Current Events > How is it to have a government job nowadays?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Department of Veteran Affairs to be specific. I hear the benefits are good. What about stability and such? Isn't it almost impossible to get fired from one of those jobs?
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I work for a DoD agency and it's a pretty good job. The benefits are good, and the pay isn't terrible either.

Regarding the firing thing, it is harder to get rid of federal employees for most things. There's a few things they can throw you out for instantly, like failing a drug test, but most of the time they have to give you about 6 months to improve your performance.

Keep in mind Congress has been trying to take steps to make it easier to fire us, and have been trying to make our retirement benefits not as good as they have been. For example, there's been talk about them changing our retirement annuities to use the average of our last 5 years of service instead of the last 3 like it has been. That will reduce most people's annuity by a little, but it's not like it will break the bank for you. Also, the annual raises have been pretty low (1 or 2%) the 3 years I've been here.

Besides the potential of Congress making the job a little less sweet, I'd say it's worth it. The TSP is a great 401K with low fees, and there's a lot of different healthcare plans available to you. Also, if you work 10 years as a civil servant you can get your federal college loans forgiven if you're still paying on them.
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Master_Bass posted...

I work for a DoD agency and it's a pretty good job. The benefits are good, and the pay isn't terrible either.

Regarding the firing thing, it is harder to get rid of federal employees for most things. There's a few things they can throw you out for instantly, like failing a drug test, but most of the time they have to give you about 6 months to improve your performance.

Keep in mind Congress has been trying to take steps to make it easier to fire us, and have been trying to make our retirement benefits not as good as they have been. For example, there's been talk about them changing our retirement annuities to use the average of our last 5 years of service instead of the last 3 like it has been. That will reduce most people's annuity by a little, but it's not like it will break the bank for you. Also, the annual raises have been pretty low (1 or 2%) the 3 years I've been here.

Besides the potential of Congress making the job a little less sweet, I'd say it's worth it. The TSP is a great 401K with low fees, and there's a lot of different healthcare plans available to you. Also, if you work 10 years as a civil servant you can get your federal college loans forgiven if you're still paying on them.

I have read about this. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing if it'll help get rid of the bad apples.

This is for my wife btw. Her current place of employment is pretty good so she has a lot to lose if she were to go somewhere that ended up being less than desirable.

I'm not really sure where Trump lies with the VA, but what would happen if there were budget cuts for that specific department? Aside from the potential layoffs, can they actually cut your pay if that were to happen?
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Government jobs have positives and negatives on extreme ends.
You'll work with some of the worst people in the worst conditions with the worst rules in place to give you unnecessary stress.
Grow children often have positions of power. Non professionals in professional positions.

You get good pay, heath care, stability, and paid timed off for the positive stuff.
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I work for local county government and it's a pretty sweet gig. Pay is little below market value but is made up for by awesome benefits. I've had this job for a tad less than 2 years and already have 4 weeks of personal\vacation time a year and that doesn't even include the sick leave I accrue. Plus all those bonus government holidays off.

As for getting fired it really is pretty tough to do so even without a union. I basically have to break the law on the clock or go awol for any chance of being fired. People who are unruly or just stop giving a fuck about their job will sometimes be put on a 6 month "personal improvement plan" to rectify the behavior but rarely does anything come from those.
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ShadowElite86 posted...

I have read about this. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing if it'll help get rid of the bad apples.

This is for my wife btw. Her current place of employment is pretty good so she has a lot to lose if she were to go somewhere that ended up being less than desirable.

I'm not really sure where Trump lies with the VA, but what would happen if there were budget cuts for that specific department? Aside from the potential layoffs, can they actually cut your pay if that were to happen?

I have never heard of anyone's pay actually being cut, but I imagine Congress could do it if they really wanted to, though. I'd say it's far more likely they just won't give us much of a yearly raise and force us to pay more into retirement.

Also, for a quick crash course on how our salaries work, most employees are paid on the General Schedule (GS) pay scale which goes from GS 1 to GS 15. So, let's use GS 9 as an example. Almost all GS 9s make $43,251 a year as their base pay and depending on where you live, you'll make extra money to account for cost of living. For specifics, you can look here:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2017/general-schedule/

Also, each GS level has different steps and you start at 1. So after one year, a GS 9 Step 1 would become a GS 9 Step 2 and get a small increase in salary. After Step 3 you have to wait two years for the automatic promotion, and after Step 6 it's 3 years. The highest you can go is Step 10. Also, if you get promoted to a higher GS level, they have to pay you more than you were making. For example, a GS 9 Step 10 would make more than a GS 10 Step 1, so they'd increase your Step level until you made more than GS 9 Step 10.

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing of an explanation. Here's an official explanation from OPM:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-systems/general-schedule/
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Melonfarms posted...

Government jobs have positives and negatives on extreme ends.
You'll work with some of the worst people in the worst conditions with the worst rules in place to give you unnecessary stress.
Grow children often have positions of power. Non professionals in professional positions.

You get good pay, heath care, stability, and paid timed off for the positive stuff.

That doesn't sound too appealing. She's looking for a different job now due to her current manager. Hopefully she can get a good sense of the person she interviews with to determine whether or not they'd mesh well together. The opportunity would allow her to work from home 100% of the time apparently so that's a plus.

Master_Bass posted...

ShadowElite86 posted...

I have read about this. I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing if it'll help get rid of the bad apples.

This is for my wife btw. Her current place of employment is pretty good so she has a lot to lose if she were to go somewhere that ended up being less than desirable.

I'm not really sure where Trump lies with the VA, but what would happen if there were budget cuts for that specific department? Aside from the potential layoffs, can they actually cut your pay if that were to happen?

Also, for a quick crash course on how our salaries work, most employees are paid on the General Schedule (GS) pay scale which goes from GS 1 to GS 15. So, let's use GS 9 as an example. Almost all GS 9s make $43,251 a year as their base pay and depending on where you live, you'll make extra money to account for cost of living. For specifics, you can look here:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2017/general-schedule/

Also, each GS level has different steps and you start at 1. So after one year, a GS 9 Step 1 would become a GS 9 Step 2 and get a small increase in salary. After Step 3 you have to wait two years for the automatic promotion, and after Step 6 it's 3 years. The highest you can go is Step 10. Also, if you get promoted to a higher GS level, they have to pay you more than you were making. For example, a GS 9 Step 10 would make more than a GS 10 Step 1, so they'd increase your Step level until you made more than GS 9 Step 10.

Hopefully that wasn't too confusing of an explanation. Here's an official explanation from OPM:

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-systems/general-schedule/

Yeah that makes sense. I'll pass those links on to her. I believe this job would be a lower GS level from what I recall her saying. She doesn't quite qualify for the next level due to not having a Bachelors degree unfortunately.
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Also, government applications, maybe just at the upper levels, are so confusing and exact that there are agencies that charge people somewhere around $700 to put the application together. It's something like a one month process but they can tune it to other government jobs if you don't get the one you apply for.

Source: My mom. She works for the IRS
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