Nice shots by the clueless! Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!
The behavior of the top-level bureaucrats has nothing in common with those actually doing the work in the trenches! With large federal gov’t cutbacks over the last two years, and more to come, re-thinking things, figuring out how to do it with less people and less money is now part of the job.
Most state and municipal gov’ts haven’t been able to give their employees raises for several years either, and have reduced or cut off pensions with no other recourse, leaving retirement-aged people with nothing after their entire careers. And ALL of them pay the same price for rent, gas, utilities and food that you do.
Just as you would not appreciate someone appraising YOUR situation, evaluating YOUR work ethic with no real info, you shouldn’t do it to others, either. Don’t presume to think that you know anything about anyone’s situation without first-hand info. Broad-brush, mean-spirited, stereotypical blather.
These cheap shots at goverment workers really offend me. I am a government worker—I work hard, every co-worker I know works hard, every person I’ve met from other agencies work hard. Often we do it overtime, and we do it for lower and lower pay. We are dedicated to our jobs, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
I think what the negative commentary on govenment workers, at the heart , goes to is the absence of divergent thinking (perhaps self-motivation) in any group that punches in at 9 and leaves at 5.For the most part, new infomation- discovery happens in the entrepreneurial marketplace, where one is at risk…where one’s own investment dollars are on the line—-higher creativity, productivity flourishes primarily in a challenging environment.Government workers, while often well trained and talented, miss a golden opp to test their abilities in a competive market…resulting in a worker focusing instead on dental benefits, a secure retirement package…while missing an unparralled growth opportunity for self-actualization through risk taking.
litebites: You obviously know very little about federal government workers. Many of them work 24/7 on call to deal with program issues and many others work 50-70 hour weeks on a regular basis. There is no compensation for the extra hours worked unless you are a lower level employee and the rate for overtime pay starts at time and a half and drops to below regular wages depending on your base pay level. It’s true that the compensation for the development of new products is not as good as in the private sector. But then, that’s part of the price for serving the public good. Anybody can be creative when big bucks are dangled before them. Try coming up with creative solutions when there isn’t sufficient budget or human resources to develop and implement the new program and bonuses are few and of low value if offered at all. Try running a program with 3 people when you need to have 7. Try to implement anything when you have multiple political onstacles and need permission from several layers of management before you can proceed.
Bottomliners takes too many cheap shots at the government and it encourages intemperate comments like the ones above. I am dropping it from my subscription and hope others will do the same.
To assume a total absence of divergent thinking is, again, a broad-brush, stereotypical, negative and incorrect statement. Regardless of where people work, they are still people. There are open-minded, analytical-minded, continually self-improving, process-improving people working in government agencies and in business, just as there are drones in to be found in both places. Neither venue has a corner on the market for either. Although, by definition, the free-thinkers are certainly more likely to be found in private enterprise. Government agencies are possessed of an enculturated, bounds-limited playing field made so by law and regulation.
Your statements may explain the draw and the temperament of the entrepreneur themselves. But it doesn’t any more explain the drive or motivation of the employees than anything else that’s been said. Most employees, whether in the employ of the government, or in private enterprise, do not live to work, they simply work to live. They have a job to provide enough income to provide for themselves and their families. They don’t particularly derive an pleasure from risk or attempts at self-actualization. They find enough risk in hoping that the business for which they work doesn’t tank, meaning that they lose the “security” of a job, along with a substantial chunk of their 401K, and have to begin the process of looking for a job all over again. Most do not want to be entrepreneurs. They want to get their good feelings away from a job.
In the small entrepreneurship, it is the entrepreneur who lives to work; and he/she is often the only one. The others on site are content to be good or great employees, just like government employees.
It is typically only in the very earliest of days in a dot-com where everyone aboard has drunk the Kool-Aid and is in it as much for ‘the dream’ if not for the money. As time goes on, the percentage pure “employees” increases.
Government worker’s attempts at creativity and challenge come from trying to figure out how to do their job, or how to excel at it, while functioning within the statutory or regulatory limitations placed upon them or in spite of them, and a climate predisposed to belittle them, to presume that they are lesser, or lesser-motivated humans, because of the popular, albeit myopic view that they are automatically drones because they work for a government entity.
If you read the news, you will notice that even government jobs come with no lock on certainty. It is, within its own limits, still a competitive environment. Where there are vacancies that are not cut for budget reasons, the competition to put oneself in a better position is every bit as fierce as their private sector counterparts. Government workers do not focus their thoughts on benefits or “secure” retirement any more than do the private sector employees. Government workers at all levels find regular assaults on their salaries and benefits, and find them being reduced or eliminate with greater and greater frequency, because of incorrect assertions in the popular press, repeated ad infinitum to a public too lazy to do their own research, and politicians who can personally profit from the popular misconception. It is far too easy reflex to place the blame on the backs of the defenseless workers, and not upon whom it belongs; the politicians. Many small towns have simply gone bankrupt to avoid paying pensions for employees who, after decades of employment, retire to find themselves at the end of their life with nothing of the promised pension, just as robbed as former employees of Enron, hundreds of dot-coms, or family businesses gone bust.
Face it. This cartoon simply exploited a popular myth, a popular, media-driven misconception that provided another opportunity to kick at a popular whipping-boy, the public employee. And it’s still broad-brushed, mean-spirited, stereotypical and wrong.
Well done.However, not to forget, another factor causing a negatibe vibe for state workers, expecially in California, is the on-going collusion between state worker retirement plan officials and elected officials—-the trade off of guaranteed beneifts for retirees in exchnage for a voting block, has sickened the average voter in the state—-causing a class warefare.This will end however, as the ugly head of insolvency enters the race and state workers will no longer remain a protected class.
randayn over 12 years ago
In fact, that the only thing that can get you fired!
Plods with ...™ over 12 years ago
Logic and common sense are off the table too.
gadget_jb over 12 years ago
Nice shots by the clueless! Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater!
The behavior of the top-level bureaucrats has nothing in common with those actually doing the work in the trenches! With large federal gov’t cutbacks over the last two years, and more to come, re-thinking things, figuring out how to do it with less people and less money is now part of the job.
Most state and municipal gov’ts haven’t been able to give their employees raises for several years either, and have reduced or cut off pensions with no other recourse, leaving retirement-aged people with nothing after their entire careers. And ALL of them pay the same price for rent, gas, utilities and food that you do.
Just as you would not appreciate someone appraising YOUR situation, evaluating YOUR work ethic with no real info, you shouldn’t do it to others, either. Don’t presume to think that you know anything about anyone’s situation without first-hand info. Broad-brush, mean-spirited, stereotypical blather.
NWdryad over 12 years ago
These cheap shots at goverment workers really offend me. I am a government worker—I work hard, every co-worker I know works hard, every person I’ve met from other agencies work hard. Often we do it overtime, and we do it for lower and lower pay. We are dedicated to our jobs, otherwise we wouldn’t do it.
litebites over 12 years ago
I think what the negative commentary on govenment workers, at the heart , goes to is the absence of divergent thinking (perhaps self-motivation) in any group that punches in at 9 and leaves at 5.For the most part, new infomation- discovery happens in the entrepreneurial marketplace, where one is at risk…where one’s own investment dollars are on the line—-higher creativity, productivity flourishes primarily in a challenging environment.Government workers, while often well trained and talented, miss a golden opp to test their abilities in a competive market…resulting in a worker focusing instead on dental benefits, a secure retirement package…while missing an unparralled growth opportunity for self-actualization through risk taking.
Patrick LaPella Premium Member over 12 years ago
litebites: You obviously know very little about federal government workers. Many of them work 24/7 on call to deal with program issues and many others work 50-70 hour weeks on a regular basis. There is no compensation for the extra hours worked unless you are a lower level employee and the rate for overtime pay starts at time and a half and drops to below regular wages depending on your base pay level. It’s true that the compensation for the development of new products is not as good as in the private sector. But then, that’s part of the price for serving the public good. Anybody can be creative when big bucks are dangled before them. Try coming up with creative solutions when there isn’t sufficient budget or human resources to develop and implement the new program and bonuses are few and of low value if offered at all. Try running a program with 3 people when you need to have 7. Try to implement anything when you have multiple political onstacles and need permission from several layers of management before you can proceed.
Bottomliners takes too many cheap shots at the government and it encourages intemperate comments like the ones above. I am dropping it from my subscription and hope others will do the same.
gadget_jb over 12 years ago
To assume a total absence of divergent thinking is, again, a broad-brush, stereotypical, negative and incorrect statement. Regardless of where people work, they are still people. There are open-minded, analytical-minded, continually self-improving, process-improving people working in government agencies and in business, just as there are drones in to be found in both places. Neither venue has a corner on the market for either. Although, by definition, the free-thinkers are certainly more likely to be found in private enterprise. Government agencies are possessed of an enculturated, bounds-limited playing field made so by law and regulation.
Your statements may explain the draw and the temperament of the entrepreneur themselves. But it doesn’t any more explain the drive or motivation of the employees than anything else that’s been said. Most employees, whether in the employ of the government, or in private enterprise, do not live to work, they simply work to live. They have a job to provide enough income to provide for themselves and their families. They don’t particularly derive an pleasure from risk or attempts at self-actualization. They find enough risk in hoping that the business for which they work doesn’t tank, meaning that they lose the “security” of a job, along with a substantial chunk of their 401K, and have to begin the process of looking for a job all over again. Most do not want to be entrepreneurs. They want to get their good feelings away from a job.
In the small entrepreneurship, it is the entrepreneur who lives to work; and he/she is often the only one. The others on site are content to be good or great employees, just like government employees.
It is typically only in the very earliest of days in a dot-com where everyone aboard has drunk the Kool-Aid and is in it as much for ‘the dream’ if not for the money. As time goes on, the percentage pure “employees” increases.
Government worker’s attempts at creativity and challenge come from trying to figure out how to do their job, or how to excel at it, while functioning within the statutory or regulatory limitations placed upon them or in spite of them, and a climate predisposed to belittle them, to presume that they are lesser, or lesser-motivated humans, because of the popular, albeit myopic view that they are automatically drones because they work for a government entity.
If you read the news, you will notice that even government jobs come with no lock on certainty. It is, within its own limits, still a competitive environment. Where there are vacancies that are not cut for budget reasons, the competition to put oneself in a better position is every bit as fierce as their private sector counterparts. Government workers do not focus their thoughts on benefits or “secure” retirement any more than do the private sector employees. Government workers at all levels find regular assaults on their salaries and benefits, and find them being reduced or eliminate with greater and greater frequency, because of incorrect assertions in the popular press, repeated ad infinitum to a public too lazy to do their own research, and politicians who can personally profit from the popular misconception. It is far too easy reflex to place the blame on the backs of the defenseless workers, and not upon whom it belongs; the politicians. Many small towns have simply gone bankrupt to avoid paying pensions for employees who, after decades of employment, retire to find themselves at the end of their life with nothing of the promised pension, just as robbed as former employees of Enron, hundreds of dot-coms, or family businesses gone bust.
Face it. This cartoon simply exploited a popular myth, a popular, media-driven misconception that provided another opportunity to kick at a popular whipping-boy, the public employee. And it’s still broad-brushed, mean-spirited, stereotypical and wrong.
It must be easy to be a cartoonist…
litebites over 12 years ago
Well done.However, not to forget, another factor causing a negatibe vibe for state workers, expecially in California, is the on-going collusion between state worker retirement plan officials and elected officials—-the trade off of guaranteed beneifts for retirees in exchnage for a voting block, has sickened the average voter in the state—-causing a class warefare.This will end however, as the ugly head of insolvency enters the race and state workers will no longer remain a protected class.