You should read this post and thread first:
- The head of IT has been in government for 27+ years. She is the one making purchasing decisions and setting strategic direction. She does not own a computer or have an external email address. She does not buy on-line, and she has the web monitor set so tight you can forget about using the Internet. No IM. No webmail. Then to ensure you cannot possibly reach the outside, no non-government equipment permitted in the building without a specific exception. This will be your organizational leader as the rule – not the exception.
- Change is glacial. Two weeks I did nothing because they could not allocate a machine for me to access the network, until I had a badge. To get the machine, a form needed to be signed by my boss, his boss, her boss, and his boss. My boss walked it around, and was told that was inappropriate, and it still took 4 hours. Then it went to the help desk who took 9 business days to process and deliver the equipment. Deliver in this case meant coming to my desk and providing a user id and password to a machine sitting there. To install software requires you to have an exception form filed. Another round of 4 signatures in my department, one from security, one from the helpdesk and one from a person who no one can explain except they need to sign the exception form – six days. Complain or bother anyone about a request and it will disappear. Petty is an understatement.
– It is true that no one gets fired. But worse, making decisions is career limiting. The solution is to ensure you never do anything of risk. What you want is to be tied into a project you can claim some responsibility with, if it goes well, and disavow any relationship if it fails.
- No _one_ makes any decisions because there is safety in numbers – very large numbers. All decisions are by committee and expect it to take weeks. They spent 12 weeks, with a minimum of six people in nearly 20 meetings discussing a database key. One key. It is an extreme example but that it can happen says it all.
– If you take any type of leadership position and do anything that employees do not like – they submit a grievance. Why? Because while one is pending, they cannot do anything to you, include request work, or deny automatic or scheduled promotions in grade. A 25 year developer? here has had a grievance on her various leaders, continuously for over 12 years. She is proud of it. “They don’t tell me what to do!”
– Write off leaving government. You can always leave right? Wrong. Would you hire someone from an environment that fosters the behavior above? With very few exceptions, spend more than a year or two as a “gov-e” and you can kiss the private sector good bye. Who would want this behavior and if it took you more than a year to figure out you should quit, that says volumes.
Unless you want to do what you are being hired to do for the next 20 years, with 2.5% annual increases in pay, bosses who make no decisions and run the same technology for decades – run away.
