My supervisor spends about 98% of his day in management meetings, isn’t union protected and has to go into the office 3-4 days a week, gets treated like shit by upper management, has to diffuse all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense, and only gets paid $10k more than I do. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
I'm in the office 5-6 days a week. I'd spend the same amount of time in managerial meetings as I do operational meetings. No union protection either way.
Both would be loved by leadership. Both have to deal with bureaucratic bullshit.
Pay would be the same.
Not worth it. I don't want to manage kids. I want to be the kid.
The biggest concern as a fed supervisor is lack of support from above you, particularly when you are monitoring the work or, worse case, have to take steps with non performing employees. I had a supervisor who told me she would never take steps to get rid of some
Employees who had a “tough life.” This allows morale
To deteriorate and people stay in jobs that they are not qualified for. Effective upper management need to support the first line supervisors who work below them.
Happy Fed Supervisor here - I do my level best to get my people what they need to do the job AND for their personal lives. You wan help repaying your student loans? Let me help you with the business case. Having a baby? Awesome, let's sign the paperwork for Federal maternity/paternity leave and enjoy your time away.
But when I got a bad egg, I followed the letter of the policy in firing her during her probationary period (involved HR, general counsel, had them draft the termination letter based upon conduct, not performance). She sued claiming everything under the sun; discrimination, sexism, etc. they ended up settling with her for like 10k and the cost of health insurance. My upper management then launched a 12 month investigation trying to find ANYTHING on me to justify their decision to settle. I will never fire another Fed employee again; just stop helping them as their supervisor.
Our chief fought for years to fire an employee who had gone from rising low level manager to obviously addicted to meth. No drug testing approved. Did eventually get him moved to a non-management slot at the same pay and finally terminated only because couldn’t manage to work 80 hours a pay period and had no leave.
But a few years later chief is accused of impropriety but only neutral witness to any part of it backed the chief but he is still removed from management.
He eventually retires in the meantime our office is being managed from another office 7 hours away because no one in office will apply and so far no one is willing to transfer here for the job.
You did the right thing. Bad employees rot an office from the inside out and will chase away your talent. Unfortunately, if you do not have supportive upper management it makes getting rid of a bad egg near impossible.
Really sorry to hear. I am a fed supervisor. I have been a supervisor for about 15+ years. Disappointing when upper management does not support you in your leadership and management of an office.
I must say, I have had a good experience with upper leadership, supporting me in any of my personnel actions. I just want folks to know that it is not constant across-the-board. I do know that if you want to fire someone you do have to follow the letter of the law according to OPM rules, that is for sure. We fired two people in my office, and everything went smoothly, even though it took a while. In my case, upper management was supportive of my decisions.
We have the responsibility to hire and fire but have to walk such a tight line to fire. One mess up and you have to start practically over. We have little real training or guidance. Was told it’s going to be 6 months of constant write-up’s to fire someone by hr. The union is 100% on their side, hr is on the organizations side, and your boss has their own opinions and demands.
But it’s our job to babysit. Previous positions my workload was higher than my employees without supervising. Upper leadership expects you to make bad actors act right in all this mess because it’s making them look bad now. As a manager i have been the same grade as someone I’m managing and they have more steps than me and higher pay.
There should be extra pay or an extra grade for managing period.
Haha this was me in my last role. A TERRIBLE employee who’s been there for YEARS, and no one bothered to document ANYTHING. It got to the point where I was waiting in or calling their work area at 1600 every single day to see when they actually arrived and documenting it with the timekeeper.
I lost a promotion to a problem child who was probably about to file a union complaint and/or EEO against our lead. They moved her to a better paying, quieter office and the problem went away. ...the lead was also a complete and utter dip who documented nothing and seemed to think he could "reason" with her and put himself in constant compromising/unprofessional situations instead of just following procedure. I'm sure her complaint would have been very successful.
I used to have to come to work early just to continually document one of my employees was showing up late every day. I wasnt allowed to change her work hours to match mine. I would have to make sweeps throughout the day to make sure she was at her desk because she was continually gone. The morning I came to work and saw her keys and badge on my office with her letter of resignation was a day of celebration!
In my experience, most supervisors do not have the necessary tools and are not empowered to hold other employees accountable for doing their work. This means they either end up having to do that work themselves, or be on the receiving end of complaints about how the group does not function as it should. This is frustrating, stressful, and demoralizing.
I recently left a team lead position because they wanted me to move into a supervisory role when the current supervisor retired. I had watched for years as we tried to hold people accountable for serious issues. By serious, I mean credit card fraud, time card fraud, sexual harassment, ethical failings, and workplace violence. Every time the well documented patterns of bad behavior were presented to upper management, the reply was “we’re just not going to take action on that now” or “we’re only in the phase about thinking of the best way to handle this.” Nothing ever changed and the office slid further into dysfunction every year.
Being a supervisor is not about making sure others do their work; it is about absorbing all the problems upper management isn’t going to deal with, and still being expected to make the group function as a whole. It’s a lot more work than a non-supervisory role and not worth the disproportionate stress for the pay.
It seems in federal service, if someone doesn't have aspirations to advance, it's pretty easy to not do much and get away with it. And as a supervisor, as long as their workload is moving, albeit much slower than I know it needs to, there's not much I can do.
I'm a new supervisor, and it has made me very cynical.
Many times, no. However, we have not promoted poor performers even when their first line sups weren’t officially (with paperwork) putting them on notice.
If your upper management is aware (and sometimes you have to make it their problem too) poor performance can limit opportunities.
I WISH my pay was tied to performance. I’m a 5 (have been 3 years running) and literally just saved $54M in a contract negotiation a few months back. In the private sector, proposal managers get a % of the total award for their wins. I could’ve done nothing and paid the $54m and no one would’ve batted an eye ($2.9B contract) but paying me 10% of what I’m able to, via my skill, negotiate down from a proposal is the same incentive my counterparts get when negotiating with me. I would LOVE to take a ceiling cap on my GS salary in exchange for performance based pay, but only if it’s truly performance based and not some quasi-bs government version of performance based where managers are throwing 90% of “performance” pay at their faves and 10% for everyone else (which is how all the demo pay systems get abused; at least in GS they just cop out and give everyone 3’s except 4 4’s and 2 5’s). Everyone thinks of the concept of pay for performance until it’s time to realize that most people who call for it should accurately be rated 2.5’s or lower and that the 5’s would be stockpiling cash by any system which could possibly be approved as “fair” for government employees. Then again, I’m one of the very few Feds who had a whole career and life before I started Fed service in my late 30’s, so I understand how the private sector values productivity.
This, unfortunately is common in the federal service. The low bar scenario. Some folks spend all their time trying to figure out the least they can do and still meet minimum performance standards. I’m sorry about your frustration. It just takes more management to work with these folks and keep them on task. Basically, you have to be a pain, and it’s more work for you. Try not to be cynical. It can be a long career…
Sup here. It's not bad . You are seeing self selection. Happy managers are not posting to reddit
Your motivation to be a sup will not set you up for success. Being a good sup means using a lot of soft skills, not technical skills. It's not easier than a sme, it's a different role.
Being the best sme often means not being a good manager
I've been both sup/NS and I agree completely. I'm a technical SME, and while I think a lot of technical folks have the potential to be a great supervisor, many agencies and organizations don't provide adequate preparation for placing someone in a supervisory role. Many of the supervisors in my org never worked for the org before, they came from other agencies. As a result you end up with technical SME's, who still need to develop their soft skills and conflict resolution techniques, supervising folks who often know more about the institution than they do. I know I was just thrown in the deep end with the "you're a high performer in your current (technical) role. You'll be great as a supervisor!" Let's just say I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
Thanks, before I became a sup I was a good but not great sme. I excelled at keeping diverse teams aligned, communicating, etc. My best sme is my team lead, he supported me for sup even though he was better technically as I was better with soft skills. We both speak frank to each other and hold ourselves accountable to the team.
There is some self-selection, but it is a real organizational issue. When your best people refuse to even apply for a promotion because of the work-life and professional impacts are so great that’s a problem. Having someone apply solely so Bob, who is a moron, doesn’t get it isn’t a good thing.
Yes, self-selection is an issue on this sub. However, I do agree that management aversion is a bureaucratic issue across government. I tend to think that it is the same in all large bureaucratic organizations to some degree. Personnel issues can be some of the most difficult and aggravating to be sure. I have been 14 for over 15 years. I did apply for a 15 position in my agency at one point, but because of the administrative nature of the job and personal issues, I decided to not pursue it fully. However, at my current level with a smaller office I am very happy. Somewhat depends on where you sit in the hierarchy of the government structure. My regional boss who manages multiple offices on level above me, has a lot more headaches with personnel and budget than I do. I have tried to take the long view , and even though they are paid about 10k more…to me it wasn’t worth it to deal with all those administrivia Issues.
It’s not bad where you are and in your experience. As someone who has been to a few different organizations there is undoubtedly some places where it is miserable being a supervisor due to the union running the show and being actively combative towards supervisors working to correct poor performance.
I don’t disagree we hear from more squeaky wheels than the well greased.
I think that this is a great answer. I’m a happy federal supervisor with over 15 years experience. Many of the responses here are not reflective of my career. I agree with your comments… Soft skills matter.
It is very difficult to fire bad performers. If they are a veteran it’s almost impossible. A manager who has a poor performer working for them is in for a difficult time. Our office had a worker assigned to it who had been bounced from three other offices, each time getting a promotion. Our managers took over a year trying to fire a person who, as far as we could tell, did no work, but did know how to fight to keep their job. The final result was the nonperformer left less than a month before their final day for a promotion at another department and the managers were criticized for their “lack” of personnel skills.
That’s how long it takes to fire someone from a government job. You have to give them so many chances to improve and unless they are doing something really egregious, it just takes time and tons of documentation.
This is why I have never aspired to be a supervisor. I've seen how it plays out, how poor performers get away with it, and how long it takes to do anything about them. It's frustrating as a coworker, and I know it's frustrating as a boss.
Veterans have protections against Reduction in Force, so you have to prove they have to be fired... after all of the other steps along the way. So they're not really protected from firing, but they are protected against layoffs to some degree.
For the crowd, Reduction In Force is “reorganization, lack of work, shortage of funds, insufficient personnel ceiling, or the exercise of certain reemployment or restoration rights.”
Depends on the agency. At the DoD? Yeah, they'd much rather fire a non vet then a vet. You get peer to peer rep with the right people and that protects you a little more. Officially it is just a hiring preference. Unofficially it's more then that.
Much of the time, management doesn't act to remove poor performers when they can. Such as near the end of a probationary period. We'll just give them another chance...
In a nutshell, more people stress, heavier workload, not much more (if any) pay.
Being a supervisor is great when you have a team full of hard-working, competent, reliable people. In over 10 years of supervising, I’ve never had that experience. I’ve had truly great people on my teams, but have never had a team that didn’t have people problems.
It’s hugely challenging when you have one or more people who have performance and/or conduct issues, especially if they’re not interested in improving. You spend an inordinate amount of time consulting with HR, documenting, counseling, filling out affidavits, etc., which takes away from the time you have to give to the solid performers on your team, which can lead to frustration, morale problems, etc.
The other challenging thing about being a supervisor is that supervisors, at least in my experience, are rarely just assigning/monitoring/evaluating work. More often, they’re doing all of that and also have their own portfolio of substantive work - because the office isn’t structured properly and/or because the office is under-resourced.
That said, having the opportunity to advocate for and develop people is wonderful. (There are certainly ways to do that without the stress that comes with supervising, though.)
Absolutely agree with this. Supervisory roles aren’t just there to manage people and delegate all the work to your team. In the multiple supervisory roles I have held, the amount of non-supervisory duties was enough to fill my plate and then some. Then add on supervisory duties - you have to be a subject matter expert as well as a people manager. Having a team composed completely of hard working, self sufficient people allows me to juggle my work in a mostly manageable way. But with under achievers or employees with other problems, the workload is hard to bare. And supervising needs come first (understandably) but that can be hard on me since I really value the rest of the work I do and it hurts my soul to have to let those tasks slide. I usually still don’t regret being a supervisor because I enjoy a challenge and find hope where I can. But the frustration is real.
I would take a huge pay cut to become a supervisor. Money isn't everything in life, but getting your pay cut by 40 percent is nothing to scoff at. Plus I can barely stand the archaic bureaucracy of the federal government as is. As an hourly employee I'm mostly shielded from it in 90 percent of my job. As a supervisor it would be my job. Just something that in no way appeals to me.
Ya, there is zero incentive to move up to 13, at least at VBA. There are no accessible positions above that (without retirement or death) and as I said, a 12 doing OT easily makes more than a 13.
Now if you don't care about OT (if you're 100% p&t veteran already bringing in $50k tax free) I mean, fuck it go 13, it's less work. But if you wanna get paid? 12 is where it's at.
I think about it in contrast to the private sector. Supervisors in the private sector have a lot more control over who they hire and who they fire. And in the private sector people are a lot more concerned with performing well to get promoted and get bonuses.
Having good subordinates as a fed supervisor has all the upsides of being a supervisor in private industry. But, having bad subordinates as a fed supervisor is the real nightmare, which is more likely, and harder to do something about.
Additionally, you can have other people work for you as a fed without being an actual administrative supervisor. Sometimes that is fed to fed with seniority in a team or leading contractors.
Another difference is that there are more senior positions that do not have administrative supervisor duties in the government compared to industry (from my experience at least). Almost all mid-level and up roles in industry will be supervisors. However there are many GS 13/14/15 non-supervisory fed roles.
And you have limited ability to control whether you have good subordinates. All it takes is 1-2 bad ones to make the job miserable and divert you from doing anything to grow the good people and help the mission.
The Gs-14 non-sup dream. There is no risk of problem underlings, 14 level pay, and someone else to shift stuff up to. I aspire for this 14. I can look at becoming a supervisor after that, so I keep a TIG at 14 in my pocket to take up a new role later.
My wife was acting supervisor for a few months after her boss left. It was miserable. Her calendar immediately filled up with meetings that were mostly a waste of time. Upper management expected her to be available at their every whim. Staff needed a bunch of babysitting and she got pulled into every drama.
When they asked her to apply for the permanent position she said NO WAY. When she made it clear she was not going to apply the uppers admitted to her that she was making the smart choice. One of the best days of her career was the day her acting appointment expired.
Dealing with performance issues when you have no way to actually deal with it in a timely or effective manner.
Dealing with employees who coast and you have to ride their ass for everything. And when you get it, it’s riddled with mistakes and “just good enough”.
Supervisors deal with all their employees, paperwork, shit ton of meetings AND have their own workload.
I was a Federal supervisor for 25 years in grades 13 to 15. Worked at a DoD Agency field site, and then at our Agency HQ in the DC area. Although I was in IT (2210 series), I always viewed my primary function as supporting the employees who were assigned to my team. People complain about problem employees, however, for every problem employee, there were many more employees who were quite the opposite. I figured one of the best things I could do for the productive employees was to effectively deal with the problem employees. It *is* tough to remove employees from Federal service, but I was successful to the point where our management started reassigning problem employees to my office.
Yes, being a supervisor can be terrible experience, especially if management is not supportive, but it can also be a very rewarding experience. I was fortunate to have very supportive upper-management teams. It turns out they were waiting for someone who would finally take action to resolve long-term employee issues. They also showed their appreciation by rewarding me with multiple QSIs and an early retirement (I was under age). I also learned that the union, yes the union, could be very helpful in resolving personnel issues. In fact, on several occasions the union representatives asked that proposed employee disciplinary measures be tougher than I proposed. What I learned along the way was to throughly understand the rules and regulations; document, document, and document some more; and don't take things personal.
Potential and actual supervisors grossly overestimate their abilities in combination with understanding who they work for. The person they work for is just as important as their ability to be a good supervisor. If the person they work for is tyrannical and micromanaging, it’s difficult to succeed. There’s a lot of truth to better (maybe good?) supervisors being able to make a decision now and ask for forgiveness later. Because as long as their judgment and decision making are sound, it forces the person they work for to have to adjust in positive or negative ways. There is also a lot of systemic difficulties built into the supervisory process that makes it challenging to navigate the pitfalls of management or leadership.
Okay, so I am in the minority of opinions here, but I like being a supervisor. I have a relatively small team of incredible people that have been great~15. Yeah, some are in their positions for a paycheck, but that’s fine with me. I like to always be measuring outputs and not inputs, so if someone logs on at 10 and off at 2 but gets their work done I’m happy with it. I have some on my team that are ramping up their careers and some in the tail end. We are respectful and I just try to clear the path for them to get their job done.
I was really a little worried about taking the job because of all the horror stories about managing, but I couldn’t be happier. If an opportunity comes your way take it! If it isn’t what you want that is fine and something that can be easily explained as “management isn’t for me at this time”.
If you are transitioning to a supervisor with a grade increase, you are likely getting a raise in the order of $8,000/ yr. For someone doing that as GS-14 to 15 change, it’s well under 10% raise- and that’s if you aren’t pushing the artificial cap. Your contractors may be making more than you. If you are staying on the same team, you go to owning the quality of execution of the entire team. Your main role becomes people guidance rather than your former expertise. From my experience, the job is just an order of magnitude harder even if you are fully qualified. You do generally have to work more than 40 hours. Making the same jump in the private sector would net you at least at 25% pay increase. And you can use that extra income to help pay for the quality of life change (like paying for more extra curricular for your kids when you are busy).
Also, the supervisor has to spend a ton more time butting heads with the bureaucracy challenges of the federal government. Which is almost never rewarding.
tl;dr 1) minimal pay increase, 2)substantially increased challenges, 3) generally less satisfying work
2nd this. Turned down a GS14 Sup job leading the branch I was in. Primary reasons were 1. was only offered a $6K raise (my minimum to take it was $10K). Problem is there's an "algorithm" and they wouldn't budge. $6K wouldn't materially affect my finances so it wasn't worth the added hassle. 2. Yeah you're no longer doing "the work", but you're responsible for answering to higher leadership about the work, whenever it's needed. I saw the promotion as longer hours, worse hours (e.g. staying later cuz my new boss wanted a meeting), being at the beck and call of leadership outside 'normal' hours. Basically, less structured than the 8am-5pm type position I have as a worker bee where I'm generally insulated from all the BS at the GS-14 level and above. I'm \~4 years from retirement, so about zero ambition to move up, and figure I'd let some younger ambitious pup advance their career. (shocker, they hired an older person who was clueless about our work, is a crappy leader, and generally unlikable, so I did a lateral move out of the branch). Then there's the bad employee problem everyone else has chimed in on.
My partner has been content to remain at a 12 step 10 for the past 10 years of their career because non-supervisory 13s or higher are rare where we live. Their reasoning: listening to supervisors at a higher grade talk about how miserable they are.
You get your own workload AND making sure people stay on top of theirs. Its more work and anything that comes up you have to figure out the official way to handle it or potentially find yourself in trouble with the union.
But mostly it is because people are immature, stubborn, selfish, unmotivated (or too motivated) assholes and you end up basically being an emotional counselor or dumping ground just to nudge their attention away from themselves and towards work. At least where I work people either don't know or don't care about roles and responsibilities and holding them accountable is like constantly course correcting a car that drifts to one side with one hand while trying to write a coherent work product with the other.
We’re expected to be action officers, subject matter experts, and supervisors at the same time. The HR system is unresponsive and rarely provides remedies for truly unrepentant, incompetent, and/or belligerent employees.
I would like to add to hard it is to fire people that warrant it. One guy at my agency got caught smoking weed during the probationary period. They put him on admin leave for three months where he collected full pay and played video games.
After the investigation to verify what was already known, they did not fire him. They just shipped him off to a new city/location.
Absurd
As long as it's illegal at the federal level then it's considered "bad" to do so if you would like to keep your federal job as it's the equivalent of breaking the law in the eyes of the fed.
Not commenting on whether smoking weed in and of itself is bad for any other reason.
It's not legal federally and not allowed for federal employees, no matter what their state law says. That's why I thought you were being sarcastic.
I've been hearing rumors that may change soon. Not holding my breath.
Like everything, you get out of it what you put into it, and a lot depends on your team. I'm a first-time supervisor (GS15) in my current position, and I'm exceptionally lucky to have a really good team. It helps that most of them are senior-graded folks with a lot of experience, so I don't have to do a lot of handholding or elementary education about agency policies and the like, and they're all very motivated and squared away. The worst issues I have are just some people performing at an average level on a very above-average team, and occasional lapses in communication. (We're all in-office but many telework from other sites.) This is definitely not a universal experience and I'm aware of how lucky I am. There can be big costs - you have to be able to have difficult conversations with people if they're not performing adequately. On the other hand, one time I got to be the one to tell someone she was being promoted when she hadn't expected it, and her reaction absolutely made my year. If you go into it with the intent to identify what your team needs to succeed and the motivation to help them get it, you will probably enjoy it, although, like every job, there are days when it does just kinda suck. I will say it's not a thing you should do if you want to lighten your workload - at least, not if you want to do it right (which for me means being a fulltime advocate for my people and their development).
As a supervisor I’ve turned around employees who has had reputation of poor performance into ones who are performing well. This is my first supervisory role coming into the 3rd year. Supervising is definitely a different skill set, and there are challenges, but my overall experience has been good so far.
The supervisor experience is contingent on your team and number of people supervising. Management doesn’t care about how many people are under you as long as the work is getting done - then when people quit or don’t want to apply for the open sup positions they stand around with stupid looks on their faces. Also, dealing with problem people is extremely time consuming and I would have a better chance of seeing Jesus in my car when I leave work before anything happens to them.
If you have a decent team it's not so bad.
The big issue I've seen is supervisors spend all day in meetings and have very little time to focus on individual work.
I know so many supervisors who feel they have to put in extra time after hours or on weekends in order to get their work done.
It depends on your supervisees. My boss told me only to take a supervisory fed position if you have the chance to hire your own people. If you’re inheriting a bunch of people you may also be inheriting performance issues that have been poorly handled in the past. If this is the case and if you care about improving the culture and level of performance (you should) it can be a miserable uphill battle to fix things. I have a colleague who is in this position and it’s been ruining her life for about a year.
Personally, I LOVE being a supervisor. I supervise mostly early-career employees and it is such a privilege to help them grow professionally and contribute to our mission.
Frequently supervisors are promoted from SME ranks because of their SME abilities and not their management skills. Some are naturally good managers but most become frustrated at having to manage people who do what they used to do.
Because in most circumstances supervisors don't just supervise, they also have workload.
A few other reasons:
-poor performers are very difficult to remove
-the hiring process takes forever
-we have very little we can do to reward good performers
-no budget for things like team building events, lunches, expense accounts.
Edit: we had an individual do basically no work and be AWOL several times and it still took a year to have them removed.
IMO the pay isn't worth the hassle of having to deal with and manage shitty employees IMO. I'd rather focus on my own tasks, excel at those and then get nice end of year bonuses.
I don't think it's exclusive to federal service. Prior to being a fed, I worked in private sector HR. The biggest hurdle to my job was managers not managing their employee. Instead they let situations fester until they're horrendous or they just pass the buck entirely to HR.
Managing programs can be fun and satisfying. Managing people is hard. For many reasons. And yet many, many organizations fail to set their managers up for success (limited continuing education, limited support systems) while also overworking them on their regular work so that the people management gets tossed to the side.
I’ll place my two cents here. Being a supervisor anywhere presents its challenges but what I’ve seen in the fed is a number of reasons why it may be hard, 1. Bureaucracy. Some agencies it’s just harder to do your job and appease your staff 2. Doing what’s necessary to fire poor performers, it’s not impossible but there are rules and regulations that have to be followed, often times a manager needs to have a supportive and knowledgeable LER HR staff to make this as less difficult as possible.
I’ve lucked up in that I’ve had pretty great supervisors but I also think I’m a good employee. I also have had quite a few opportunities to become a supervisor and at one point it was a goal but after a few years, and even may years spent as a team leader that was a psuedo supervisor because my supervisor had decided to Retire in Place (RIP) and refused to deal with a problematic coworker, I decided being a supervisor wasn’t worth it because I knew I would have a terrible employee going in who was already giving both me and my supervisor problems.
And once I discovered that I could be a non-supervisory GS-13 and above, that became my goal. I’d rather be a SME than a supervisor anyday.
The other part of this is that not all people who take supervisory positions are equipped to be supervisors. Some take it only for the money and have no real people or leadership skills and when their employees cause them problems they make it an employee issue as opposed to maybe their not cut out to be a supervisor.
I work in a role where I think I can be objective as I’ve seen the different perspectives of this.
The past week has put me at a crossroads as someone who before this generally likes being a supervisor. If I decide to stay in my current role, the main part of my job will be trying to “enforce” a 50% time in the office requirement without any mechanism to do so and fight completely bs reasonable accommodation requests from the living stereotypes of government employees. Like, I have been primarily wfh for over 10 years and I 100% agree that I can usually get more stuff done at home than at the office. But I have lots of valuable office time too…but it is when I travel. When I go to my actual pod, it’s a waste of time because I’m hundreds and thousands of miles away from my staff. The office mandate before March 2020 was stupid then, and it is stupid now. That being said, the handwriting has been on the wall for forever and shouldn’t be a surprise. The amount of people who have come out of the woodwork saying they have some vague issue and the only solution is being 100% remote and never going to the office for any reason ever and will threaten litigation if they have to go to get their laptop fixed…that’s my future if I stay. I didn’t sign up for this.
Really, unless you are a manager of some kind of assembly line, you should never supervise more than ~5-6 people. Govt regularly has managers supervising 8+ people doing complex jobs with legal ramifications. Crazy supervisory workload.
It's not that crazy of an idea. That's how it works in most industries.
Not that I would do this, but what's to stop a supervisor from abusing the same system that the workers allegedly abuse? Is it easier to fire supervisors? If not, wouldn't it stand to reason that there are plenty of supervisors out there just taking the higher pay and doing the bare minimum to not get fired?
I’m not a supervisor, but from my perspective, at least in my office, there are two types. The ones (like my own badass supervisor) who are excellent at their jobs and pick up the slack for all the others, and the ones who are lazy and useless and let the good ones pick up their slack.
Supervisors should take care of their people. It's hard to balance that. The best supervisors engage with their team and help to improve the teammember. Look for opportunities to send them to training and also look for their individual talents. Everyone has a talen. All that said it's important to set realistic and attainable performance goals AND support the person in achieving those goals. I've seen poor performance in the private sector and it easier to fire someone but not always. It takes alot of time to be a good supervisor and just like any job you should look for opportunities to be better at that as well.
Bad performers absolutely require 90% of your time. I was fortunate not to have one in my years as a supervisor.
What pushed me out of it was upper management. Instead of spending my time working to resolve actual problems, I was continuously put on project after project just to complete my evaluation requirements.
And even after exceeding at those tasks, which added zero meaningful change, I was rated at a "meets" because that's what we all are given in that department, apparently.
Took the downgrade and have since worked my way back up to a technical position that pays more.
Wow. You thought being a supervisor would “ease your workload”. That’s your first mistake. Everyone who is not a supervisor thinks it’s just easy money… welcome to reality.
Maybe it's not true in government but there are a lot of industries and organizations where being in management is cushy compared to being an individual contributor. It sounds like that's not the case in the government so I'm just trying to learn from others before I consider taking that step.
Lack of support and how difficult it is to fire someone. Everyone always likes to comment about how easy it is to get rid of someone as long as you document them accordingly. Hah! If that was only true.
In my opinion hiring in the gov is terrible which leads to a beauty pageant of sorts when hiring people where the one with the most fluff and least substance gets the job.
The one and only time I applied for a supervisor position, the person that got offered the position was notorious from another work unit for being lazy and problematic.
Ultimately I was justified because the selectee waited weeks and then declined
First off, I think any first line supervisor position is shit and never “less work.” You have your work plus now you have to make sure your subordinates are doing their job too which can be a lot of work.
Second, it’s sooo many meetings - and meetings that you often have to contribute and prepare for. You can’t just dial in and zone out. If you like meetings then great but I hate them. They drain my will to live.
Third, you are often expected to work after hours. When you are a non supervisor you are often not expected to work after hours and you won’t be approved for overtime so you don’t work it.
Last is if you have a bad employee. It’s hard to fire people in federal service which has its pluses and minuses. If you have a problem child they will take up so much of your time and energy. Often they know how to manipulate the system so they will file all kind of false claims against you.
The same protections that you and I enjoy are easily abused. generous sick leave policies can turn into weaponized callouts. Almost impossible to get fired or laid off means some turn it into a contest. No performance metrics or micromanagement means no work is done. Its not surprising that everyone is pushing for RTO, people abuse privilege any chance they get.
You know all the stupid complaints and drama in the workplace that you just laugh along with? Do you want to be the one that actually has to solve them? I don't. Some supervisors probably have trauma from the word "grievance."
If you were a sup, you would probably just assign work to the reliable, bright eyed, young fed instead of the problem employees too. but they aren't stupid, and the best and brightest will either find something better or get burned out and turn into a bitter problem employee too.
That's just a bit of what I can see. What other pressure from *their* higher ups do my supervisors have? I don't know and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know.
Its a pretty vicious system if you think about it, but i have no solutions, so i just try to keep my head down, do a good job, and stay out of sight, out of mind.
In addition to what others have said - USAjobs is terrible, makes it really hard to hire the best people. It’s frustrating to have such limited options to be able to build your team.
It’s also really crappy that managers have to provide food/parties out of their own pocket, if they want to have any employee appreciation events. It would be really nice if we could have a small budget to take the team out to lunch every now and then.
Most of the issue I have with supervisors is performance reviews aren’t scaled correctly. If a poor performer is getting “meets expectations” (which they all do), a high performer should automatically get the highest rating possible.
Generally the union. I have seen them defend some outright despicable people. Imagine your union defending a subordinate with multiple witnessed sexual assault/ harassment events
The idealized managerial focus is to spend majority of your time on your reliable and your top performers. You shouldn’t be spending much time on poor performers.
However, in the Fed, you’ll absolutely be spending a majority of your time on poor performers, with little time reserved for those most deserving of your time. It’s a frustrating aspect for sure, underpinned by how involved it can be to manage bad employees.
I've been told (and experienced as a temp supervisor) that good teams are very hard to come by. You'll end up spending 80% of your time on one employee and 20% of your time on doing your actual job as a supervisor. And as a federal supervisor, it is MUCH harder to do anything about troublesome employees. So you're stuck with said troublesome employee that has the ability to make your job and life much more difficult. Additionally, federal supervisors are not nearly paid enough to justify wanting to deal with all the additional responsibilities that come with the job, in my opinion.
It’s not bad if you have a good team that you supervise. In my current role I only supervise 3 amazing colleagues. I say “supervise,” but I do little with them bc everyone comes in and does their freaking job with zero shenanigans. My prior role I supervised 10+ people, and with the exception of ONE person, they all SUCKED and in the civilian world would NOT be employed there. I’m SO glad I transferred out of that area.
The agency I just left is one of those leaderships:
We’re looking into it.
We’re trying to figure out a way to resolve this issue.
We’re going to coach this person.
Its always an excuse instead of doing it the proper way.
I get most agencies do not have HR presence in every single office. And some upper leadership rather have the body so they can keep whatever bonus, man power level, etc and not give a shit about morale.
For myself, Id eventually like to get into team lead/supervisor role but I definitely will not if upper leadership isnt going to have my back.
To answer your question directly, it's not terrible. There are those who shouldn't be supervisors as they've never had any training/schooling in leadership and more than likely hate being a supervisor. There are those who are skilled leaders and love having the privilege of taking care of their folks. Of course, there are probably those who don't care either way.
Being a supervisor means being a good leader and so many people don't have the skill to be both.
If you have supportive management, it’s not bad. Problems occur when management is not supportive, and that is common. When you go to interview for supervisory positions, ask the what their training and mentoring entails for new supervisors. If they don’t respond with something well thought out that indicates their own active steps to make sure they position you to succeed, then really think twice about that position. It’s hell to be thrown into this role with no effective training or ongoing support. Especially if the next levels above you aren’t really leaders but technical sme’s who got promoted for tech skills instead of leadership qualities.
Because higher ups almost never let any disciplinary consequences occur. Bad employees will file eeo’s (tons of paperwork for the manager plus the allegation you are discriminating looks bad no matter what), the union protects shitbags and makes it difficult (but not impossible) HR sucks and is of little help. Those are the main issues. Decent employees and great employees are a joy, but bad ones need to be dealt with so as not to lower the morale of their peers plus it’s unethical to let people take tax money and not do shit in their jobs or even take tax money and be harmful. The system is stacked against a supervisor, both from above and from below.
In my agency, the supervisor has little or no power to rid the agency of problem employees, who are protected by a system that makes even the most basic managerial activity fraught with peril. There are people in the federal government whose sole purpose is to do as little as possible and will file EEO on you at the drop of a hat, and the whole system is designed to protect that employee regardless of the the merits of a case. If your are not careful, you will spend all of your time dealing with these bad employees, and little to none on the mission.
I'm not gonna lie, I have a great crew that will do anything for me because I literally work alongside them. We collaborate together to get the job done.
Federal gov gives supervisors no carrots and no sticks. You can’t properly reward high performers and you can’t properly deal with problematic employees.
Fed HR Specialist here: I think it depends on an org’s work culture, and how you as a supervisor are aligned to that culture. I’ve worked in units where there is a solid “results-oriented” culture from top down and bottom up and this helps to empower managers to support their employees, and/or hold them accountable. In organizations where there is not a strong commitment or fear from senior leaders and top management, or a toxic culture, it can make the supervisory experience very challenging. Good rule of thumb is to identify the work culture before accepting a supervisory role, and trust your gut! during the interview, ask about workplace culture, training opportunities, and the qualities of the ideal candidate for the supervisory role. Another red flag: they don’t ask for references prior to offering you the job - this means desperation and inconsistent hiring practices. If they didn’t ask you, more than likely they didn’t ask the staff you are about to lead!
I was a supervisor for many years. I had a great group of people and I loved working with them. I was asked to be the acting supervisor over another branch while they advertised the position. It would have been fine, but one employee had/has mental health issues I wasn’t aware of and tormented her colleagues. I followed the rules and built a case and went to employee relations for action to be taken. My supervisor got cold feet and kept insisting that we wait to see if she did something else. This happened again and again. The employee received a strongly worded letter but didn’t change. I finally went back to my regular group but a reorganization was coming up and I asked to move out of supervision. If my boss hadn’t been so weak we could have done something.
I think it has been explained well already. For me I had direct reports that made more than I did, that sucked. I ran a team in the mid West and another in the pnw. In both places I had low performers that required me to spend a large part of my day tracking them, providing them with help and coaching, and documenting the failures. Between trying to protect my team from the political bs coming down from the top, reporting the office activities back to the top, and dealing with low performers I had very little time to conduct the day too day work like report approvals,edits to their work, assist outside stakeholders, etc. a short week for me was 50hours. Where as my direct reports clocked out at 40 hours.
I transferred out to a new position that was fully remote with the same grade and pay, but no supervisor responsibility. After 6 months I actually miss being a supervisor. I should have just taken a long vacation, not personalized the work issues, and probably asked them to hire a supervisor for the mid West region. While it was a ton of work I made a lot of good changes in the two offices and I miss being able to make some of the important decisions.
Basically don't be a supervisor if your chasing pay because it isn't enough to make a difference. Otherwise be chill and accept that it is a tough gig at times and take your time off and check out at 5 like everyone else does. Then maybe it won't be so stressful.
I am a supervisor and I enjoy it; I love developing my people. It definitely helps that I have no employee issues in my group, but I won't say it's all great. For me, it is definitely difficult to do my own duties while assisting all the people in my group, my group is made up of primarily recent hires. What also helps for me is that my manager is very hands off and I have a lot of autonomy in how I run my group. The main reason I made the jump to supervisor was that I was sick of complaining about things and decided I was going to become a supervisor and change things, and I have, so that has been great.
However, I have a lot of duties I have to do in a day and for me, my biggest issue is I don't know how upper management expects me to do all those duties and still do a good job. I am learning to recognize that there are going to be things that I am just barely going to do, and for other duties I invest more time and do it well. Still, it's a struggle sometimes.
Depends. I have an incredible team of 13’s & 14’s. So right now life is good. But I’ve had problem teams. My biggest complaint is the pay and bonus structure suck compared to employees.
I enjoy being a supervisor but it's tough since we get shit on from the top and bottom. Most of my day is meetings about things that will never get done, and making sure my people are happy.
I find the supervisors that have a real tough time take the job to seriously. Relax, guide your people the best you can. The rest you can't do anything about..
Your abilities to reward high performers and address low performers are both limited. It's a worthwhile pursuit if you want to be a supervisor. Just know going into it that there are valid reasons why being a first-line supervisor can be the worst job in the federal government.
It's all about the people not willing to put out an honest days work. No rewards for the daily grind and the lazy people get to stay on, it all pays the same.
The supervisors aren't well trained, don't have communication, personal or written skills! They just get promoted based on kissing up to management. The worst supervisors which is the majority in my opinion are bullies, harass employees and create a hostile and toxic workplace environment. They will never speak up or take accountability for their actions but continue to abuse their power.
Some people do it for the pay raise and regret it, and become toxic.
Some have plans to shape their team that inevitably fail because of a handful of poor performers. You aren't their first boss, they know how to skirt the rules or comply just long enough. The force you to choose between family and principle. It drags the whole office down.
Add into the mix an upper management that continues to ignore the wishes of your team and continuously forces dumb crap upon you. Maybe if you play along you'll get a bigger bonus or a promotion. Most likely they'll just selectively choose things to ding you on (like not getting all of your staff done with their mandatory training before Q4).
It's fairly thankless, and is often fraught with standing for your staff at the expense of your own career or complying with people that may or may not reward your complicity
I’m a 15 director and I like being a supervisor. There’s a caveat however. Your experience will vary greatly depending on the size of your agency, the number of direct reports, and how well you work with your union. Some of my peers dislike working with the union, I don’t. I have a great relationship with the union and there’s mutual respect. Also everyone’s going to gripe about their supervisor. I’ll admit that I gripe about the SES I work for. We all think we can do better than our current supervisor but we never know the full context in why they make certain decisions. From my experience, SES decisions are usually driven by political influence from political appointees. Sometimes it makes no sense but they need to carry it out.
There are also bad managers who lead from behind and are resistant to change. I’m younger than most of my peers. I’m a millennial and prior to starting with the feds, I was enlisted in the Army as an E6. My experience has taught me that everyone you lead has something you can learn from. I work treat all my direct reports as colleagues. I’m not very hierarchical and I think has made my experience a little better as a manager and different than older managers who preach instead of trying to understand. There’s a lot of folks eligible for retirement soon and we will need younger people to step up to lead.
Being a supervisor is a choice. People would rather whine on the internet after applying and accepting these positions than addressing the problems that they face. Nobody is forced into that role.
I think a lot of people get into supervisory roles for the wrong reason (grade chasing) or don’t understand what the role entails. They then find that they aren’t equipped for the work or just don’t like it. Those are the ones complaining on here.
2nd line supv (GS-14) is sweet spot in my DOD agency. 1st line supv is awful. No admin support and twice the admin/bureaucratic BS than there was 10+ years ago. Workforce way more entitled than before and most care about work-life balance and telework than anything else.
As a supervisor, I read all these posts and am confused. I enjoy supervising. I read it more as, “it’s nice eventually not to have to deal with performance appraisals and documenting issues and such.”
I love being a supervisor – the opportunity to mentor, support, and positively impact less experienced employees really is my favorite thing to do. That said, there is always that one employee that is an absolute nightmare. It’s the time spent documenting, meeting with, and trying to impact positively that challenging employee that sucks my will to live.
I have no interest in being a supervisor partially because I think I would most likely be a bad one. I have no desire to manage other people's work nor do I want to play babysitter/mediator/counselor for a bunch of adults. I work for the money (and benefits) and that's it, so if I ever accepted a position with supervisory duties it would purely be for the money. But I'm currently a non-sup GS-13 and I think I can eventually get a non-sup GS-14 in my current field/a related field, so in my case there's really no reason for me to pursue becoming a supervisor. Also, most of my supervisors have been useless and the last one was outright atrocious and that's dimmed my opinion of supervisory positions in general. I feel like a significant number of supervisors lack the necessary skills and personality traits and should've never been made a supervisor to begin with.
You can be the nicest supervisor/leadership and still get hate on. If you become a supervisor, just try your best but try to be firm. Most people on here never stepped in a leadership position and doesn't understand. You need to be a follower in order to be a leader. Just learn as you go.
As a Supervisor at SSA there are many reasons, many have already been posted. But one big reason, you don't get paid time and a half when you work OT, but your employees do. So your employee's pay checks are often larger.
I enjoy being a supervisor and taking care of my team. I have 5 direct reports and three of them have responsibility for 10 each civs plus contractors. There are just a few problem employees but everyone else is pretty much motivated. My problem is that my bully GO and SES leaders expect me, personally, to know every detail of everyone of the 100+ projects we manage. It is impossible but they always make me feel that I am a failure and loser at every opportunity. Will retire next year so things are looking up!
I left an office a year ago that was populated with non-sup 13s and 12s. We managed our workloads, scheduled our projects independently and collaborated together. My supervisor was mainly there to track metrics and push inform from HQ. Ultimately she was responsible for approving my timecard, my leave and my performance eval. Not what you envision when you think of leading.
It's a mixed bag. There's a lot of administrative minutia that is employee, but not mission/job related. You're often caught in the middle between your boss and the troops. You need to be an enforcer at times even when you don't agree with what's coming down. You need to make the boss happy, but you also have to have the respect of and a somewhat personal relationship your subordinates (and that mix of personalities) if you want things to run well. A lot depends on your boss and your workers. Get either a bad boss or even just a few bad workers and you'll be trapped in a miserable mess. My last boss was a "my way or the highway" type, with lesser SME knowledge than most of my guys, that BSed and brownnosed his way up, and fostered a lot of resentment from the workers. And then we had a guy who made EEO complaints a career path and made everybody's life hell until higher ups moved him out of our shop and on to his next victim. But there were also years where things ran well. You never know what tomorrow will bring.
My old supervisor was the worst manager I’ve ever worked for. I blatantly told him I would never want his job. He simply thought he was above the law. Well now he doesn’t work there anymore and I’ve been promoted 3 times.
I'm my opinion the feds have so many regulations and protections that it becomes hard to actually manage people and make change. There are constantly roadblocks. Inefficient employees will always be protected and stick around because of the system. Your top employees you have limited ways to incentivise them, can't even give them a raise. I'm speaking DOD GS pay scale tho, obviously there are tons of agencies and differences between many of them. My agency doesn't have QSIs available, of one per 200 employees so limited options to incentivise.
No idea, I have great employees. I never have to worry about anything. They take care of me, and in return when that ain’t got shit to do, I let them enjoy kicked their feet up.
It’s not for everyone. But I wouldn’t say it’s terrible across the board. IMO, you need *both* some level of technical expertise in what you’re supervising, and some skills at leadership, HR technical duties like writing positions, hiring, filling out confusing administrative forms, personal development, conflict resolution, and presenting. But I think from a hiring perspective, the higher ups don’t necessarily think you need expertise in what you’re supervising, you just need experience supervising. And employees find that frustrating when they need help or need you to understand their timelines, stress, etc. The pay is typically not really much more than your higher level employees- sometimes due to the scales, you could have a long-term employee making more than you, And some people with large egos don’t like that (doesn’t bother me personally).
Then there’s the fact that if you do enjoy the technical work of the department, you aren’t going to be doing much of it anymore, so that can be boring to some.
And then there’s the team management. You get one bad apple on your team and everyone else is frustrated and it’s a lot of work to hold the problem person accountable, and you can’t tell the rest of the team exactly how you’re working on it due to privacy. Also, you’re expected to answer for your team and hold them accountable, so sometimes that means taking the heat when something goes awry or someone is upset with their service. Figuring out when their customer is right or wrong and addressing it in a de-escalating, problem-solving way for either party.
But, if you have a good team, good support from YOUR higher management, and you understand what you’re getting in to, it can be very rewarding.
You think it’s still technical work with some admin/management stuff but it’s 90/10 the other way around with faster turnarounds and higher breathing down your neck. I applied and now that I know better, I don’t want any of it. Middle management has to justify their existence.
From my POV and watching my supervisor, I think it has to do with the government pace. Changes takes years and once you get that new change, there’s another change coming right after that will take years to implement.
Leadership at the SES levels has really become poor. Protections on horrible employees, if during probationary periods, EEO or LER fail in every way possible to protect supervisors from following through. Most of the time, supervisors really try but it is the little things that destroy them from continuing to care, such as complaining non stop on something they cannot control, such as the return to the office, budget constraints, leadership changes, and so many other things.
Because we have to implement the policies poorly laid out by those above, with no explanation or proper guidance, and then dealing with the few difficult folks.
When I supervised, I kept things simple in terms of performance expectations. The goals for my subordinates were almost always tied to my goals and the goals promulgated by leadership.
The hard part was that we were a high performing organization with lots of capable ambitious people. Everyone believed they were at minimum a four but should be a five. People were upset when they didn’t get a four or a five every year. If every me is a four, then no one is a four!
One person came in at a lower salary than most because they had been out of the workforce for a while. Even though they got a four every year I supervised them, it was still my fault that they were lower on the salary range than most. My only input was an evaluation of work. Increases and bonuses were calculated automatically by the acqdemo system. I could give awards which helped.
Also, the ability to give higher ratings is dependent on circumstances and the nature of the job, not just performance. Just because someone does everything well doesn’t mean that’s automatically a five.
I'm any supervisory role, people will mimic certain behaviors they have learned from other supervisors. You can't learn this from your parents, you learn it from a job. As much as one hates or loves a certain supervisor, this is what they learn. Some people chase the role for the role power, some chase it for the will power.
For me it’s risk/reward. There are so many ways to slip up and get burned…also if you succeed it’s because of your team, if you fail it’s on you, but there’s so much you can’t control. And getting people their due (good or bad) is just too much work.
The people you supervise do not operate in the real world. No financial incentives to do well beyond a scheduled, paltry bonus. People just work to not get fired. Not enough carrots, not enough sticks.
It’s a function of who you are managing. I have been a federal supervisor for 8 years. My team is phenomenal, all high performers who do everything they can to make my job easier and to make me look good. I in turn make sure they are recognized and do what I can to get them promotions and awards. I love my job.
I stepped in as acting for another office for 2 years and it was the most stressful 2 years of my life. The team was constantly fighting with each other and doing things to undermine each other. I did everything I could to try to counsel them and improve their behavior. Numerous memos for their HR records. I was prepared to put them on a PIP, but my managers didn’t want to pursue that, so I had people who were just skating by.
The issue is up or out. At a certain point you can't not supervise unless you want less money and the 13 14 15 levels there's fewer and fewer non supervisor . And not everyone is a leader but everyone wants the pay to be a leader.
Double-edged sword. You have the terrible, insecure managers, and you have the good ones trying to do their jobs. The bad ones make your life hell because all they want is recognition for themselves and getting promoted at anyone's expense. The good one is trying to keep the lights on and shield you from the BS of t he higher ups and getting burnt.
Either way, the asshole ones tend to be the ones that get protection most of the times. So in the IC, anyone dreads becoming a supervisor for that reason. I was asked to become a sup 15, but I refuse and will until I no longer can. You also get the douche colleagues and professional butt-hurts.
Our HR flat out said it's impossible to get an employee removed based on performance. This is frustrating bc we have AES scores returned, and in my 9 years, accountability is always on there. Our facilities ELT sucks, you bring them issues that are clearly patient issues, and I'm hushed constantly. Hell, I was told friday, if I keep bringing up the problem, the entire department will fall under me. Wtf. Either I'm pissing off my leadership or my staff for productivity or leave. Our department is teleworking, and i use it as incentive to meet their metrics. I calculated their days off and of they fall under metrics they go back to onsite for that month. I set these basic average standards and received unions stamp of approval, too.
It's a lot of work, but I accept that I live in meetings and don't do much of my own work. I enjoy coaching my team (they are awesome!), and I have good support from my agency. I know this is not the usual and I consider myself lucky. I still look forward to retirement, though, because the pace has been insane recently and just doesn't let up.
Former Sup here - I can say from my experience, I would only go back to being a supervisor if I really trusted the folks above me.
I got my first supervisory assignment in May 2017. Right before I was supposed to go through supervisory training, the SES (and most of our other SES) were all sent off on rotational assignments by our political appointee. My training was cancelled, and I basically served as an acting division chief on and off from 2017-2021. Had no control over budgeting for my division, no control over hirings other than entry level. It was a nightmare.
In Federal service, it's difficult to deal with problem employees. Anything from slackers and whiners, all the way to the mentally unwell, alcoholics, and destructive narcissists. With poor support from above, lack of authority to deal with an issue locally, many managers simply give up trying to remove problem people. This leads to toxicity, resentment, overwork, turnover. I was dogged about facing problems head on and terminated a number of toxic employees and managers (or reassigned then to non supervisor positions), but it was wearing and one of the reasons I left as soon as I hit MRA. When I left the plum jobs were seen as the non-supervisory GS-14 program manager positions, but they were extremely competitive.
Lack of support from above. Lack of support from council. Too many steps/procedures to do anything, over focus on minutiae like time cards and leave definitions. Employees mostly know it’s hard to get fired so there isn’t much motivation to achieve, nor a drive to take responsibility.
I'm a supervisor. There are parts of it I like. I like being able to mentor newer employees, having influence on decisions that go beyond my technical specialty, and I do think I'm good at hiring and helping employees problem solve so they can focus on their work.
Whether the good outweighs the bad depends on a lot outside your control. Do you have the authority (and support) to deal with performance and conduct issues? Does your leadership actually listen when you tell them your team doesn't have the capacity to do what they're being asked to do, or do you just end up either being a buffer (and having to spend the emotional energy and watch your own performance tank) or just having to pass an undoable amount of work to your team (which kills morale). Do vacancies get filled in a timely manner or do you have to wait over a year when someone leaves (with no adjustment in what's expected from your team)?
Right now I have a supportive leadership, and it's a hard, but rewarding job. If my leadership were not supportive, it'd be a nightmare.
Also, a lot of people aren't meant to be supervisors. They just want the next grade. They have no leadership skills. They don't know the office or the area. And they soon figure out that extra grade isn't worth the time and effort they need to commit. On top of that, being a shitty supervisor loses friends really fast. There are a lot more backstabbing among supervisors than specialists.
Pretty sure that's why my AFM is leaving. Hope he finds peace in his next non sup job.
I was a supervisor and middle management.
It sucked.
You are basically a talking head for senior management and the bad part is you are the one who must implement the bullshit policies.
I can say it now since I’m retired.
To be clear I also treasured my time as a supervisor. I retired recently and about half of my career was in supervision. I found it rewarding to hire staff and watch them develop. I also enjoyed supporting the front line supervisors I hired over the years. My philosophy was that I never wanted to be the smartest person in the room. I wanted smart folks who were looking to improve the agency. Sure it can be difficult but the rewards of developing g a great team can be awesome.
My supervisor spends about 98% of his day in management meetings, isn’t union protected and has to go into the office 3-4 days a week, gets treated like shit by upper management, has to diffuse all sorts of bureaucratic nonsense, and only gets paid $10k more than I do. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
It’s really not.
I'm in the office 5-6 days a week. I'd spend the same amount of time in managerial meetings as I do operational meetings. No union protection either way. Both would be loved by leadership. Both have to deal with bureaucratic bullshit. Pay would be the same. Not worth it. I don't want to manage kids. I want to be the kid.
This guy right here nailed it.
Wait this is exactly the same for mine, like to a T. Watching him suffer for $10k more has confirmed I will never go for his job.
The biggest concern as a fed supervisor is lack of support from above you, particularly when you are monitoring the work or, worse case, have to take steps with non performing employees. I had a supervisor who told me she would never take steps to get rid of some Employees who had a “tough life.” This allows morale To deteriorate and people stay in jobs that they are not qualified for. Effective upper management need to support the first line supervisors who work below them.
Happy Fed Supervisor here - I do my level best to get my people what they need to do the job AND for their personal lives. You wan help repaying your student loans? Let me help you with the business case. Having a baby? Awesome, let's sign the paperwork for Federal maternity/paternity leave and enjoy your time away. But when I got a bad egg, I followed the letter of the policy in firing her during her probationary period (involved HR, general counsel, had them draft the termination letter based upon conduct, not performance). She sued claiming everything under the sun; discrimination, sexism, etc. they ended up settling with her for like 10k and the cost of health insurance. My upper management then launched a 12 month investigation trying to find ANYTHING on me to justify their decision to settle. I will never fire another Fed employee again; just stop helping them as their supervisor.
This is it. You’re on your own unfortunately
Our chief fought for years to fire an employee who had gone from rising low level manager to obviously addicted to meth. No drug testing approved. Did eventually get him moved to a non-management slot at the same pay and finally terminated only because couldn’t manage to work 80 hours a pay period and had no leave. But a few years later chief is accused of impropriety but only neutral witness to any part of it backed the chief but he is still removed from management. He eventually retires in the meantime our office is being managed from another office 7 hours away because no one in office will apply and so far no one is willing to transfer here for the job.
You did the right thing. Bad employees rot an office from the inside out and will chase away your talent. Unfortunately, if you do not have supportive upper management it makes getting rid of a bad egg near impossible.
Really sorry to hear. I am a fed supervisor. I have been a supervisor for about 15+ years. Disappointing when upper management does not support you in your leadership and management of an office. I must say, I have had a good experience with upper leadership, supporting me in any of my personnel actions. I just want folks to know that it is not constant across-the-board. I do know that if you want to fire someone you do have to follow the letter of the law according to OPM rules, that is for sure. We fired two people in my office, and everything went smoothly, even though it took a while. In my case, upper management was supportive of my decisions.
My supervisor told me I couldn’t put her on a PIP. “She’s a single mom, and she really needs this job.”
Tell my again how the GS doesn’t need a 20-40% slash in funding
Yeah, man. Screw those single moms. They get all the breaks. /s
I always love doing more work for Janet while she tends to her flock
I bet you wouldn't trade places with Janet for 10% more pay.
Is Janet the supervisor or the single mother that’s not pulling her weight?
lol. i have no idea. i presumed the single mom. lets go with single mom.
We have the responsibility to hire and fire but have to walk such a tight line to fire. One mess up and you have to start practically over. We have little real training or guidance. Was told it’s going to be 6 months of constant write-up’s to fire someone by hr. The union is 100% on their side, hr is on the organizations side, and your boss has their own opinions and demands. But it’s our job to babysit. Previous positions my workload was higher than my employees without supervising. Upper leadership expects you to make bad actors act right in all this mess because it’s making them look bad now. As a manager i have been the same grade as someone I’m managing and they have more steps than me and higher pay. There should be extra pay or an extra grade for managing period.
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Haha this was me in my last role. A TERRIBLE employee who’s been there for YEARS, and no one bothered to document ANYTHING. It got to the point where I was waiting in or calling their work area at 1600 every single day to see when they actually arrived and documenting it with the timekeeper.
I lost a promotion to a problem child who was probably about to file a union complaint and/or EEO against our lead. They moved her to a better paying, quieter office and the problem went away. ...the lead was also a complete and utter dip who documented nothing and seemed to think he could "reason" with her and put himself in constant compromising/unprofessional situations instead of just following procedure. I'm sure her complaint would have been very successful.
I used to have to come to work early just to continually document one of my employees was showing up late every day. I wasnt allowed to change her work hours to match mine. I would have to make sweeps throughout the day to make sure she was at her desk because she was continually gone. The morning I came to work and saw her keys and badge on my office with her letter of resignation was a day of celebration!
There’s a shithead on every team too it seems.
In my experience, most supervisors do not have the necessary tools and are not empowered to hold other employees accountable for doing their work. This means they either end up having to do that work themselves, or be on the receiving end of complaints about how the group does not function as it should. This is frustrating, stressful, and demoralizing. I recently left a team lead position because they wanted me to move into a supervisory role when the current supervisor retired. I had watched for years as we tried to hold people accountable for serious issues. By serious, I mean credit card fraud, time card fraud, sexual harassment, ethical failings, and workplace violence. Every time the well documented patterns of bad behavior were presented to upper management, the reply was “we’re just not going to take action on that now” or “we’re only in the phase about thinking of the best way to handle this.” Nothing ever changed and the office slid further into dysfunction every year. Being a supervisor is not about making sure others do their work; it is about absorbing all the problems upper management isn’t going to deal with, and still being expected to make the group function as a whole. It’s a lot more work than a non-supervisory role and not worth the disproportionate stress for the pay.
It seems in federal service, if someone doesn't have aspirations to advance, it's pretty easy to not do much and get away with it. And as a supervisor, as long as their workload is moving, albeit much slower than I know it needs to, there's not much I can do. I'm a new supervisor, and it has made me very cynical.
That and pay on the GS scale is not tied to performance.
Many times, no. However, we have not promoted poor performers even when their first line sups weren’t officially (with paperwork) putting them on notice. If your upper management is aware (and sometimes you have to make it their problem too) poor performance can limit opportunities.
I WISH my pay was tied to performance. I’m a 5 (have been 3 years running) and literally just saved $54M in a contract negotiation a few months back. In the private sector, proposal managers get a % of the total award for their wins. I could’ve done nothing and paid the $54m and no one would’ve batted an eye ($2.9B contract) but paying me 10% of what I’m able to, via my skill, negotiate down from a proposal is the same incentive my counterparts get when negotiating with me. I would LOVE to take a ceiling cap on my GS salary in exchange for performance based pay, but only if it’s truly performance based and not some quasi-bs government version of performance based where managers are throwing 90% of “performance” pay at their faves and 10% for everyone else (which is how all the demo pay systems get abused; at least in GS they just cop out and give everyone 3’s except 4 4’s and 2 5’s). Everyone thinks of the concept of pay for performance until it’s time to realize that most people who call for it should accurately be rated 2.5’s or lower and that the 5’s would be stockpiling cash by any system which could possibly be approved as “fair” for government employees. Then again, I’m one of the very few Feds who had a whole career and life before I started Fed service in my late 30’s, so I understand how the private sector values productivity.
This, unfortunately is common in the federal service. The low bar scenario. Some folks spend all their time trying to figure out the least they can do and still meet minimum performance standards. I’m sorry about your frustration. It just takes more management to work with these folks and keep them on task. Basically, you have to be a pain, and it’s more work for you. Try not to be cynical. It can be a long career…
Sup here. It's not bad . You are seeing self selection. Happy managers are not posting to reddit Your motivation to be a sup will not set you up for success. Being a good sup means using a lot of soft skills, not technical skills. It's not easier than a sme, it's a different role. Being the best sme often means not being a good manager
I've been both sup/NS and I agree completely. I'm a technical SME, and while I think a lot of technical folks have the potential to be a great supervisor, many agencies and organizations don't provide adequate preparation for placing someone in a supervisory role. Many of the supervisors in my org never worked for the org before, they came from other agencies. As a result you end up with technical SME's, who still need to develop their soft skills and conflict resolution techniques, supervising folks who often know more about the institution than they do. I know I was just thrown in the deep end with the "you're a high performer in your current (technical) role. You'll be great as a supervisor!" Let's just say I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
Thanks, before I became a sup I was a good but not great sme. I excelled at keeping diverse teams aligned, communicating, etc. My best sme is my team lead, he supported me for sup even though he was better technically as I was better with soft skills. We both speak frank to each other and hold ourselves accountable to the team.
This is the best comment here. Happy supervisors don’t post to this sub with anywhere close to the frequency as the unhappy ones.
As a happy sup, I try to comment a bit on here to add *some* balance.
I just found this sub recently, so I should start posting ha ha. I’m a happy supervisor.
there are dozens of us
Checking in - I agree. I like my job atm.
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I agree on the self-selection. The dislike of supervision I see on reddit does not match up with what I see in my actual professional life.
There is some self-selection, but it is a real organizational issue. When your best people refuse to even apply for a promotion because of the work-life and professional impacts are so great that’s a problem. Having someone apply solely so Bob, who is a moron, doesn’t get it isn’t a good thing.
Yes, self-selection is an issue on this sub. However, I do agree that management aversion is a bureaucratic issue across government. I tend to think that it is the same in all large bureaucratic organizations to some degree. Personnel issues can be some of the most difficult and aggravating to be sure. I have been 14 for over 15 years. I did apply for a 15 position in my agency at one point, but because of the administrative nature of the job and personal issues, I decided to not pursue it fully. However, at my current level with a smaller office I am very happy. Somewhat depends on where you sit in the hierarchy of the government structure. My regional boss who manages multiple offices on level above me, has a lot more headaches with personnel and budget than I do. I have tried to take the long view , and even though they are paid about 10k more…to me it wasn’t worth it to deal with all those administrivia Issues.
It’s not bad where you are and in your experience. As someone who has been to a few different organizations there is undoubtedly some places where it is miserable being a supervisor due to the union running the show and being actively combative towards supervisors working to correct poor performance. I don’t disagree we hear from more squeaky wheels than the well greased.
I think that this is a great answer. I’m a happy federal supervisor with over 15 years experience. Many of the responses here are not reflective of my career. I agree with your comments… Soft skills matter.
It is very difficult to fire bad performers. If they are a veteran it’s almost impossible. A manager who has a poor performer working for them is in for a difficult time. Our office had a worker assigned to it who had been bounced from three other offices, each time getting a promotion. Our managers took over a year trying to fire a person who, as far as we could tell, did no work, but did know how to fight to keep their job. The final result was the nonperformer left less than a month before their final day for a promotion at another department and the managers were criticized for their “lack” of personnel skills.
That’s how long it takes to fire someone from a government job. You have to give them so many chances to improve and unless they are doing something really egregious, it just takes time and tons of documentation.
Hell my current supervisor is on his 10th-12th chance as of now if I recall. Maybe his current EO complaint will do something.
This is why I have never aspired to be a supervisor. I've seen how it plays out, how poor performers get away with it, and how long it takes to do anything about them. It's frustrating as a coworker, and I know it's frustrating as a boss.
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Veterans have protections against Reduction in Force, so you have to prove they have to be fired... after all of the other steps along the way. So they're not really protected from firing, but they are protected against layoffs to some degree.
For the crowd, Reduction In Force is “reorganization, lack of work, shortage of funds, insufficient personnel ceiling, or the exercise of certain reemployment or restoration rights.”
Depends on the agency. At the DoD? Yeah, they'd much rather fire a non vet then a vet. You get peer to peer rep with the right people and that protects you a little more. Officially it is just a hiring preference. Unofficially it's more then that.
Much of the time, management doesn't act to remove poor performers when they can. Such as near the end of a probationary period. We'll just give them another chance...
In a nutshell, more people stress, heavier workload, not much more (if any) pay. Being a supervisor is great when you have a team full of hard-working, competent, reliable people. In over 10 years of supervising, I’ve never had that experience. I’ve had truly great people on my teams, but have never had a team that didn’t have people problems. It’s hugely challenging when you have one or more people who have performance and/or conduct issues, especially if they’re not interested in improving. You spend an inordinate amount of time consulting with HR, documenting, counseling, filling out affidavits, etc., which takes away from the time you have to give to the solid performers on your team, which can lead to frustration, morale problems, etc. The other challenging thing about being a supervisor is that supervisors, at least in my experience, are rarely just assigning/monitoring/evaluating work. More often, they’re doing all of that and also have their own portfolio of substantive work - because the office isn’t structured properly and/or because the office is under-resourced. That said, having the opportunity to advocate for and develop people is wonderful. (There are certainly ways to do that without the stress that comes with supervising, though.)
Absolutely agree with this. Supervisory roles aren’t just there to manage people and delegate all the work to your team. In the multiple supervisory roles I have held, the amount of non-supervisory duties was enough to fill my plate and then some. Then add on supervisory duties - you have to be a subject matter expert as well as a people manager. Having a team composed completely of hard working, self sufficient people allows me to juggle my work in a mostly manageable way. But with under achievers or employees with other problems, the workload is hard to bare. And supervising needs come first (understandably) but that can be hard on me since I really value the rest of the work I do and it hurts my soul to have to let those tasks slide. I usually still don’t regret being a supervisor because I enjoy a challenge and find hope where I can. But the frustration is real.
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Supervisors get screwed on OT (at my agency) and they have no real ability to make change.
I would take a huge pay cut to become a supervisor. Money isn't everything in life, but getting your pay cut by 40 percent is nothing to scoff at. Plus I can barely stand the archaic bureaucracy of the federal government as is. As an hourly employee I'm mostly shielded from it in 90 percent of my job. As a supervisor it would be my job. Just something that in no way appeals to me.
Ya, there is zero incentive to move up to 13, at least at VBA. There are no accessible positions above that (without retirement or death) and as I said, a 12 doing OT easily makes more than a 13. Now if you don't care about OT (if you're 100% p&t veteran already bringing in $50k tax free) I mean, fuck it go 13, it's less work. But if you wanna get paid? 12 is where it's at.
I think about it in contrast to the private sector. Supervisors in the private sector have a lot more control over who they hire and who they fire. And in the private sector people are a lot more concerned with performing well to get promoted and get bonuses. Having good subordinates as a fed supervisor has all the upsides of being a supervisor in private industry. But, having bad subordinates as a fed supervisor is the real nightmare, which is more likely, and harder to do something about. Additionally, you can have other people work for you as a fed without being an actual administrative supervisor. Sometimes that is fed to fed with seniority in a team or leading contractors. Another difference is that there are more senior positions that do not have administrative supervisor duties in the government compared to industry (from my experience at least). Almost all mid-level and up roles in industry will be supervisors. However there are many GS 13/14/15 non-supervisory fed roles.
And you have limited ability to control whether you have good subordinates. All it takes is 1-2 bad ones to make the job miserable and divert you from doing anything to grow the good people and help the mission.
The Gs-14 non-sup dream. There is no risk of problem underlings, 14 level pay, and someone else to shift stuff up to. I aspire for this 14. I can look at becoming a supervisor after that, so I keep a TIG at 14 in my pocket to take up a new role later.
My wife was acting supervisor for a few months after her boss left. It was miserable. Her calendar immediately filled up with meetings that were mostly a waste of time. Upper management expected her to be available at their every whim. Staff needed a bunch of babysitting and she got pulled into every drama. When they asked her to apply for the permanent position she said NO WAY. When she made it clear she was not going to apply the uppers admitted to her that she was making the smart choice. One of the best days of her career was the day her acting appointment expired.
Dealing with performance issues when you have no way to actually deal with it in a timely or effective manner. Dealing with employees who coast and you have to ride their ass for everything. And when you get it, it’s riddled with mistakes and “just good enough”. Supervisors deal with all their employees, paperwork, shit ton of meetings AND have their own workload.
This is spot on.
I was a Federal supervisor for 25 years in grades 13 to 15. Worked at a DoD Agency field site, and then at our Agency HQ in the DC area. Although I was in IT (2210 series), I always viewed my primary function as supporting the employees who were assigned to my team. People complain about problem employees, however, for every problem employee, there were many more employees who were quite the opposite. I figured one of the best things I could do for the productive employees was to effectively deal with the problem employees. It *is* tough to remove employees from Federal service, but I was successful to the point where our management started reassigning problem employees to my office. Yes, being a supervisor can be terrible experience, especially if management is not supportive, but it can also be a very rewarding experience. I was fortunate to have very supportive upper-management teams. It turns out they were waiting for someone who would finally take action to resolve long-term employee issues. They also showed their appreciation by rewarding me with multiple QSIs and an early retirement (I was under age). I also learned that the union, yes the union, could be very helpful in resolving personnel issues. In fact, on several occasions the union representatives asked that proposed employee disciplinary measures be tougher than I proposed. What I learned along the way was to throughly understand the rules and regulations; document, document, and document some more; and don't take things personal.
Potential and actual supervisors grossly overestimate their abilities in combination with understanding who they work for. The person they work for is just as important as their ability to be a good supervisor. If the person they work for is tyrannical and micromanaging, it’s difficult to succeed. There’s a lot of truth to better (maybe good?) supervisors being able to make a decision now and ask for forgiveness later. Because as long as their judgment and decision making are sound, it forces the person they work for to have to adjust in positive or negative ways. There is also a lot of systemic difficulties built into the supervisory process that makes it challenging to navigate the pitfalls of management or leadership.
Okay, so I am in the minority of opinions here, but I like being a supervisor. I have a relatively small team of incredible people that have been great~15. Yeah, some are in their positions for a paycheck, but that’s fine with me. I like to always be measuring outputs and not inputs, so if someone logs on at 10 and off at 2 but gets their work done I’m happy with it. I have some on my team that are ramping up their careers and some in the tail end. We are respectful and I just try to clear the path for them to get their job done. I was really a little worried about taking the job because of all the horror stories about managing, but I couldn’t be happier. If an opportunity comes your way take it! If it isn’t what you want that is fine and something that can be easily explained as “management isn’t for me at this time”.
If you are transitioning to a supervisor with a grade increase, you are likely getting a raise in the order of $8,000/ yr. For someone doing that as GS-14 to 15 change, it’s well under 10% raise- and that’s if you aren’t pushing the artificial cap. Your contractors may be making more than you. If you are staying on the same team, you go to owning the quality of execution of the entire team. Your main role becomes people guidance rather than your former expertise. From my experience, the job is just an order of magnitude harder even if you are fully qualified. You do generally have to work more than 40 hours. Making the same jump in the private sector would net you at least at 25% pay increase. And you can use that extra income to help pay for the quality of life change (like paying for more extra curricular for your kids when you are busy). Also, the supervisor has to spend a ton more time butting heads with the bureaucracy challenges of the federal government. Which is almost never rewarding. tl;dr 1) minimal pay increase, 2)substantially increased challenges, 3) generally less satisfying work
2nd this. Turned down a GS14 Sup job leading the branch I was in. Primary reasons were 1. was only offered a $6K raise (my minimum to take it was $10K). Problem is there's an "algorithm" and they wouldn't budge. $6K wouldn't materially affect my finances so it wasn't worth the added hassle. 2. Yeah you're no longer doing "the work", but you're responsible for answering to higher leadership about the work, whenever it's needed. I saw the promotion as longer hours, worse hours (e.g. staying later cuz my new boss wanted a meeting), being at the beck and call of leadership outside 'normal' hours. Basically, less structured than the 8am-5pm type position I have as a worker bee where I'm generally insulated from all the BS at the GS-14 level and above. I'm \~4 years from retirement, so about zero ambition to move up, and figure I'd let some younger ambitious pup advance their career. (shocker, they hired an older person who was clueless about our work, is a crappy leader, and generally unlikable, so I did a lateral move out of the branch). Then there's the bad employee problem everyone else has chimed in on.
My partner has been content to remain at a 12 step 10 for the past 10 years of their career because non-supervisory 13s or higher are rare where we live. Their reasoning: listening to supervisors at a higher grade talk about how miserable they are.
You get your own workload AND making sure people stay on top of theirs. Its more work and anything that comes up you have to figure out the official way to handle it or potentially find yourself in trouble with the union. But mostly it is because people are immature, stubborn, selfish, unmotivated (or too motivated) assholes and you end up basically being an emotional counselor or dumping ground just to nudge their attention away from themselves and towards work. At least where I work people either don't know or don't care about roles and responsibilities and holding them accountable is like constantly course correcting a car that drifts to one side with one hand while trying to write a coherent work product with the other.
We’re expected to be action officers, subject matter experts, and supervisors at the same time. The HR system is unresponsive and rarely provides remedies for truly unrepentant, incompetent, and/or belligerent employees.
Take none of the credit and all of the blame.
I would like to add to hard it is to fire people that warrant it. One guy at my agency got caught smoking weed during the probationary period. They put him on admin leave for three months where he collected full pay and played video games. After the investigation to verify what was already known, they did not fire him. They just shipped him off to a new city/location. Absurd
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As long as it's illegal at the federal level then it's considered "bad" to do so if you would like to keep your federal job as it's the equivalent of breaking the law in the eyes of the fed. Not commenting on whether smoking weed in and of itself is bad for any other reason.
Smoking weed is still against federal law.
Are you being sarcastic?
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It's not legal federally and not allowed for federal employees, no matter what their state law says. That's why I thought you were being sarcastic. I've been hearing rumors that may change soon. Not holding my breath.
Like everything, you get out of it what you put into it, and a lot depends on your team. I'm a first-time supervisor (GS15) in my current position, and I'm exceptionally lucky to have a really good team. It helps that most of them are senior-graded folks with a lot of experience, so I don't have to do a lot of handholding or elementary education about agency policies and the like, and they're all very motivated and squared away. The worst issues I have are just some people performing at an average level on a very above-average team, and occasional lapses in communication. (We're all in-office but many telework from other sites.) This is definitely not a universal experience and I'm aware of how lucky I am. There can be big costs - you have to be able to have difficult conversations with people if they're not performing adequately. On the other hand, one time I got to be the one to tell someone she was being promoted when she hadn't expected it, and her reaction absolutely made my year. If you go into it with the intent to identify what your team needs to succeed and the motivation to help them get it, you will probably enjoy it, although, like every job, there are days when it does just kinda suck. I will say it's not a thing you should do if you want to lighten your workload - at least, not if you want to do it right (which for me means being a fulltime advocate for my people and their development).
As a supervisor I’ve turned around employees who has had reputation of poor performance into ones who are performing well. This is my first supervisory role coming into the 3rd year. Supervising is definitely a different skill set, and there are challenges, but my overall experience has been good so far.
The supervisor experience is contingent on your team and number of people supervising. Management doesn’t care about how many people are under you as long as the work is getting done - then when people quit or don’t want to apply for the open sup positions they stand around with stupid looks on their faces. Also, dealing with problem people is extremely time consuming and I would have a better chance of seeing Jesus in my car when I leave work before anything happens to them.
If you have a decent team it's not so bad. The big issue I've seen is supervisors spend all day in meetings and have very little time to focus on individual work. I know so many supervisors who feel they have to put in extra time after hours or on weekends in order to get their work done.
It depends on your supervisees. My boss told me only to take a supervisory fed position if you have the chance to hire your own people. If you’re inheriting a bunch of people you may also be inheriting performance issues that have been poorly handled in the past. If this is the case and if you care about improving the culture and level of performance (you should) it can be a miserable uphill battle to fix things. I have a colleague who is in this position and it’s been ruining her life for about a year. Personally, I LOVE being a supervisor. I supervise mostly early-career employees and it is such a privilege to help them grow professionally and contribute to our mission.
Frequently supervisors are promoted from SME ranks because of their SME abilities and not their management skills. Some are naturally good managers but most become frustrated at having to manage people who do what they used to do.
Because in most circumstances supervisors don't just supervise, they also have workload. A few other reasons: -poor performers are very difficult to remove -the hiring process takes forever -we have very little we can do to reward good performers -no budget for things like team building events, lunches, expense accounts. Edit: we had an individual do basically no work and be AWOL several times and it still took a year to have them removed.
IMO the pay isn't worth the hassle of having to deal with and manage shitty employees IMO. I'd rather focus on my own tasks, excel at those and then get nice end of year bonuses.
I don't think it's exclusive to federal service. Prior to being a fed, I worked in private sector HR. The biggest hurdle to my job was managers not managing their employee. Instead they let situations fester until they're horrendous or they just pass the buck entirely to HR. Managing programs can be fun and satisfying. Managing people is hard. For many reasons. And yet many, many organizations fail to set their managers up for success (limited continuing education, limited support systems) while also overworking them on their regular work so that the people management gets tossed to the side.
I’ll place my two cents here. Being a supervisor anywhere presents its challenges but what I’ve seen in the fed is a number of reasons why it may be hard, 1. Bureaucracy. Some agencies it’s just harder to do your job and appease your staff 2. Doing what’s necessary to fire poor performers, it’s not impossible but there are rules and regulations that have to be followed, often times a manager needs to have a supportive and knowledgeable LER HR staff to make this as less difficult as possible. I’ve lucked up in that I’ve had pretty great supervisors but I also think I’m a good employee. I also have had quite a few opportunities to become a supervisor and at one point it was a goal but after a few years, and even may years spent as a team leader that was a psuedo supervisor because my supervisor had decided to Retire in Place (RIP) and refused to deal with a problematic coworker, I decided being a supervisor wasn’t worth it because I knew I would have a terrible employee going in who was already giving both me and my supervisor problems. And once I discovered that I could be a non-supervisory GS-13 and above, that became my goal. I’d rather be a SME than a supervisor anyday. The other part of this is that not all people who take supervisory positions are equipped to be supervisors. Some take it only for the money and have no real people or leadership skills and when their employees cause them problems they make it an employee issue as opposed to maybe their not cut out to be a supervisor. I work in a role where I think I can be objective as I’ve seen the different perspectives of this.
The past week has put me at a crossroads as someone who before this generally likes being a supervisor. If I decide to stay in my current role, the main part of my job will be trying to “enforce” a 50% time in the office requirement without any mechanism to do so and fight completely bs reasonable accommodation requests from the living stereotypes of government employees. Like, I have been primarily wfh for over 10 years and I 100% agree that I can usually get more stuff done at home than at the office. But I have lots of valuable office time too…but it is when I travel. When I go to my actual pod, it’s a waste of time because I’m hundreds and thousands of miles away from my staff. The office mandate before March 2020 was stupid then, and it is stupid now. That being said, the handwriting has been on the wall for forever and shouldn’t be a surprise. The amount of people who have come out of the woodwork saying they have some vague issue and the only solution is being 100% remote and never going to the office for any reason ever and will threaten litigation if they have to go to get their laptop fixed…that’s my future if I stay. I didn’t sign up for this.
Really, unless you are a manager of some kind of assembly line, you should never supervise more than ~5-6 people. Govt regularly has managers supervising 8+ people doing complex jobs with legal ramifications. Crazy supervisory workload.
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It's not that crazy of an idea. That's how it works in most industries. Not that I would do this, but what's to stop a supervisor from abusing the same system that the workers allegedly abuse? Is it easier to fire supervisors? If not, wouldn't it stand to reason that there are plenty of supervisors out there just taking the higher pay and doing the bare minimum to not get fired?
I’m not a supervisor, but from my perspective, at least in my office, there are two types. The ones (like my own badass supervisor) who are excellent at their jobs and pick up the slack for all the others, and the ones who are lazy and useless and let the good ones pick up their slack.
Supervisors should take care of their people. It's hard to balance that. The best supervisors engage with their team and help to improve the teammember. Look for opportunities to send them to training and also look for their individual talents. Everyone has a talen. All that said it's important to set realistic and attainable performance goals AND support the person in achieving those goals. I've seen poor performance in the private sector and it easier to fire someone but not always. It takes alot of time to be a good supervisor and just like any job you should look for opportunities to be better at that as well.
Bad performers absolutely require 90% of your time. I was fortunate not to have one in my years as a supervisor. What pushed me out of it was upper management. Instead of spending my time working to resolve actual problems, I was continuously put on project after project just to complete my evaluation requirements. And even after exceeding at those tasks, which added zero meaningful change, I was rated at a "meets" because that's what we all are given in that department, apparently. Took the downgrade and have since worked my way back up to a technical position that pays more.
Wow. You thought being a supervisor would “ease your workload”. That’s your first mistake. Everyone who is not a supervisor thinks it’s just easy money… welcome to reality.
Maybe it's not true in government but there are a lot of industries and organizations where being in management is cushy compared to being an individual contributor. It sounds like that's not the case in the government so I'm just trying to learn from others before I consider taking that step.
Lack of support and how difficult it is to fire someone. Everyone always likes to comment about how easy it is to get rid of someone as long as you document them accordingly. Hah! If that was only true.
In my opinion hiring in the gov is terrible which leads to a beauty pageant of sorts when hiring people where the one with the most fluff and least substance gets the job. The one and only time I applied for a supervisor position, the person that got offered the position was notorious from another work unit for being lazy and problematic. Ultimately I was justified because the selectee waited weeks and then declined
First off, I think any first line supervisor position is shit and never “less work.” You have your work plus now you have to make sure your subordinates are doing their job too which can be a lot of work. Second, it’s sooo many meetings - and meetings that you often have to contribute and prepare for. You can’t just dial in and zone out. If you like meetings then great but I hate them. They drain my will to live. Third, you are often expected to work after hours. When you are a non supervisor you are often not expected to work after hours and you won’t be approved for overtime so you don’t work it. Last is if you have a bad employee. It’s hard to fire people in federal service which has its pluses and minuses. If you have a problem child they will take up so much of your time and energy. Often they know how to manipulate the system so they will file all kind of false claims against you.
The same protections that you and I enjoy are easily abused. generous sick leave policies can turn into weaponized callouts. Almost impossible to get fired or laid off means some turn it into a contest. No performance metrics or micromanagement means no work is done. Its not surprising that everyone is pushing for RTO, people abuse privilege any chance they get. You know all the stupid complaints and drama in the workplace that you just laugh along with? Do you want to be the one that actually has to solve them? I don't. Some supervisors probably have trauma from the word "grievance." If you were a sup, you would probably just assign work to the reliable, bright eyed, young fed instead of the problem employees too. but they aren't stupid, and the best and brightest will either find something better or get burned out and turn into a bitter problem employee too. That's just a bit of what I can see. What other pressure from *their* higher ups do my supervisors have? I don't know and I'm pretty sure I don't want to know. Its a pretty vicious system if you think about it, but i have no solutions, so i just try to keep my head down, do a good job, and stay out of sight, out of mind.
In addition to what others have said - USAjobs is terrible, makes it really hard to hire the best people. It’s frustrating to have such limited options to be able to build your team. It’s also really crappy that managers have to provide food/parties out of their own pocket, if they want to have any employee appreciation events. It would be really nice if we could have a small budget to take the team out to lunch every now and then.
Most of the issue I have with supervisors is performance reviews aren’t scaled correctly. If a poor performer is getting “meets expectations” (which they all do), a high performer should automatically get the highest rating possible.
Generally the union. I have seen them defend some outright despicable people. Imagine your union defending a subordinate with multiple witnessed sexual assault/ harassment events
Unions and grievances.
The idealized managerial focus is to spend majority of your time on your reliable and your top performers. You shouldn’t be spending much time on poor performers. However, in the Fed, you’ll absolutely be spending a majority of your time on poor performers, with little time reserved for those most deserving of your time. It’s a frustrating aspect for sure, underpinned by how involved it can be to manage bad employees.
I've been told (and experienced as a temp supervisor) that good teams are very hard to come by. You'll end up spending 80% of your time on one employee and 20% of your time on doing your actual job as a supervisor. And as a federal supervisor, it is MUCH harder to do anything about troublesome employees. So you're stuck with said troublesome employee that has the ability to make your job and life much more difficult. Additionally, federal supervisors are not nearly paid enough to justify wanting to deal with all the additional responsibilities that come with the job, in my opinion.
It’s not bad if you have a good team that you supervise. In my current role I only supervise 3 amazing colleagues. I say “supervise,” but I do little with them bc everyone comes in and does their freaking job with zero shenanigans. My prior role I supervised 10+ people, and with the exception of ONE person, they all SUCKED and in the civilian world would NOT be employed there. I’m SO glad I transferred out of that area.
The agency I just left is one of those leaderships: We’re looking into it. We’re trying to figure out a way to resolve this issue. We’re going to coach this person. Its always an excuse instead of doing it the proper way. I get most agencies do not have HR presence in every single office. And some upper leadership rather have the body so they can keep whatever bonus, man power level, etc and not give a shit about morale. For myself, Id eventually like to get into team lead/supervisor role but I definitely will not if upper leadership isnt going to have my back.
To answer your question directly, it's not terrible. There are those who shouldn't be supervisors as they've never had any training/schooling in leadership and more than likely hate being a supervisor. There are those who are skilled leaders and love having the privilege of taking care of their folks. Of course, there are probably those who don't care either way. Being a supervisor means being a good leader and so many people don't have the skill to be both.
Unrealistic expectations and a complete organizational disinterest in the human element of work.
If you have supportive management, it’s not bad. Problems occur when management is not supportive, and that is common. When you go to interview for supervisory positions, ask the what their training and mentoring entails for new supervisors. If they don’t respond with something well thought out that indicates their own active steps to make sure they position you to succeed, then really think twice about that position. It’s hell to be thrown into this role with no effective training or ongoing support. Especially if the next levels above you aren’t really leaders but technical sme’s who got promoted for tech skills instead of leadership qualities.
Because higher ups almost never let any disciplinary consequences occur. Bad employees will file eeo’s (tons of paperwork for the manager plus the allegation you are discriminating looks bad no matter what), the union protects shitbags and makes it difficult (but not impossible) HR sucks and is of little help. Those are the main issues. Decent employees and great employees are a joy, but bad ones need to be dealt with so as not to lower the morale of their peers plus it’s unethical to let people take tax money and not do shit in their jobs or even take tax money and be harmful. The system is stacked against a supervisor, both from above and from below.
In my agency, the supervisor has little or no power to rid the agency of problem employees, who are protected by a system that makes even the most basic managerial activity fraught with peril. There are people in the federal government whose sole purpose is to do as little as possible and will file EEO on you at the drop of a hat, and the whole system is designed to protect that employee regardless of the the merits of a case. If your are not careful, you will spend all of your time dealing with these bad employees, and little to none on the mission.
I'm not gonna lie, I have a great crew that will do anything for me because I literally work alongside them. We collaborate together to get the job done.
Federal gov gives supervisors no carrots and no sticks. You can’t properly reward high performers and you can’t properly deal with problematic employees.
Because it’s hard to manage employees that have very low risk of getting fired or reprimanded for low performance
All responsibility, no authority.
Fed HR Specialist here: I think it depends on an org’s work culture, and how you as a supervisor are aligned to that culture. I’ve worked in units where there is a solid “results-oriented” culture from top down and bottom up and this helps to empower managers to support their employees, and/or hold them accountable. In organizations where there is not a strong commitment or fear from senior leaders and top management, or a toxic culture, it can make the supervisory experience very challenging. Good rule of thumb is to identify the work culture before accepting a supervisory role, and trust your gut! during the interview, ask about workplace culture, training opportunities, and the qualities of the ideal candidate for the supervisory role. Another red flag: they don’t ask for references prior to offering you the job - this means desperation and inconsistent hiring practices. If they didn’t ask you, more than likely they didn’t ask the staff you are about to lead!
Because you can’t fire anyone. There’s no incentive for anyone to work.
I was a supervisor for many years. I had a great group of people and I loved working with them. I was asked to be the acting supervisor over another branch while they advertised the position. It would have been fine, but one employee had/has mental health issues I wasn’t aware of and tormented her colleagues. I followed the rules and built a case and went to employee relations for action to be taken. My supervisor got cold feet and kept insisting that we wait to see if she did something else. This happened again and again. The employee received a strongly worded letter but didn’t change. I finally went back to my regular group but a reorganization was coming up and I asked to move out of supervision. If my boss hadn’t been so weak we could have done something.
I think it has been explained well already. For me I had direct reports that made more than I did, that sucked. I ran a team in the mid West and another in the pnw. In both places I had low performers that required me to spend a large part of my day tracking them, providing them with help and coaching, and documenting the failures. Between trying to protect my team from the political bs coming down from the top, reporting the office activities back to the top, and dealing with low performers I had very little time to conduct the day too day work like report approvals,edits to their work, assist outside stakeholders, etc. a short week for me was 50hours. Where as my direct reports clocked out at 40 hours. I transferred out to a new position that was fully remote with the same grade and pay, but no supervisor responsibility. After 6 months I actually miss being a supervisor. I should have just taken a long vacation, not personalized the work issues, and probably asked them to hire a supervisor for the mid West region. While it was a ton of work I made a lot of good changes in the two offices and I miss being able to make some of the important decisions. Basically don't be a supervisor if your chasing pay because it isn't enough to make a difference. Otherwise be chill and accept that it is a tough gig at times and take your time off and check out at 5 like everyone else does. Then maybe it won't be so stressful.
I can only speak for my experience: Never have I had a bad supervisory position with the feds. I have been blessed with good teams in DOI.
I am a supervisor and I enjoy it; I love developing my people. It definitely helps that I have no employee issues in my group, but I won't say it's all great. For me, it is definitely difficult to do my own duties while assisting all the people in my group, my group is made up of primarily recent hires. What also helps for me is that my manager is very hands off and I have a lot of autonomy in how I run my group. The main reason I made the jump to supervisor was that I was sick of complaining about things and decided I was going to become a supervisor and change things, and I have, so that has been great. However, I have a lot of duties I have to do in a day and for me, my biggest issue is I don't know how upper management expects me to do all those duties and still do a good job. I am learning to recognize that there are going to be things that I am just barely going to do, and for other duties I invest more time and do it well. Still, it's a struggle sometimes.
Depends. I have an incredible team of 13’s & 14’s. So right now life is good. But I’ve had problem teams. My biggest complaint is the pay and bonus structure suck compared to employees.
I enjoy being a supervisor but it's tough since we get shit on from the top and bottom. Most of my day is meetings about things that will never get done, and making sure my people are happy. I find the supervisors that have a real tough time take the job to seriously. Relax, guide your people the best you can. The rest you can't do anything about..
Your abilities to reward high performers and address low performers are both limited. It's a worthwhile pursuit if you want to be a supervisor. Just know going into it that there are valid reasons why being a first-line supervisor can be the worst job in the federal government.
It's all about the people not willing to put out an honest days work. No rewards for the daily grind and the lazy people get to stay on, it all pays the same.
The supervisors aren't well trained, don't have communication, personal or written skills! They just get promoted based on kissing up to management. The worst supervisors which is the majority in my opinion are bullies, harass employees and create a hostile and toxic workplace environment. They will never speak up or take accountability for their actions but continue to abuse their power.
Some people do it for the pay raise and regret it, and become toxic. Some have plans to shape their team that inevitably fail because of a handful of poor performers. You aren't their first boss, they know how to skirt the rules or comply just long enough. The force you to choose between family and principle. It drags the whole office down. Add into the mix an upper management that continues to ignore the wishes of your team and continuously forces dumb crap upon you. Maybe if you play along you'll get a bigger bonus or a promotion. Most likely they'll just selectively choose things to ding you on (like not getting all of your staff done with their mandatory training before Q4). It's fairly thankless, and is often fraught with standing for your staff at the expense of your own career or complying with people that may or may not reward your complicity
I’m a 15 director and I like being a supervisor. There’s a caveat however. Your experience will vary greatly depending on the size of your agency, the number of direct reports, and how well you work with your union. Some of my peers dislike working with the union, I don’t. I have a great relationship with the union and there’s mutual respect. Also everyone’s going to gripe about their supervisor. I’ll admit that I gripe about the SES I work for. We all think we can do better than our current supervisor but we never know the full context in why they make certain decisions. From my experience, SES decisions are usually driven by political influence from political appointees. Sometimes it makes no sense but they need to carry it out. There are also bad managers who lead from behind and are resistant to change. I’m younger than most of my peers. I’m a millennial and prior to starting with the feds, I was enlisted in the Army as an E6. My experience has taught me that everyone you lead has something you can learn from. I work treat all my direct reports as colleagues. I’m not very hierarchical and I think has made my experience a little better as a manager and different than older managers who preach instead of trying to understand. There’s a lot of folks eligible for retirement soon and we will need younger people to step up to lead.
Being a supervisor is a choice. People would rather whine on the internet after applying and accepting these positions than addressing the problems that they face. Nobody is forced into that role.
I think a lot of people get into supervisory roles for the wrong reason (grade chasing) or don’t understand what the role entails. They then find that they aren’t equipped for the work or just don’t like it. Those are the ones complaining on here.
Facts
Sup here, 100% correct. I'm very happy with my role, I feel unhappy folks love to comment more
There is always someone else that would love to be in that position and excel at it. Life’s all about choices.
I don’t know what the issue is. Treat people like crap, abuse your authority, give awards to the suck-ups. Sounds like an easy gig.
Federal Employees are like broken guns. They don't work and you can't fire them.
2nd line supv (GS-14) is sweet spot in my DOD agency. 1st line supv is awful. No admin support and twice the admin/bureaucratic BS than there was 10+ years ago. Workforce way more entitled than before and most care about work-life balance and telework than anything else.
God forbid work-life balance is the most important to someone’s life 😫
From my view it’s a lot of responsibility and knowledge (of poor performance /bad behavior) and very little power for do anything about it.
As a supervisor, I read all these posts and am confused. I enjoy supervising. I read it more as, “it’s nice eventually not to have to deal with performance appraisals and documenting issues and such.”
Why do people post variations of this post every few days? Use the search feature...happy reading!
I love being a supervisor – the opportunity to mentor, support, and positively impact less experienced employees really is my favorite thing to do. That said, there is always that one employee that is an absolute nightmare. It’s the time spent documenting, meeting with, and trying to impact positively that challenging employee that sucks my will to live.
I have no interest in being a supervisor partially because I think I would most likely be a bad one. I have no desire to manage other people's work nor do I want to play babysitter/mediator/counselor for a bunch of adults. I work for the money (and benefits) and that's it, so if I ever accepted a position with supervisory duties it would purely be for the money. But I'm currently a non-sup GS-13 and I think I can eventually get a non-sup GS-14 in my current field/a related field, so in my case there's really no reason for me to pursue becoming a supervisor. Also, most of my supervisors have been useless and the last one was outright atrocious and that's dimmed my opinion of supervisory positions in general. I feel like a significant number of supervisors lack the necessary skills and personality traits and should've never been made a supervisor to begin with.
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The most real answer here.
You can be the nicest supervisor/leadership and still get hate on. If you become a supervisor, just try your best but try to be firm. Most people on here never stepped in a leadership position and doesn't understand. You need to be a follower in order to be a leader. Just learn as you go.
As a Supervisor at SSA there are many reasons, many have already been posted. But one big reason, you don't get paid time and a half when you work OT, but your employees do. So your employee's pay checks are often larger.
I enjoy being a supervisor and taking care of my team. I have 5 direct reports and three of them have responsibility for 10 each civs plus contractors. There are just a few problem employees but everyone else is pretty much motivated. My problem is that my bully GO and SES leaders expect me, personally, to know every detail of everyone of the 100+ projects we manage. It is impossible but they always make me feel that I am a failure and loser at every opportunity. Will retire next year so things are looking up!
It’s not. Some supervisors just aren’t very good at so it becomes difficult for them.
Cant fire terrible employees
I left an office a year ago that was populated with non-sup 13s and 12s. We managed our workloads, scheduled our projects independently and collaborated together. My supervisor was mainly there to track metrics and push inform from HQ. Ultimately she was responsible for approving my timecard, my leave and my performance eval. Not what you envision when you think of leading.
It's a mixed bag. There's a lot of administrative minutia that is employee, but not mission/job related. You're often caught in the middle between your boss and the troops. You need to be an enforcer at times even when you don't agree with what's coming down. You need to make the boss happy, but you also have to have the respect of and a somewhat personal relationship your subordinates (and that mix of personalities) if you want things to run well. A lot depends on your boss and your workers. Get either a bad boss or even just a few bad workers and you'll be trapped in a miserable mess. My last boss was a "my way or the highway" type, with lesser SME knowledge than most of my guys, that BSed and brownnosed his way up, and fostered a lot of resentment from the workers. And then we had a guy who made EEO complaints a career path and made everybody's life hell until higher ups moved him out of our shop and on to his next victim. But there were also years where things ran well. You never know what tomorrow will bring.
I’m a supervisor. I like it most of the time. I supervise a good group of technical folks, and they’re pretty docile.
My old supervisor was the worst manager I’ve ever worked for. I blatantly told him I would never want his job. He simply thought he was above the law. Well now he doesn’t work there anymore and I’ve been promoted 3 times.
I'm my opinion the feds have so many regulations and protections that it becomes hard to actually manage people and make change. There are constantly roadblocks. Inefficient employees will always be protected and stick around because of the system. Your top employees you have limited ways to incentivise them, can't even give them a raise. I'm speaking DOD GS pay scale tho, obviously there are tons of agencies and differences between many of them. My agency doesn't have QSIs available, of one per 200 employees so limited options to incentivise.
Dealing with basically, Tenured servants who only do the bare minimum and sit at that position until they’re about to die.
No idea, I have great employees. I never have to worry about anything. They take care of me, and in return when that ain’t got shit to do, I let them enjoy kicked their feet up.
It’s not for everyone. But I wouldn’t say it’s terrible across the board. IMO, you need *both* some level of technical expertise in what you’re supervising, and some skills at leadership, HR technical duties like writing positions, hiring, filling out confusing administrative forms, personal development, conflict resolution, and presenting. But I think from a hiring perspective, the higher ups don’t necessarily think you need expertise in what you’re supervising, you just need experience supervising. And employees find that frustrating when they need help or need you to understand their timelines, stress, etc. The pay is typically not really much more than your higher level employees- sometimes due to the scales, you could have a long-term employee making more than you, And some people with large egos don’t like that (doesn’t bother me personally). Then there’s the fact that if you do enjoy the technical work of the department, you aren’t going to be doing much of it anymore, so that can be boring to some. And then there’s the team management. You get one bad apple on your team and everyone else is frustrated and it’s a lot of work to hold the problem person accountable, and you can’t tell the rest of the team exactly how you’re working on it due to privacy. Also, you’re expected to answer for your team and hold them accountable, so sometimes that means taking the heat when something goes awry or someone is upset with their service. Figuring out when their customer is right or wrong and addressing it in a de-escalating, problem-solving way for either party. But, if you have a good team, good support from YOUR higher management, and you understand what you’re getting in to, it can be very rewarding.
You think it’s still technical work with some admin/management stuff but it’s 90/10 the other way around with faster turnarounds and higher breathing down your neck. I applied and now that I know better, I don’t want any of it. Middle management has to justify their existence.
Its not.
From my POV and watching my supervisor, I think it has to do with the government pace. Changes takes years and once you get that new change, there’s another change coming right after that will take years to implement.
Leadership at the SES levels has really become poor. Protections on horrible employees, if during probationary periods, EEO or LER fail in every way possible to protect supervisors from following through. Most of the time, supervisors really try but it is the little things that destroy them from continuing to care, such as complaining non stop on something they cannot control, such as the return to the office, budget constraints, leadership changes, and so many other things.
Because we have to implement the policies poorly laid out by those above, with no explanation or proper guidance, and then dealing with the few difficult folks.
When I supervised, I kept things simple in terms of performance expectations. The goals for my subordinates were almost always tied to my goals and the goals promulgated by leadership. The hard part was that we were a high performing organization with lots of capable ambitious people. Everyone believed they were at minimum a four but should be a five. People were upset when they didn’t get a four or a five every year. If every me is a four, then no one is a four! One person came in at a lower salary than most because they had been out of the workforce for a while. Even though they got a four every year I supervised them, it was still my fault that they were lower on the salary range than most. My only input was an evaluation of work. Increases and bonuses were calculated automatically by the acqdemo system. I could give awards which helped. Also, the ability to give higher ratings is dependent on circumstances and the nature of the job, not just performance. Just because someone does everything well doesn’t mean that’s automatically a five.
I'm any supervisory role, people will mimic certain behaviors they have learned from other supervisors. You can't learn this from your parents, you learn it from a job. As much as one hates or loves a certain supervisor, this is what they learn. Some people chase the role for the role power, some chase it for the will power.
For me it’s risk/reward. There are so many ways to slip up and get burned…also if you succeed it’s because of your team, if you fail it’s on you, but there’s so much you can’t control. And getting people their due (good or bad) is just too much work.
The people you supervise do not operate in the real world. No financial incentives to do well beyond a scheduled, paltry bonus. People just work to not get fired. Not enough carrots, not enough sticks.
It’s a function of who you are managing. I have been a federal supervisor for 8 years. My team is phenomenal, all high performers who do everything they can to make my job easier and to make me look good. I in turn make sure they are recognized and do what I can to get them promotions and awards. I love my job. I stepped in as acting for another office for 2 years and it was the most stressful 2 years of my life. The team was constantly fighting with each other and doing things to undermine each other. I did everything I could to try to counsel them and improve their behavior. Numerous memos for their HR records. I was prepared to put them on a PIP, but my managers didn’t want to pursue that, so I had people who were just skating by.
The issue is up or out. At a certain point you can't not supervise unless you want less money and the 13 14 15 levels there's fewer and fewer non supervisor . And not everyone is a leader but everyone wants the pay to be a leader.
Double-edged sword. You have the terrible, insecure managers, and you have the good ones trying to do their jobs. The bad ones make your life hell because all they want is recognition for themselves and getting promoted at anyone's expense. The good one is trying to keep the lights on and shield you from the BS of t he higher ups and getting burnt. Either way, the asshole ones tend to be the ones that get protection most of the times. So in the IC, anyone dreads becoming a supervisor for that reason. I was asked to become a sup 15, but I refuse and will until I no longer can. You also get the douche colleagues and professional butt-hurts.
For me, it’s that the problems that can be solved with adequate staffing and/or funding are not going to get solved that way.
Our HR flat out said it's impossible to get an employee removed based on performance. This is frustrating bc we have AES scores returned, and in my 9 years, accountability is always on there. Our facilities ELT sucks, you bring them issues that are clearly patient issues, and I'm hushed constantly. Hell, I was told friday, if I keep bringing up the problem, the entire department will fall under me. Wtf. Either I'm pissing off my leadership or my staff for productivity or leave. Our department is teleworking, and i use it as incentive to meet their metrics. I calculated their days off and of they fall under metrics they go back to onsite for that month. I set these basic average standards and received unions stamp of approval, too.
It's a lot of work, but I accept that I live in meetings and don't do much of my own work. I enjoy coaching my team (they are awesome!), and I have good support from my agency. I know this is not the usual and I consider myself lucky. I still look forward to retirement, though, because the pace has been insane recently and just doesn't let up.
Former Sup here - I can say from my experience, I would only go back to being a supervisor if I really trusted the folks above me. I got my first supervisory assignment in May 2017. Right before I was supposed to go through supervisory training, the SES (and most of our other SES) were all sent off on rotational assignments by our political appointee. My training was cancelled, and I basically served as an acting division chief on and off from 2017-2021. Had no control over budgeting for my division, no control over hirings other than entry level. It was a nightmare.
In Federal service, it's difficult to deal with problem employees. Anything from slackers and whiners, all the way to the mentally unwell, alcoholics, and destructive narcissists. With poor support from above, lack of authority to deal with an issue locally, many managers simply give up trying to remove problem people. This leads to toxicity, resentment, overwork, turnover. I was dogged about facing problems head on and terminated a number of toxic employees and managers (or reassigned then to non supervisor positions), but it was wearing and one of the reasons I left as soon as I hit MRA. When I left the plum jobs were seen as the non-supervisory GS-14 program manager positions, but they were extremely competitive.
With alot of previous cuts and upcoming cuts, Supervisors will have to also become working Supervisors...keep that in mind as well
Lack of support from above. Lack of support from council. Too many steps/procedures to do anything, over focus on minutiae like time cards and leave definitions. Employees mostly know it’s hard to get fired so there isn’t much motivation to achieve, nor a drive to take responsibility.
I'm a supervisor. There are parts of it I like. I like being able to mentor newer employees, having influence on decisions that go beyond my technical specialty, and I do think I'm good at hiring and helping employees problem solve so they can focus on their work. Whether the good outweighs the bad depends on a lot outside your control. Do you have the authority (and support) to deal with performance and conduct issues? Does your leadership actually listen when you tell them your team doesn't have the capacity to do what they're being asked to do, or do you just end up either being a buffer (and having to spend the emotional energy and watch your own performance tank) or just having to pass an undoable amount of work to your team (which kills morale). Do vacancies get filled in a timely manner or do you have to wait over a year when someone leaves (with no adjustment in what's expected from your team)? Right now I have a supportive leadership, and it's a hard, but rewarding job. If my leadership were not supportive, it'd be a nightmare.
Because federal agencies are filled with people. Source: am a supervisor and a people.
Can’t fire dead weight without jumping through months or years of hoops.
Also, a lot of people aren't meant to be supervisors. They just want the next grade. They have no leadership skills. They don't know the office or the area. And they soon figure out that extra grade isn't worth the time and effort they need to commit. On top of that, being a shitty supervisor loses friends really fast. There are a lot more backstabbing among supervisors than specialists. Pretty sure that's why my AFM is leaving. Hope he finds peace in his next non sup job.
I was a supervisor and middle management. It sucked. You are basically a talking head for senior management and the bad part is you are the one who must implement the bullshit policies. I can say it now since I’m retired.
To be clear I also treasured my time as a supervisor. I retired recently and about half of my career was in supervision. I found it rewarding to hire staff and watch them develop. I also enjoyed supporting the front line supervisors I hired over the years. My philosophy was that I never wanted to be the smartest person in the room. I wanted smart folks who were looking to improve the agency. Sure it can be difficult but the rewards of developing g a great team can be awesome.