Less is Less
By Amit Singh | Thursday, December 2nd, 2010 | PolicyThe recent announcement from Obama to freeze govt salaries for 2 years worries me about the quality of govt services going forward. Many govt civilians trade off higher salaries in the private sector for the stability and benefits of the federal govt. But some civilians take the govt jobs, because they love public service in a particular domain (i.e. defense, education, etc) and many of them are actually really great. In my personal experience with the federal govt, I would estimate that a smart, motivated civilian is easily worth the equivalent of 25 private contractors. The problem however is that these exceptional civilians need to be rewarded for their good work to keep them incentivized to stay with the govt.
If talented people leave the govt, they most likely will be replaced with less talented, less motivated individuals and because they are less capable, they will require more people to perform the job of the single talented individual. Reminds me of one of my favorite George Washington quotes:
“My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.“
Sadly, I think this penny-wise, pound-foolish move to reduce federal spending will actually end up increasing the size of govt. A better move in my opinion would have been to pursue the Pay For Performance schemes where civilians could get compensated based on their contributions instead of their seniority.
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10 Responses to "Less is Less"
“…a smart, motivated [government] civilian is easily worth the equivalent of 25 private contractors.”
Really? This is over-the-top hyperbole, even for you Amit. I spent 25 years in the public sector and the last 12 years in the private sector contracting to the DoD. There are great civil service employees and some who are just sucking up oxygen and turning food into shit. There are some lazy private contractors and some who are the innovators and thought leaders of the agencies they support. But, the difference is that the lazy contractors are usually gone in short order while the useless civil service employees remain until retirement at age 55.
Such a blanket characterization as yours is patently dishonest and self-refutable. Your ratio of 25-1 is laughable in its very premise. There is no anecdotal or empirical evidence to support such an absurd claim.
@HisRoc, much to my frustration, it is pretty difficult to get rid of bad contractors especially when they have a security clearance and are managed by mediocre to sub-par civilians who don’t have a backbone and the intellectual honesty to see how they are being taken advantage of. time and time again I have seen an army of private contractors produce useless work because of the poor leadership of their govt lead. in my time as a contractor, I have always stressed to my govt customer that we can do more work with fewer people and constantly fight temptations to add more people to the projects I manage. at the end of the day, smaller talented teams run circles around larger process oriented teams which is the reason for my anecdotal estimation.
anyway, the point of the article is that the good civilians will leave the govt while the others will stay there until retirement as you said. overall, its a lose-lose.
I think the freeze is merited, given that state and local government employees, not to mention private sector employees, have gone without raises for three to four years in some cases.
That said, this could have bad effect on Virginia’s economy. We have more than 144,000 federal workers in the state(although a good number of those are militaryh and thus not affected by the pay freeze).
The real problem with the govt service currently, apart from its brontosaurus sized anatomy, can be traced back in large part to the beloved Jimmy Carter. He abolished the Civil Service Commission which maintained a reasonably competent, honest workforce and management that Amit sees in a mirage apparently. When Carter replaced the CSC with the Office of Personnel Mgt (OPM) at the behest of the usual Dem suspects the Dems (and to be fair later Repub admins)had free reign to put incompetent cronies all over govt. The problem became noticeably bad in Clinton’s terms and has gone down rapidly under Bush 43 and especially Obama. Furthermore there is no clear demarcation between contractors and Feds since people move back and forth between the two sectors at their convenience or when they are booted out by a new set of cronies.
As for the freeze I don’t believe it affects anything except cost of living which hasn’t been rising much the past few years anyway. Does it affect within- grade increases? Promotions? A total charade in my view.
Amit, I worked as military officer and a contractor on government funded programs. There is no way I could make comparable money in the private sector. The public sector is no longer a place of honorable public service at a financial sacrifice, but instead is a place of guarenteed higher pay and longer vacation time.
Amit,
So your story is that you can’t get rid of bad contractors because of the lazy, ineffective government civilians supervising them? But you said that one smart, motivated civil servant could do the work of 25 contractors. So why don’t you put one of those smart, motivated civilians in charge of the contractors? Or don’t you have any of them working for you? Or maybe they exist only in your imagination?
James Q.,
I don’t know what your skill set is, but I went to work for a contractor when I retired from active duty at the same salary as my last military grade. Within six years I was earning more than the highest SES grade in base salary and bonus. After 10 years I was able to semi-retire and start my own consulting practice. I had civil service offers after the dual comp law was repealed–it would have been a severe cut in pay. BTW, in my last salaried position I got four weeks per year paid vacation. How much vacation time does an SES actually get to take?
@HisRoc, you’re making my point for me. I would love to put more smart motivated civil servants in charge but the problem is that they aren’t enough of them. Thus my estimation that a good civil servant who can make proper use of contractors is much more effective than one who cannot. For some reason you think that I’m saying if a contractor can type 10 words a minute that a good civilian can type 250 words per minute. It’s not about the throughput of a single individual but their ability to lead a force-multiplying team to do magnitudes more. Perhaps you never worked in management and don’t understand what I’m talking about and rather obsess about constantly trying to insult and demean me.
@Quigley, you make a good point and I should have clarified better that when I say private sector, I actually meant federal contractors, which is understandably mistaken for the public sector. So yes I agree there are plenty of federal contractors who are fleecing the tax payers while complacent civilians allow it to happen.
@valentinus, I agree that there will be many workarounds which will include artificial promotions, tdys, etc. Already hearing rumblings about them where I work.
Amit,
I have worked in management. I was a division chief on the Army Staff in the Pentagon and was a division vice president in a Fortune 100 defense corporation.
You insult and demean yourself with your absurd and contradictory assertions. I just point them out.
yes, I insult myself. brilliant.
@Amit, see http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/lang/eng/dan_pink_on_motivation.html to get some interesting insights on motivation and pay for performance.
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