition for a job done well, nor will you get any blame for doing it poorly, so long as it does what it says on the box.
The deadlines also vary by contract, but as every layer of middlemen adds its own padding, it wouldn't be remarkable to have two years to develop yet-another-CRUD-app with zero scalability, compatibility, or interoperability requirements.
No one doing the actual work is a direct government employee, because the uniform pay schedules are completely incompatible with industry norms. The government employees are simply there to make sure the contractors do what is required.
The net result is that you can get all your work done in just 2 hours and look busy for 6, or amble through it at a sloth's pace, gold-plating everything, achieving 100% test coverage, using ordinary software as a teaching lab for industry best practices, and such.
There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
> There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
These are the same downsides you see in the private sector.
> For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week.
Have yet to encounter a contracting environment where is is true. In fact, I was explicitly told that since I was salaried I was expected to put in whatever work it took to make deadlines, despite only putting 40 hours down on my timecard. Considering the facility I worked in had a DCAA office embedded in it I find it hard to believe the government did not know this was going on.
Oh, how delightful. Call the government ethics hotline and inform them that your employer is defrauding the government. You might get a nice bonus out of it, in theory.
In reality, whistleblowers always get screwed. You would have to extensively cover your own ass, and gather evidence that absolves you, specifically, of wrongdoing first.
If you are reporting time worked as anything other than the actual number that you were working, that is illegal. So alternately, start reporting the actual hours worked. If your employer makes an issue of it, tell them that you will need a signed, written copy of any order they give you that instructs you to violate the law.
If you get fired, you can retaliate by getting someone sent to jail.
I haven't worked there in almost four years, so that would be hard to do at this point. Even if I was, part of what sustained this is that we were a classified program, so only cleared auditors could access the full information.
Furthermore, our government customer didn't care as long as they got their deliveries on time and as cheaply as possible. I know in theory a program office can't lean on DCAA, but in practice (especially considering the clearance situation) I don't know if the PO would obstruct such an investigation. After all, from their POV getting what they want for less is not fraud.
Are you in SIGINT? If you're not in SIGINT, I agree with everything you've said, otherwise my experience has been pretty different likely because I'm in SIGINT. Most of us are employees and the work can be pretty satisfying and rewarding, especially when you can see the effects and/or results when you're just a small cog in the machine.
It's possible we're in different countries, though :-).
The federal government has exactly 10 federal holidays: New Year's Day, MLK Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Government controlled sites are closed on those days. That means contractors can't work at such a site on those days. Rather than requiring their employees to work elsewhere, contractor companies often just concede that their employees can get a holiday too, and most of them even make it paid time off.
Some companies observe different holidays, such as by adding Christmas Eve and the day after Thanksgiving, and removing Columbus Day.
There is no such thing as public holidays in the US. Some days are bank holidays. Some days are school holidays. Some days are federal holidays. But there is no law that requires any employer to give all of its nonessential employees paid time off on any particular day. The only sort-of-exception is that an employer can't prevent someone from voting on Election Day, but that does not have to be paid leave.
Wal-Mart, for instance, has only 5 paid holidays: Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. (Note that Easter is always on a Sunday, a time when many people already have a day off from work.) And if you get holiday bonus pay for working on those days, your hours are rumored to be cut afterward to compensate.
Some companies are also generous enough to allow 80 additional hours of paid time off every year, to be used as either sick leave or vacation days.
To me as a US English speaker this meant public holidays, since we normally call the other type of holiday "vacation". He probably gets at least 10-15 of those as well.
Depends on the company and facility situation. I worked for several years in such an environment, but the facility was open 24/7. You could be paged at any time for critical issues, but of course would always have to come in to find out what it actually was. Not being able to bring work home just led to the expectation that you would spend more time in the office.
