Is there anything more miserable than working for a state government?

Working from 7 to 12 in a back office job sounds way worse lmao.  At that point I'd just quit and work in a factory or something, so at least I'd get paid some overtime.

2 hours of work a day, plus nap time, sounds amazing right about now.. not gonna lie. 

matt19215

My dad worked back/middle office most of his life. For the last ~5ish years or so he has been working at a department for my state government for a pension for retirement in addition to his 401k. From what I have seen, this seems to be one of the most miserable dead-end places you could work. He does maybe a couple of hours of work a day, puts his mouse jiggler in the computer, and takes a nap half the day. 

He asked me to change the status on his computer to away and I saw the department's group message and people were only talking about when they are getting promotions and raises, and arguing about vacation time.

He says that a lot of his coworkers are fully remote and won't even login for days at a time. Apparently, they just hired some new guy who has 3 MBAs and is working on a fourth?? And government workers are union in my state so you have to really fuck up to be fired. 

I have seen the excel work he has to do, simple stuff, but apparently, it will take some employees a week to do some pivot tables and graphs and shit.

I mean he used to come home from the city and 12 am just to leave at 7 in the morning, busting his ass in the office so I imagine this is just an early vacation for him.

Kinda puts things in perspective, I feel like if you had 2 or 3 people with the work ethic of an IB analyst you could replace a whole department of 20 or so people. I work remotely now and I overhear him in the most useless meetings I have ever heard of in my life. it really puts into perspective the work ethics of people who work in finance and those who work in state government.

Not that their jobs aren't necessary, but I think the world would be a better, more productive place if everyone was forced to do 2 years of IB at the analyst level like how people in some countries have to do military conscription.

Cool story. Never Happened.

There are far FAR worse places to end up than dead end government job. Lets see....

- Guaranteed pension, that is likely more generous than your private sector peers (assuming it never gets cut down the road, big if)

- Job security out the ass

- Livable wage. Not great, and definitely the biggest short coming, but you wont be on the street either

- Controlled hours

- Ample vacation time

- Probably biggest perk of all, zero stress. No preparing for that big pitch the next day, or having the underlying stress even when off the clock to make sure a project gets completed

So what is there to complain about again? Yea if you actually want to get things done, challenge yourself, maximize career opps, etc it can be hell. But there are back office private sector jobs that suck just as much without that upside, or actual dangerous low paying labor like construction that comes with a massive trade off.

Overall, I can see the appeal - especially as you get towards end of career. 

One of my family's friends worked in government running a fairly large post office. He would take a MONTH straight off in the summer (in addition to maybe another two weeks spread out), and said he was never called, emailed, etc. once. He could just go completely dark and his team never contacted him for anything.

At OP (and everyone else above) spot on about living to work vs working to live. I briefly for ~8 months worked for a state government doing audit, and most of the points made are spot on. 

My experience: I grew up in an area where a lot of people worked for the state, had a lot of family friends who worked for the state and got me my first job out of college while I was studying for the CPA. I'd say there was definitely a mix of people, some smart, some hard working, some just there for the check, some cool people, some jerks. Definitely not the place to be if you want to ambitious, but its okay if just want a job. Overall, I'll outline some points below;

- I'd say working for the state government was just really an extension of school. Be at your desk at 9, not 9:01, and no ones showing up at 8:50. At 5 pencils down, no ones working at 5:01. It was sort like high school meets a family; in some ways clique-y in other ways everyone was in everyone else's business. 

- Most people I'd say where there for the pension, and people who worked there were good people, coached kids teams and were family people. However, I get OP's point that in instead of paying 16 people to do 1 hours of work a day the department could have paid 2 people to do 8 hours of work per day. Sure, people need jobs, but when it comes to paying from a taxpayer perspective, you don't wonder why governments are always strapped for cash. 

- You really couldn't get fired. As OP said, there were people who were highered who couldn't do the work, so they didn't get assignments and just hung out all day. We had one guy whose job it was to monitor the temperature in the office, that's it. 

-  I worked in audit, half the work didn't get done around tax time because everyone had their own "practice" they were running for taxes. So they mainly showed up to show up, didn't really work much, then did taxes at night. Also, we audited our own government, most of the issues we found were swept under a rug. The report we did put out was 6 half pages (or 3 full pages) total. Took months to do, when an outside firm could probably have done it in a week.

being hunted by a sentient crocodile on TRT would be a lot worse than working a cushy government job tbh

The only thing worse than state gov is local...90% of them are entirely worthless.

Thing is, the incentive structure isn't there to attract high powered people.  Gov't values stability more than growth, it attracts people with a different mindset even when they are highly qualified.  State pays below market and lately there's less pensioned jobs...so who works there?  Less ambitious people.  Or people like your dad who are just working an angle to minimize stress.  SHOCKER: most people are just in it for a paycheck and value free time more than a fat bank account.  That's always been the case everywhere, and capitalists just can't seem to understand folks who aren't 100% obsessed with making money.  There really is more to life and most people are living that.

State agencies could cut some fat but they really wouldn't be saving much money relative to the corruption they could clean up in the procurements/bribery/lobbying side of things....and they don't clean up anything because they don't give a shit.  But that's at the macro level.  At the level of the individual employee, they can't offer anything to keep high powered folks around.  IB analysts have better options.  It's that simple.  The few high intensity people that do work in govt rise quickly through the ranks or bounce out.  

Reminds me of a family member who works in state govt and has a boss that came from corporate america...the poor jerk just can't wrap his head around the idea that people don't give a fuck.  His bosses don't care about his fancy new processes, the rank and file refuse to do any overtime, and NOTHING he does will get him a fat bonus. He's a race horse at a skate park, it's a mismatch.  Me personally, I think he's just fronting because he actually rather does like practicing golf for 5 hours a day in his office.

Yea, that's reality

And this right here is a perfect example of why taxation is theft. Government wasting your money paying lazy people who barely work to waste time and do shit a college kid could figure out in a couple of hours. What a waste. But kudos to your dad, sounds like a sweet gig for someone looking to coast.