All the federal employees I have met are EXCELLENT. It is very difficult to get hired into one of the dwindling jobs at the agencies. A lot of the government has been contracted out. Having worked at a federal IT contractor, I can say that in my experience most of those workers are very good and dedicated to their work. HOWEVER, they don’t always understand well the mission at hand. Some of this is to be expected given that they are contractors who come and go more frequently than federal employees charged with implementing government programs.
Ironically extreme selection pressure is exactly what leads to extreme risk aversion.
"We only hire the absolute best" does not lead to "move fast and break things" (which sounds awful in a FAA context anyway) it leads to people who devoted their lives to being the absolute best at coloring inside the lines and never straying off the path, to being the best follower out there, to the ultimate authoritarians desiring to grow into being the authority.
The heaviest selection pressure usually does not lead to the most efficient system, it generally leads to a system able to endure heavy selection pressure.
There's a sociologist who wrote a famous book about bureaucracy and its in my library at home and the name of the sociologist and his book are at the tip of my tongue but he wasn't near the top of a quick google search; the above is a paraphrase of his book. No its not Douglas Adams or even Scott Adams although those two are correct about the problem in general LOL.
People who want a job like that should just be on UBI instead. Then at least we'd have systems that could change to meet the needs of their users in a timely way.
The people who need a pyramid structure to strive for, and office politics to fight, will never settle for "from each according to their ability and to each according to their need", and those are the people we've selected for.
Here here. Also, if there weren’t red tape, then there would be more corruption and lack of accountability. The staff of agencies are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If one wants to critique government agencies, criticize the political appointees who are in thrall to the industries they are supposed to be regulating. The rank and file generally work hard and in good faith. They are just trying to be good stewards of public resources. I’ve seen this at the federal level and state levels (primarily in North Carolina and Louisiana).
avidphantasm|3 years ago
VLM|3 years ago
"We only hire the absolute best" does not lead to "move fast and break things" (which sounds awful in a FAA context anyway) it leads to people who devoted their lives to being the absolute best at coloring inside the lines and never straying off the path, to being the best follower out there, to the ultimate authoritarians desiring to grow into being the authority.
The heaviest selection pressure usually does not lead to the most efficient system, it generally leads to a system able to endure heavy selection pressure.
There's a sociologist who wrote a famous book about bureaucracy and its in my library at home and the name of the sociologist and his book are at the tip of my tongue but he wasn't near the top of a quick google search; the above is a paraphrase of his book. No its not Douglas Adams or even Scott Adams although those two are correct about the problem in general LOL.
__MatrixMan__|3 years ago
sokoloff|3 years ago
VLM|3 years ago
TomSwirly|3 years ago
[deleted]
avidphantasm|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]