>Most jack of all trades jobs are at small companies in my experience
Yup. I'd add public sector work to that list (mostly because it's chronically understaffed and heavily siloed so you have to fill in a lot of roles).
BigCos tend to like specialization because of consistency/efficiency. They might have a skunkworks where you can be a jack of all trades but it's hard to get hired into those roles.
I work in public sector (NHS Tech) and I'm not so sure.
There can be a lot of bureaucracy around hiring leading to quite well defined roles. You're right about understaffing and if you end up in a good sub organisation there'll be a lot of work to do and room to branch out. But you're unlikely to get hired as a jack of all trades. Startups are far more likely to hire useful people who can do a lot of different things. Public sector you'll be hired to do a specific thing but then might be able to pick up lots of random things if you have the right rep or people around you.
Pg has a quote along the lines of "easier jobs that are hard to get fired from are worth more money." Of course not every public job is easy, rather often there are benefits involved other than cash
I work in the public sector of Denmark. I make around 20-25% less of my peers in similar private sector functions. I have a friend that I graduated with who’s hopped between a few public sector jobs and for him the number is 5-10%.
On the flip side, I work completely flexible hours. Never more than 37hours a week, and within those 37 hours I get a paid lunch break, so it’s really 34,5 hours a week. It brings flexible, I’ve sometimes had 70 hour weeks doing big transitions or elections (we do digitised voter signin, and there is a lot of preparation involved to make sure it doesn’t fuck up and that everyone knows what to do if it does). In Denmark everyone in stable jobs gets to take the first day of a child being sick off. I get three days. Every man gets 2 weeks of paid and guaranteed paternity leave, I get 13 weeks. I get two extra paid vacation days per child under 13 a year (up to 3 or 4 children, not sure about the limit). I get an extra week of paid vacation a year compared to the national standards. If I have to see a doctor or a dentist, I can do so on and count the time as working hours. And I get to work in an environment where people won’t bat an eye when you use these things, you obviously can’t abuse them without getting attention.
We have some of the lowest corruption in the world, and while our leaderships and management structure is archaic and IT is completely undervalued considering every one of our employees uses it at least 1 hour a day and about two thousand of them spend their entire day working with computers, it’s not terrible.
Like I said, the pay is lower than the private sector, but IT is paid well, so even though I could make more money outside the public sector, I still make more money a month than my mother who’s been a anaesthetic nurse for 39 years. The only professions who rank in more money than me outside of tech is things like doctors, lawyers and middlemanagers. So I think it’s fair enough. Obviously my boss has the same benefits as me and he makes around tripple of what I do, so it’s still better to be a manager in the public sector than an IT grunt.
If you actually calculate your pay per amount of work and I mean just taking the official time - 37 hours /week and vacations, you'll actually get to similar numbers as your private sector colleagues. So the basic question is not whether you'd accept a lower pay, but whether you'd accept working less. Then you can add as bonuses the increased flexibility and less stress... Is there a difference in job stability between private and public jobs?
We have yearly budget cuts, so far I’ve not been involved and I likely won’t be, but it’s a yearly stress factor for everyone as the political level and the administration CEO later spends months figuring out how to cut.
Our private sector is still relatively booming for developers, so there is always jobs openings. People tend to shop around more in the private sector though.
He’s not completely off though. I have friends in the private sector who work more than the 37 hours because the culture is like that, because they enjoy it, because it speeds their career or a combination. It’s gotten less and less as we age, but still, some of them have pushed some really long weeks in their younger years.
Sweden – keep in mind though that we have a much much more compressed salary variation than the US. That goes for both private companies and government agencies.
sure ... you don't get too much money in the public sector.
but payment is pretty ok, stress is on a considerably lower level than in the private sector, and if you want you are able to work there until you retire ... you remeber: job-safety ... the thing a lot of young people are constantly whining about.
In my experience the lower paycheck of public sector was more than made up for by kick ass benefits, more vacation time, and a slew of non-vacation days off.
Yup. I'd add public sector work to that list (mostly because it's chronically understaffed and heavily siloed so you have to fill in a lot of roles).
BigCos tend to like specialization because of consistency/efficiency. They might have a skunkworks where you can be a jack of all trades but it's hard to get hired into those roles.