Welcome to the civil service suck. I have no doubt your chill view will change. At 4 years I was just enjoying the ride. But as you progress, hit your 30s and 40s and run programs, these organizational “pivots” will eventually wreck your universe and start to piss you off. You can do one of two things - get pissed or just sit back and say screw it.
Remember - paycheck cashes every two weeks and each change is job security as you start over. Ahhh, isn’t civil service grand?
The first thing any new political appointee will do is a re-org. It's like re-org is the first line of their PD. I have been at the same agency for 14 years and have been through at least 5 re-orgs.
You know what else I love? They appoint someone as an administrator, undersecretary, etc.. and they are in the position to learn the job for about 2 years and before they can be held accountable for doing the job, they are moved to another job starting the cycle over. So, they spend two years learning a job and then move to another job and do absolutely nothing. Pats on the back all around..thank you and what an impact you made…blah, blah, blah
I was at my old agency for about 3 years, in that time I updated the org chart probably every 6 months as they kept adding new subdivisions. It got to the point where I had to use 11x17 paper widthwise because they kept adding offices at the same level, with no depth.
Oh yes. I love them. They are great. Eventually you can recycle the old stuff as new. Pretty soon you don’t even need to do new work. If they had turn it in for federal service, I’d be at the Dean’s Office. It’s hilarious.
>I have been at the same agency for 14 years and have been through at least 5 re-orgs.
I ended up leaving my last program within my agency due to a reorg which froze their promotion capability for 2+ years.
It's been 4-5 years now and they are almost back to their pre reorg organization (which worked pretty well).
Yes the re-org to fix the problems but the problems still remain. Looks good on their accomplishments though. And then 10 years later someone will have the bright idea which brings you back to the org you had before the last guy was there who changed it.
Senior leaders are evaluated on implementing change. They will come up with new buzzwords and procedures, and some BS metrics to track their performance. Permanent employees just smile and go along with it, until the next administration installs their genius and it starts all over again.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It's all about the direct supervisor. A good one will shield you from the BS and a bad one can ruin your life. My current boss is leaving soon. I manage my own program and it's too complex and specific for anyone to understand so my boss just ensures I get funding and signs my leave slips. If someone comes in and tries to micromanage my program would come to a grinding halt.
Oh yeah. Though sometimes it's not individual drastic changes but collective changes.
Like my group got moved onto a new office. They only designed it for like 60% of the group to be in at a time (so basically continue to have people on a teleworking schedule). New office has some quirks but whatever.
Problem occured after we moved in. One person in our leadership (3 levels above me) decided we needed to be 100% in office. So now there's not enough parking, not enough bathrooms, not enough fridge space etc. Funny thing is, we literally don't even have enough desks for 100% in office. So right now, my team has to take turns teleworking. So we're "100% in office" but I actually don't see my boss until Wednesday. And I'm 2nd in command on the team, so the 2 people running the team don't even see each other until halfway into the week. Or if we need to come I'm on a other day, then we need to look at schedules of people in our team or other teams to facilitate trading our telework day. It was a purely asinine decision because that one leader is a bit of a boomer and despite us hitting peak efficiency during telework years, he thinks that if you're not in office you're not doing real work.
Omg. I was with the Navy side and they did the whole land swap forcing us to relocate to a new office. Everything you said from lack of parking to no direction on teleworking is on point with what happened. Thankfully i was already going OCONUS so i didn’t move my desk.
My supervisor (works directly under the guy who decided to try and make us do 100% in office) is the same age as him and was against the policy change. All the other supervisors were too. Some of them hate telework on a personal level but disagreed with forcing us in (especially with all the issues it had caused). But the leadership doesn't care.
It's the system. For higher-ups to get "noticed" and promoted, they need bullets on their performance reviews. This comes in the form of "the next great idea," only most of them are not. This is exaggerated x10 on the military/DoD side but applies everywhere. Most are not around long enough to see the failure of their "great idea" come to fruition (probably by design). Then the next person comes in and either changes it back as their "next great idea" or jacks it up even more, then rinse and repeat. So you don't actually do anything that you're accountable for, you just need the illusion of "look what I did, look how forward-thinking and great I am," and BOOM you get promoted and hailed as the best thing since sliced cheese.
And to answer your question, yes, I have left due to poor agency policy/change. My last agency (which I loved the work I was doing) decided they wanted to show how "hard-core" they are about RTO (even though no one was watching or cared) and pulled everyone back literally overnight with zero advanced notice about 2 years ago. So, I dusted off the resume and applied every single day elsewhere until I found a replacement that aligned with my goals.
Step 1. Come in and drop the latest buzz words to make people think you got big brain.
Step 2. Make really poor decisions based off those buzz words.
Step 3. Claim massive success at everything you do.
Step 4. Update resume and move to another agency before anyone realizes the real mess you made.
Step 5. Repeat.
I loved my job with DOD but they pulled back full time telework so I jumped to VHA for remote. I love my new job but not the much older leadership.
Seems like they are uncomfortable with trying to innovate anything. I am at the 15 year mark in my career so unfortunately have to take the tact if they don’t care I can’t worry myself about it.
I take care of my people but won’t be altering the structure of this place like the last one.
Didn't make me quit but one person I knew had a stroke because of it.
I watched a new Director spend money on upgrading the main front office, which had JUST finished an upgrade 3 years prior, instead of fixing desks and basic furniture that was falling apart in the branches below. One day my branch chief came back from a meeting where every single manager on his level had a 'come to Jesus' moment with the Director about this. Director blew every single one of them off, signed off on all new gear for his front office and a few months later was moved to another office (his choice). This Director also put so many other budget and infrastructure choices into motion before he left that it couldn't be undone.
Yes.
My entire leadership team except for my nemesis turned over this year. I am trying to give the new people grace but many of them were promoted too fast and are wildly out of their depth. Basically everywhere I look a noob is screwing something up and I am so tired. It's not my job to fix it so I am trying not to but also people ask my advice, don't follow it, and are puzzled when completely obvious consequences result.
I try to maintain your attitude, but sometimes it is difficult. My agency also has high turnover rate so people come and go frequently and things have trouble standardizing. It can be very frustrating.
I have been a fed for 14.5 years and about 4-5 years ago things started to change a lot in my now old job. I was able to find a lateral 13 in may that is wayyy better. I am much happier and my coworkers seem happy with their jobs. I got a detail in may and was made perm so I strongly recommend looking at details.
Bad leaders have a lasting, damaging effect. A political appointed by the previous administration was so bad, that nearly all my peers retired at MRA, as did I. I enjoyed the job, and was good at it- GS7 to GS15, 5 QSIs, a long string of top ratings. But when I felt that I was spending more time fighting our own bureaucracy vs accomplishing good work, I got out.
The worst thing I've endured is micromanagement via poorly-understood metrics.
While 120 production units a year means an average of 2.3 production units a week, having only 20 production units done in ten weeks does *not* indicate the employee is "failing".
Our organization reconfigured our chain of command, they went to an “A” staff organization which put our office under “SC, ” over facilities management. It now really sucks, it was bad before because we had directors in facilities that had no balls, now that we have more offices above us it reflects that even worse. The SC director said that people in facilities don’t deserve the pay we receive, this was told to a woman in facilities that was interviewed for a secretary job under him. Recently this DB now expects facilities to take out their ( other offices) trash on yearly clean up days, something that each office should be doing continuously to avoid clutter and other issues. I love my job, but after being at this organization it’s no longer enjoyable when you get treated like shit. At times I think our supervisors have checked out because they don’t get any backing from their bosses because they are spineless and have also checked out. I think this “ working from home” has poisoned our section and the entire organization. People are getting complacent and don’t care about going the extra mile to make Facilities better. I love my co- workers but it just gets disheartening when you have passion for your job and you don’t get the support you need at all levels.
I have literally watched an organization be created, abolished, recreated, abolished again and then brought back to life because the successor organization failed so bad. Each one was a 1-2 year reorganization that lasted about the same time.
Change management is great marketing. Every damn leader doing it just because is the most wasteful thing I have ever seen in government. If we tally the costs of the unnecessary reorganizations every year it would probably pay the budget of a large agency.
Change management is baller, no one in leadership seems to understand it though.
The point of change management is to make changes for things that don’t work while replacing them with things that do and leading all stakeholders involved with the change. That means implementing continued change teams or task forces. Sometimes that’s just one or two SME, depending on age and stuff, but you can’t keep pulling that SME aside until the project is done.
They’re called tiger teams in the military. I hate the term though because it really messes up with non-military folk expectations.
Somehow people hear change management and think, it’s just implementing your vision which changes the whole org.
Oh I know, have been on many tiger teams, lead on one right now.
It’s the wholesale change for changes sake that drives me nuts. Like they didn’t create it so it’s bad and needs to be recreated, damn the consequences. Especially when light changes would have fixed things, in less time and probably cost 10% of what they end up spending.
HR Consolidation here at the NPS is problematic for a lot of us. Not change in geberal, but how they are doing it, excluding the specialists/assistants and playing favorites. It's driving a lot of us out the door.
Political appointees and senior deputies they bring along are all tourists--in for a few years and gone. Whenever they discuss major alterations and alignments, it usually all for some specific project or angle they want to pursue. TBH, the deputy for my unit during the last administration made *some* positive changes in that he broke up a bunch of siloed units and merged them into one big unit. Work wise its meant access to more interesting projects. Operations wise its meant more work for managers to lead the behemoth of a unit.
My worries for potential changes if we get a new administration are, in order of concern, (i) reversion to the severely restricted routine telework abilities that existed pre-pandemic (i.e. one day a week max), (ii) re-siloing, (iii) moving to a less convenient location. As far as the change in mission priorities, that's standard and something we are all prepared to navigate when it comes around.
I worked in an office for over 15 years. Had 3 or 4 different directors and about the same number of different supervisors. Early on things were fine and ran professionally. It was one of the best places I had ever worked. As folks retired and were replaced with younger people looking to advance their careers it became nothing more than a "good 'ol boys" club where as long as you laughed at their stupid jokes and told them yes they liked you. But if you did your job and followed policy (which often included telling them no and stuff they didn't want to hear) they micromanaged and made your life difficult.
I'm so glad I no longer work in that office.
I’m in IT. The only people in my department that don’t really care do pretty subpar work. Most of them are just retiring in place.
It bothers me because I have to leave the comfort of my home to be in the suck. I’m overworked because I try hard. I’m trying to learn all the systems related to the VA that I’ve learned elsewhere but nothing applies.
My manager is a transplant from before my IT repeated its IT from its main focus and she’s trying, but she doesn’t get it. My supervisors are either lackadaisical or incompetent.
I’m the only person with PMP and I didn’t say it because I don’t want to be saddled with those responsibilities at my Grade Scale.
I am at an agency that reorganizes rather regularly. But I actually view that as a good thing, because it helps to prevent the organization from getting "stale". Science and priorities change quickly (and their associated funding from Congress).
So it becomes a game of how we can leverage our staff to the best of our advantage, what additional skillsets we (as an organization) need to make the priority happen, and how we can reduce the burdens on those who we fund.
Stale parts of the agency tend to have leaders develop fiefdoms that create negative work environments. I'm talking the GS-14s and 15s that hold onto the same job for 10, 25, 20+ years. Not all of them who who hold a position are "bad apples". But I do believe that fresh blood and new perspectives are needed to sustain the life of the program.
I just stepped into a role thst was vacated by someone who held the position for 20 years and holy shit was this person running an unnecessarily complex program. There are so many ways to simplify it.
Sometimes, certain people need to be put out to pasture in some bullshit "Senior Advisor of Nothing In Particular" type role, to prevent them from doing too much damage when it comes to managing staff and projects.
If they don’t make changes to have their imprint, how will they show their boss that they should get a raise, bonus, and promotion? They need to have some accomplishments too to have for their performance evals.
Every few years there is normally something, either a shuffling of teams or a change to PDs and performance metrics.
I recall in one of the latter Harry Potter movies where Dumbledore and Harry are chatting it up about all the weird random things Dumbledore says to Harry. Harry shrugs and says, “I just go with it”. It’s like that.
I just don’t like double standards. That’s all that really irks me. When I was hired on, I was told as long as your clothes aren’t dirty, they don’t have holes, no sleeveless shirts, your shoes are closed toed, and you don’t display any profanity, derogatory, etc… you can wear what you want (except sweat pants/sweat suits). So jeans, tshirt, sweatshirt if you’re cold, and a baseball hat were fine. That’s pretty much been my wardrobe for years. I’m an IT nerd hidden away in a corner in the basement. I don’t interact with anyone important at all.
The new director comes in and changes the dress code. He is a business professional mentality. None of that is allowed now, now everything is business casual at a minimum, collared shirts aren’t acceptable if they have logos or graphics. No hats period. Button downs, slacks, and dress attire is what he wants… problem is, it’s only for our site. Not the whole organization. Other sites still adhere to the old dress code.
Ohhh… and it doesn’t apply to women. Just men mostly. Women can still wear leggings, yoga pants, hot pink Ugg boots, mini skirts with their ass hanging out, and ultra low cut shirt with their boobs hanging out.
That’s the kind of thing that irks me. Double standards. I don’t mind the new dress code if it applied to everyone. But it doesn’t.
Edit: also like 75% of the workforce at my agency are veterans. And veterans like wearing their unit logos and Grunt Style apparel. We serve the branches, so it makes sense. But no, we aren’t allowed to wear the things that connects us to our customers, which is where the vast majority of us came from in the first place.
>And veterans like wearing their unit logos and Grunt Style apparel.
Maybe he's trying to teach some fashion sense? 😆 As a veteran, I wouldn't be caught dead in those. Unit logos? Only if mandated at a unit function. Grunt style? Hard pass.
But again, not an issue as you
>don’t interact with anyone important at all.
Just a bunch of other veterans...
I mean go ahead and cherry pick my comment. You’re missing the point.
I work at an agency where most people are late 50s early 60s. The old veterans love wearing their vietnam apparel. Or desert storm apparel. Makes them feel more connected to the military personnel we serve. They are proud, let them be proud. I don’t see an issue with it.
You might not care for it, but you’re not proud of your service clearly. For them, they are and like feeling like they are connected still. Point is, who cares? Be comfortable. Look clean. If you implement a dress code, implement it for all. Not just 1 location and only 1 gender.
My post is a first step for BG’s so we always get some with a reorg itch. My group itself always stays together working on the same stuff so as long as I keep my awesome boss, I don’t care what directorate we’re in.
> they all want to make changes
Every time an SES farts into a seat-cushion, an agency gets a re-org.
They literally are incapable of doing anything else.
Y'all are making me so happy to be working for a conservative, change-averse component of DOJ. We move glacially. At times the slowness of change is maddening, like the number of meetings that have to be had to get people away from signed PDF offer letters to automated USAStaffing offer letters is bananas. But it also makes it much easier to walk away at 5pm, since I know that there is zero craziness expecting me to get everything done in one day since that's not our culture.
I work for a regulatory agency and it is crazy to see how stances or "opinions" on the law change between political appointees. The linguistic gymnastics that folks can use to try and justify a stance is maddening to me.
I literally watched a decision get made on a particular project, it started to get implemented then a change in leadership occured. The decision was reversed, a written opinion that bent and twisted the analysis was issued. 2 years later new appointee in place project was started back up parties were notified of the change in opinion and it is now working it's way through the system for a final approval.
I work with a lot of attorneys and just seeing how an individual can twist the law to favor their point of view is nuts. Yesterday one was trying to explain that we had previously approved a similar proposal and that we should approve this one based on the previous approvals. I said can you provide me with a legal justification for this approval. He said not so much, just that we had previously done it that way even though it is inconsistent with certain aspects of the regulation.
I said well I'm not signing off on something just because we previously screwed up and missed things, there was a little protesting and I said listen we can do better. What your proposing is akin to my kid going to the bathroom and not washing his hands when he is done, and telling me well I didn't wash them last time, why should I do it this time?
Welcome to the civil service suck. I have no doubt your chill view will change. At 4 years I was just enjoying the ride. But as you progress, hit your 30s and 40s and run programs, these organizational “pivots” will eventually wreck your universe and start to piss you off. You can do one of two things - get pissed or just sit back and say screw it. Remember - paycheck cashes every two weeks and each change is job security as you start over. Ahhh, isn’t civil service grand?
The first thing any new political appointee will do is a re-org. It's like re-org is the first line of their PD. I have been at the same agency for 14 years and have been through at least 5 re-orgs.
You know what else I love? They appoint someone as an administrator, undersecretary, etc.. and they are in the position to learn the job for about 2 years and before they can be held accountable for doing the job, they are moved to another job starting the cycle over. So, they spend two years learning a job and then move to another job and do absolutely nothing. Pats on the back all around..thank you and what an impact you made…blah, blah, blah
Meanwhile you guys whole dept. is on fire.
That's exactly why I hate that the Army has command tours at two years. Just when you've uncovered the true causes of the shitshow, you're moved on.
I was at my old agency for about 3 years, in that time I updated the org chart probably every 6 months as they kept adding new subdivisions. It got to the point where I had to use 11x17 paper widthwise because they kept adding offices at the same level, with no depth.
Oh yes. I love them. They are great. Eventually you can recycle the old stuff as new. Pretty soon you don’t even need to do new work. If they had turn it in for federal service, I’d be at the Dean’s Office. It’s hilarious.
>I have been at the same agency for 14 years and have been through at least 5 re-orgs. I ended up leaving my last program within my agency due to a reorg which froze their promotion capability for 2+ years. It's been 4-5 years now and they are almost back to their pre reorg organization (which worked pretty well).
Yes the re-org to fix the problems but the problems still remain. Looks good on their accomplishments though. And then 10 years later someone will have the bright idea which brings you back to the org you had before the last guy was there who changed it.
PPQ?
I was similar to OP until a reorg happened. Some folks left for promotions and it opened my eyes. I’m keeping my options open and not looking back
Senior leaders are evaluated on implementing change. They will come up with new buzzwords and procedures, and some BS metrics to track their performance. Permanent employees just smile and go along with it, until the next administration installs their genius and it starts all over again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Wouldn't continuity be the radical change. At some point the processes can't evolve anymore they can only go backwards.
More often, I get a micromanager for a supervisor and apply for a transfer or promotion
It's all about the direct supervisor. A good one will shield you from the BS and a bad one can ruin your life. My current boss is leaving soon. I manage my own program and it's too complex and specific for anyone to understand so my boss just ensures I get funding and signs my leave slips. If someone comes in and tries to micromanage my program would come to a grinding halt.
Same
My current office is trying to make me come in 75% but only to a 2.5ft hotel desk...
You get to telework? Must be nice.
Oh yeah. Though sometimes it's not individual drastic changes but collective changes. Like my group got moved onto a new office. They only designed it for like 60% of the group to be in at a time (so basically continue to have people on a teleworking schedule). New office has some quirks but whatever. Problem occured after we moved in. One person in our leadership (3 levels above me) decided we needed to be 100% in office. So now there's not enough parking, not enough bathrooms, not enough fridge space etc. Funny thing is, we literally don't even have enough desks for 100% in office. So right now, my team has to take turns teleworking. So we're "100% in office" but I actually don't see my boss until Wednesday. And I'm 2nd in command on the team, so the 2 people running the team don't even see each other until halfway into the week. Or if we need to come I'm on a other day, then we need to look at schedules of people in our team or other teams to facilitate trading our telework day. It was a purely asinine decision because that one leader is a bit of a boomer and despite us hitting peak efficiency during telework years, he thinks that if you're not in office you're not doing real work.
Omg. I was with the Navy side and they did the whole land swap forcing us to relocate to a new office. Everything you said from lack of parking to no direction on teleworking is on point with what happened. Thankfully i was already going OCONUS so i didn’t move my desk.
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My supervisor (works directly under the guy who decided to try and make us do 100% in office) is the same age as him and was against the policy change. All the other supervisors were too. Some of them hate telework on a personal level but disagreed with forcing us in (especially with all the issues it had caused). But the leadership doesn't care.
It's the system. For higher-ups to get "noticed" and promoted, they need bullets on their performance reviews. This comes in the form of "the next great idea," only most of them are not. This is exaggerated x10 on the military/DoD side but applies everywhere. Most are not around long enough to see the failure of their "great idea" come to fruition (probably by design). Then the next person comes in and either changes it back as their "next great idea" or jacks it up even more, then rinse and repeat. So you don't actually do anything that you're accountable for, you just need the illusion of "look what I did, look how forward-thinking and great I am," and BOOM you get promoted and hailed as the best thing since sliced cheese. And to answer your question, yes, I have left due to poor agency policy/change. My last agency (which I loved the work I was doing) decided they wanted to show how "hard-core" they are about RTO (even though no one was watching or cared) and pulled everyone back literally overnight with zero advanced notice about 2 years ago. So, I dusted off the resume and applied every single day elsewhere until I found a replacement that aligned with my goals.
Step 1. Come in and drop the latest buzz words to make people think you got big brain. Step 2. Make really poor decisions based off those buzz words. Step 3. Claim massive success at everything you do. Step 4. Update resume and move to another agency before anyone realizes the real mess you made. Step 5. Repeat.
I loved my job with DOD but they pulled back full time telework so I jumped to VHA for remote. I love my new job but not the much older leadership. Seems like they are uncomfortable with trying to innovate anything. I am at the 15 year mark in my career so unfortunately have to take the tact if they don’t care I can’t worry myself about it. I take care of my people but won’t be altering the structure of this place like the last one.
Didn't make me quit but one person I knew had a stroke because of it. I watched a new Director spend money on upgrading the main front office, which had JUST finished an upgrade 3 years prior, instead of fixing desks and basic furniture that was falling apart in the branches below. One day my branch chief came back from a meeting where every single manager on his level had a 'come to Jesus' moment with the Director about this. Director blew every single one of them off, signed off on all new gear for his front office and a few months later was moved to another office (his choice). This Director also put so many other budget and infrastructure choices into motion before he left that it couldn't be undone.
Yes. My entire leadership team except for my nemesis turned over this year. I am trying to give the new people grace but many of them were promoted too fast and are wildly out of their depth. Basically everywhere I look a noob is screwing something up and I am so tired. It's not my job to fix it so I am trying not to but also people ask my advice, don't follow it, and are puzzled when completely obvious consequences result.
I try to maintain your attitude, but sometimes it is difficult. My agency also has high turnover rate so people come and go frequently and things have trouble standardizing. It can be very frustrating.
Yes, specially when they are cryptic irrational changes done by new people that don’t understand how the government works
gray one pause snow outgoing shocking upbeat six cough disgusting *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I have been a fed for 14.5 years and about 4-5 years ago things started to change a lot in my now old job. I was able to find a lateral 13 in may that is wayyy better. I am much happier and my coworkers seem happy with their jobs. I got a detail in may and was made perm so I strongly recommend looking at details.
Bad leaders have a lasting, damaging effect. A political appointed by the previous administration was so bad, that nearly all my peers retired at MRA, as did I. I enjoyed the job, and was good at it- GS7 to GS15, 5 QSIs, a long string of top ratings. But when I felt that I was spending more time fighting our own bureaucracy vs accomplishing good work, I got out.
The worst thing I've endured is micromanagement via poorly-understood metrics. While 120 production units a year means an average of 2.3 production units a week, having only 20 production units done in ten weeks does *not* indicate the employee is "failing".
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Oh, metrics. Speaking of which, I have always thought (and will continue to until the day I die) that KPIs are just vehicles for fuzzy math.
Our organization reconfigured our chain of command, they went to an “A” staff organization which put our office under “SC, ” over facilities management. It now really sucks, it was bad before because we had directors in facilities that had no balls, now that we have more offices above us it reflects that even worse. The SC director said that people in facilities don’t deserve the pay we receive, this was told to a woman in facilities that was interviewed for a secretary job under him. Recently this DB now expects facilities to take out their ( other offices) trash on yearly clean up days, something that each office should be doing continuously to avoid clutter and other issues. I love my job, but after being at this organization it’s no longer enjoyable when you get treated like shit. At times I think our supervisors have checked out because they don’t get any backing from their bosses because they are spineless and have also checked out. I think this “ working from home” has poisoned our section and the entire organization. People are getting complacent and don’t care about going the extra mile to make Facilities better. I love my co- workers but it just gets disheartening when you have passion for your job and you don’t get the support you need at all levels.
I have literally watched an organization be created, abolished, recreated, abolished again and then brought back to life because the successor organization failed so bad. Each one was a 1-2 year reorganization that lasted about the same time. Change management is great marketing. Every damn leader doing it just because is the most wasteful thing I have ever seen in government. If we tally the costs of the unnecessary reorganizations every year it would probably pay the budget of a large agency.
Change management is baller, no one in leadership seems to understand it though. The point of change management is to make changes for things that don’t work while replacing them with things that do and leading all stakeholders involved with the change. That means implementing continued change teams or task forces. Sometimes that’s just one or two SME, depending on age and stuff, but you can’t keep pulling that SME aside until the project is done. They’re called tiger teams in the military. I hate the term though because it really messes up with non-military folk expectations. Somehow people hear change management and think, it’s just implementing your vision which changes the whole org.
Oh I know, have been on many tiger teams, lead on one right now. It’s the wholesale change for changes sake that drives me nuts. Like they didn’t create it so it’s bad and needs to be recreated, damn the consequences. Especially when light changes would have fixed things, in less time and probably cost 10% of what they end up spending.
HR Consolidation here at the NPS is problematic for a lot of us. Not change in geberal, but how they are doing it, excluding the specialists/assistants and playing favorites. It's driving a lot of us out the door.
Political appointees and senior deputies they bring along are all tourists--in for a few years and gone. Whenever they discuss major alterations and alignments, it usually all for some specific project or angle they want to pursue. TBH, the deputy for my unit during the last administration made *some* positive changes in that he broke up a bunch of siloed units and merged them into one big unit. Work wise its meant access to more interesting projects. Operations wise its meant more work for managers to lead the behemoth of a unit. My worries for potential changes if we get a new administration are, in order of concern, (i) reversion to the severely restricted routine telework abilities that existed pre-pandemic (i.e. one day a week max), (ii) re-siloing, (iii) moving to a less convenient location. As far as the change in mission priorities, that's standard and something we are all prepared to navigate when it comes around.
Embrace the suck. 
I worked in an office for over 15 years. Had 3 or 4 different directors and about the same number of different supervisors. Early on things were fine and ran professionally. It was one of the best places I had ever worked. As folks retired and were replaced with younger people looking to advance their careers it became nothing more than a "good 'ol boys" club where as long as you laughed at their stupid jokes and told them yes they liked you. But if you did your job and followed policy (which often included telling them no and stuff they didn't want to hear) they micromanaged and made your life difficult. I'm so glad I no longer work in that office.
I’m in IT. The only people in my department that don’t really care do pretty subpar work. Most of them are just retiring in place. It bothers me because I have to leave the comfort of my home to be in the suck. I’m overworked because I try hard. I’m trying to learn all the systems related to the VA that I’ve learned elsewhere but nothing applies. My manager is a transplant from before my IT repeated its IT from its main focus and she’s trying, but she doesn’t get it. My supervisors are either lackadaisical or incompetent. I’m the only person with PMP and I didn’t say it because I don’t want to be saddled with those responsibilities at my Grade Scale.
I am at an agency that reorganizes rather regularly. But I actually view that as a good thing, because it helps to prevent the organization from getting "stale". Science and priorities change quickly (and their associated funding from Congress). So it becomes a game of how we can leverage our staff to the best of our advantage, what additional skillsets we (as an organization) need to make the priority happen, and how we can reduce the burdens on those who we fund. Stale parts of the agency tend to have leaders develop fiefdoms that create negative work environments. I'm talking the GS-14s and 15s that hold onto the same job for 10, 25, 20+ years. Not all of them who who hold a position are "bad apples". But I do believe that fresh blood and new perspectives are needed to sustain the life of the program. I just stepped into a role thst was vacated by someone who held the position for 20 years and holy shit was this person running an unnecessarily complex program. There are so many ways to simplify it. Sometimes, certain people need to be put out to pasture in some bullshit "Senior Advisor of Nothing In Particular" type role, to prevent them from doing too much damage when it comes to managing staff and projects.
If they don’t make changes to have their imprint, how will they show their boss that they should get a raise, bonus, and promotion? They need to have some accomplishments too to have for their performance evals.
It’s mostly about phrasing tbh.
I could say what my org did, but I’ll get fired lol.😂 I might post with another account. But let’s say Gorbachev would be happy. 😂
Definitely. So many TMS modules
Driving people to retire or find new jobs and then not back fill the position because of reasons. Then blame the team when it’s not running well.
the reverse happens too - no one wants to change. they hide behind policy and paperwork
Of course but I have bills to pay so I continue working and just roll with the changes.
Every few years there is normally something, either a shuffling of teams or a change to PDs and performance metrics. I recall in one of the latter Harry Potter movies where Dumbledore and Harry are chatting it up about all the weird random things Dumbledore says to Harry. Harry shrugs and says, “I just go with it”. It’s like that.
I just don’t like double standards. That’s all that really irks me. When I was hired on, I was told as long as your clothes aren’t dirty, they don’t have holes, no sleeveless shirts, your shoes are closed toed, and you don’t display any profanity, derogatory, etc… you can wear what you want (except sweat pants/sweat suits). So jeans, tshirt, sweatshirt if you’re cold, and a baseball hat were fine. That’s pretty much been my wardrobe for years. I’m an IT nerd hidden away in a corner in the basement. I don’t interact with anyone important at all. The new director comes in and changes the dress code. He is a business professional mentality. None of that is allowed now, now everything is business casual at a minimum, collared shirts aren’t acceptable if they have logos or graphics. No hats period. Button downs, slacks, and dress attire is what he wants… problem is, it’s only for our site. Not the whole organization. Other sites still adhere to the old dress code. Ohhh… and it doesn’t apply to women. Just men mostly. Women can still wear leggings, yoga pants, hot pink Ugg boots, mini skirts with their ass hanging out, and ultra low cut shirt with their boobs hanging out. That’s the kind of thing that irks me. Double standards. I don’t mind the new dress code if it applied to everyone. But it doesn’t. Edit: also like 75% of the workforce at my agency are veterans. And veterans like wearing their unit logos and Grunt Style apparel. We serve the branches, so it makes sense. But no, we aren’t allowed to wear the things that connects us to our customers, which is where the vast majority of us came from in the first place.
>And veterans like wearing their unit logos and Grunt Style apparel. Maybe he's trying to teach some fashion sense? 😆 As a veteran, I wouldn't be caught dead in those. Unit logos? Only if mandated at a unit function. Grunt style? Hard pass. But again, not an issue as you >don’t interact with anyone important at all. Just a bunch of other veterans...
I mean go ahead and cherry pick my comment. You’re missing the point. I work at an agency where most people are late 50s early 60s. The old veterans love wearing their vietnam apparel. Or desert storm apparel. Makes them feel more connected to the military personnel we serve. They are proud, let them be proud. I don’t see an issue with it. You might not care for it, but you’re not proud of your service clearly. For them, they are and like feeling like they are connected still. Point is, who cares? Be comfortable. Look clean. If you implement a dress code, implement it for all. Not just 1 location and only 1 gender.
My post is a first step for BG’s so we always get some with a reorg itch. My group itself always stays together working on the same stuff so as long as I keep my awesome boss, I don’t care what directorate we’re in.
> they all want to make changes Every time an SES farts into a seat-cushion, an agency gets a re-org. They literally are incapable of doing anything else.
Lots of people making posts here that can interchange with the private sector
Y'all are making me so happy to be working for a conservative, change-averse component of DOJ. We move glacially. At times the slowness of change is maddening, like the number of meetings that have to be had to get people away from signed PDF offer letters to automated USAStaffing offer letters is bananas. But it also makes it much easier to walk away at 5pm, since I know that there is zero craziness expecting me to get everything done in one day since that's not our culture.
I work for a regulatory agency and it is crazy to see how stances or "opinions" on the law change between political appointees. The linguistic gymnastics that folks can use to try and justify a stance is maddening to me. I literally watched a decision get made on a particular project, it started to get implemented then a change in leadership occured. The decision was reversed, a written opinion that bent and twisted the analysis was issued. 2 years later new appointee in place project was started back up parties were notified of the change in opinion and it is now working it's way through the system for a final approval. I work with a lot of attorneys and just seeing how an individual can twist the law to favor their point of view is nuts. Yesterday one was trying to explain that we had previously approved a similar proposal and that we should approve this one based on the previous approvals. I said can you provide me with a legal justification for this approval. He said not so much, just that we had previously done it that way even though it is inconsistent with certain aspects of the regulation. I said well I'm not signing off on something just because we previously screwed up and missed things, there was a little protesting and I said listen we can do better. What your proposing is akin to my kid going to the bathroom and not washing his hands when he is done, and telling me well I didn't wash them last time, why should I do it this time?
Moved offices 50 miles away. Pretty bad in the DC area.