I've worked at a government job and it was one of the worst experiences of my professional career. As a summer student, I outperformed the guy who had that job the other 10.5 months of the year. And still I have never been paid so much for doing so little.
But I've also seen exactly how meaningless the private sector can be. While it may satisfy my desire for fast-paced, stimulating work, ultimately a lot of it is, well, stupid. The fact that you can get to work with some exciting new tech obscures the fact that 50% of projects will fail, and of those, even fewer will ever matter to anyone or even bring a smile to anyone's face. And many of the ones that do succeed are often patently immoral, or at best amoral.
Meanwhile, capitalism today is run for the benefit of managers. Even if you're lucky enough to work for a successful company, expect the CEO and VPs to reap the lion's share of the rewards, and fire you (or your friends) at Wall Street's whim.
I guess I'm saying that I can see this guy's point of view. Gee-whiz tech is one thing, but stability does matter, and some parts of the government are doing good work. I know a woman who makes a good, stable living generating stats out of the census, and also creating web tools for people to do the same. Consequently she's doing something good for Americans of all kinds, the scale creates interesting challenges, and there's even something to look forward to after it's all over. Can you imagine it?
Right now I have a great job, but even we can't completely escape the relentless stupidity that is the software business today.
But I've also seen exactly how meaningless the private sector can be. While it may satisfy my desire for fast-paced, stimulating work, ultimately a lot of it is, well, stupid. The fact that you can get to work with some exciting new tech obscures the fact that 50% of projects will fail, and of those, even fewer will ever matter to anyone or even bring a smile to anyone's face. And many of the ones that do succeed are often patently immoral, or at best amoral.
Meanwhile, capitalism today is run for the benefit of managers. Even if you're lucky enough to work for a successful company, expect the CEO and VPs to reap the lion's share of the rewards, and fire you (or your friends) at Wall Street's whim.
I guess I'm saying that I can see this guy's point of view. Gee-whiz tech is one thing, but stability does matter, and some parts of the government are doing good work. I know a woman who makes a good, stable living generating stats out of the census, and also creating web tools for people to do the same. Consequently she's doing something good for Americans of all kinds, the scale creates interesting challenges, and there's even something to look forward to after it's all over. Can you imagine it?
Right now I have a great job, but even we can't completely escape the relentless stupidity that is the software business today.