Public sector IT was an extremely frustrating experience for me.
- incompetent administration (org flow chart, constantly changing paradigms, misnomers ("open source" == we tape together stuff from public git-repositories, push nothing upstream, and outsource lots of core development))
- administration's priorities change with every election (project funding as a flag in the wind depending on current political climate)
- red tape everywhere
- bureaucrats everywhere
- the whole job-stack attracted incompetent people, the kind that values stability over deep understanding and progress. the kind where I thought "man, good that they are working here in [$current_politically_opportune_project] so they can't do actual damage somewhere else". this applied for the business administrators, the project managers, the "developers", the admins, even a large part of the contractors.
- "you're working too fast! haven't been here for long, eh?"
- compliance > security
Never, ever ever ever again. Granted, this was in Europe, maybe the US sucks less in the public sector. I would bet a good amount of money that there is a large intersection of problem spaces among the regions though.
I have been a gov developer. I have never been held to a lower standard, but a lot of that is not the developer's fault. It is that leadership is not technical.
This is in Canada.
A colleague still there tells me that they purchased a software library without consulting a single software developer.
Yes, I felt the same way, the fact that leadership was not technical was huge. But it’s also the inherent reward incentives in a politically driven dynamic. The environment just felt cursed
Not to mention if you fuck up, you're creating permanent record in your state's system. Whereas if something goes bad with a private employer, (unless it's gross) just quit and move on.
Same thing here friend! The trick is realizing that the federal salary and benefits package is absolutely astronomically generous for the amount of work that the average fed puts in per month.
Then there’s the standard 10% of them that struggle to carry the load, burn themselves out, and leave to double their pay at the same workload. Work hard, deliver more? At best you’ll get a 1000$ yearly bonus.
Slack off, deliver nothing? Same thing, still get promoted.
A ridiculous thing from my time in government was that promotions were interview driven only. If you aced the interview, you got a promo. Didn't matter if you did shit beforehand.
A guy on my gov team got the promo over our by far most experienced and skilled developer as he spent his time practicing for the interview instead of working.
- incompetent administration (org flow chart, constantly changing paradigms, misnomers ("open source" == we tape together stuff from public git-repositories, push nothing upstream, and outsource lots of core development))
- administration's priorities change with every election (project funding as a flag in the wind depending on current political climate)
- red tape everywhere
- bureaucrats everywhere
- the whole job-stack attracted incompetent people, the kind that values stability over deep understanding and progress. the kind where I thought "man, good that they are working here in [$current_politically_opportune_project] so they can't do actual damage somewhere else". this applied for the business administrators, the project managers, the "developers", the admins, even a large part of the contractors.
- "you're working too fast! haven't been here for long, eh?"
- compliance > security
Never, ever ever ever again. Granted, this was in Europe, maybe the US sucks less in the public sector. I would bet a good amount of money that there is a large intersection of problem spaces among the regions though.