Technical expertise of Government workers LOL

[steppinthrax]

So, this is not really a surprise to me working in the IT contracting field (and business side) for some time now. Since yesterday I've been asked to look at a web app (C#.NET) that was created by a gov worker. She's been working on the thing for months. I've been in meetings with her while she talks about this again and again, anyway it's about 1 or two actual site pages and a Master page.

I learned this because she had to go away on a sudden vacation because of a sickness in the family that happened to land on the exact day that the app needed to go live. So when the app went live it wasn't working properly. So since they had no one else in the group that does .NET development, I was asked to look at it and in the process I had to pull her entire project from our source library and debug it.

So her super also decided to pull the code library too. He's not to technical, however he knows a thing or two to be dangerous enough and sometimes surprising at the same time. I'm looking at her application from the front end and it looks like a big fucking mess. She's utilized the GridView control (.NET) within the project and as a very poor implementation of the GridView. It looks very much like a junior level gridview with no finess and customization in displaying the data. As a result the gridview spans across the entire browser window way beyond two whole monitors requiring a scroll. She dosen't disable certain columns that don't need to be present or shorten columns by just providing a graphic. She utilizes no libraries like AJAX or Jquery to provide model popups etc. So when you hit "Edit" it actually edits inside the gridview which sucks in this situation. Also she tries to "pretty it up" by putting in graphics but dosen't make them transparent so they look like a box inside a black background and that bullshit. Besides the cosmetic and usability the application dosen't function properly. The apps job is to run a schedule of jobs and push them out to folders etc in various formats, well it dosen't run logged off as well as some of the jobs are not running properly. So the super discovers a couple of SQL statements that are actually coded into her program v.s. using a stored procedure. He finds errors with her query, so we actually have to change the query and deploy her app again.

This is what takes the cake and is funny as hell. The super comes over and asks me about a file in her project, it has a weird keyword in it. I'm going thru her code and saw it as well but didn't pay too close attention. Let's say (for this post) the keyword is LinFan.Jobs.StayAwake. So I google this keyword and in Google one site pops up. I go to this guy's site and he has a post on his blog from 2011 with some code in it. I click on his site to download his project and I found the same exact file in his project as well, code from code it matches what's on our servers. So I'm thinking oh maybe it's a common project file for the plugin she used. I go to the guy's site again and found his name is John Lin (not real name but you understand) and that this is his custom code. So we both realize that she ripped this shit off the web and didn't really do much to it.

Anyway sad thing is when she returns little will be done to her or tell her how dumb she is and everything will continue as normal. If I raise an issue with it I will likely lose my head in this contract. LOL.

 

[nakedfrog]

So, this is not really a surprise to me working in the IT contracting field (and business side) for some time now.

+1 for not a surprise

 

[dullard]

What does that have to do with government workers?

You could have titled it any of these and it would be just as accurate:
"Technical expertise of coworkers LOL"
"Technical expertise of people who have family LOL"
"Technical expertise of people who aren't assigned the right project LOL"
"Technical expertise of supervisors who don't do their job LOL"
"Technical expertise of women LOL"
"Technical expertise of humans LOL"

Since you can swap out the noun and be just as accurate for your situation, your choice of nouns seems to be biased and incorrectly jumps to conclusions.

 

[steppinthrax]

What does that have to do with government workers?

You could have titled it any of these and it would be just as accurate:
"Technical expertise of coworkers LOL"
"Technical expertise of people who have family LOL"
"Technical expertise of people who aren't assigned the right project LOL"
"Technical expertise of women LOL"
"Technical expertise of humans LOL"

Since you can swap out the noun and be just as accurate for your situation, your choice of nouns seems to be biased and incorrectly jumps to conclusions.

I've worked among gov workers for over 10+ years. They generally tend to be the least technical and lacking the most skills. They are also more likely to be the ones with personality/work/behavioral issues. I can write a book of stores for you on crazy shit I've heard and dealt with.

Point is if this occurred at a fully private organization, she'd at a minimal will be pulled off the project and put under a huge radar with a 2nd occurrence losing her livelihood.

I have a wife and 2 kids, we all of personal responsibilities that extend beyond work. I know many brilliant woman developers. Women and family have little to do with it.

 

[nakedfrog]

Point is if this occurred at a fully private organization, she'd at a minimal will be pulled off the project and put under a huge radar with a 2nd occurrence losing her livelihood.

Eh, depends, some places you really, REALLY have to screw up bigly to get the axe. We typically had to document issues for months in order to get the buy-off to show someone the door. Irritating.

 

[steppinthrax]

Eh, depends, some places you really, REALLY have to screw up bigly to get the axe. We typically had to document issues for months in order to get the buy-off to show someone the door. Irritating.

For gov or private?

 

[nakedfrog]

For gov or private?

Private. Same thing at the last place I worked, the typical thing was to move them into a different role if they kept screwing up.

 

[steppinthrax]

Private. Same thing at the last place I worked, the typical thing was to move them into a different role if they kept screwing up.

I guess it depends on the state. I live in an at-will state. If you have a large organization they might have rules they have to follow based on their line of work esp if it involves to goberment.

 

[Thebobo]

I've worked among gov workers for over 10+ years. They generally tend to be the least technical and lacking the most skills. They are also more likely to be the ones with personality/work/behavioral issues. I can write a book of stores for you on crazy shit I've heard and dealt with.

Point is if this occurred at a fully private organization, she'd at a minimal will be pulled off the project and put under a huge radar with a 2nd occurrence losing her livelihood.

I have a wife and 2 kids, we all of personal responsibilities that extend beyond work. I know many brilliant woman developers. Women and family have little to do with it.

I've worked in the government for 30 years and there are some sharp people and there are some not so sharp people, my office of course was the crème de la crème /flex. Also I've run into a lot of very stupid contractors and some sharp ones. A lot of one's perspective comes from ones preconceived biases.

 

[steppinthrax]

I've worked in the government for 30 years and there are some sharp people and there are some not so sharp people, my office of course was the crème de la crème /flex. Also I've run into a lot of very stupid contractors and some sharp ones. A lot of one's perspective comes from ones preconceived biases.

It's based on the rules for gov employees v.s. private. In the gov you can jerk around for a long time before getting fired. It's the reason why many people stereotypically say "You're safe" with a gov job. Your job is never going anywhere. It's the reason why you have gov workers working in the same place for 30+ years. With that comes complacency and all the negative things about an individual who knows they can't be fired and never brushes up on their skills.

 

[dullard]

I've worked among gov workers for over 10+ years. They generally tend to be the least technical and lacking the most skills. They are also more likely to be the ones with personality/work/behavioral issues. I can write a book of stores for you on crazy shit I've heard and dealt with.

Point is if this occurred at a fully private organization, she'd at a minimal will be pulled off the project and put under a huge radar with a 2nd occurrence losing her livelihood.

Having worked 10+ years each in both government and private jobs, I can say without a doubt that incompetence abounds equally in both locations.

 

[K1052]

Having worked 10+ years each in both government and private jobs, I can say without a doubt that incompetence abounds equally in both locations.

Yep. And if anybody thinks that such a person couldn't survive in a private corporate environment i can only say LOL.

 

[pete6032]

I've worked among gov workers for over 10+ years. They generally tend to be the least technical and lacking the most skills.

They are also poorly paid relative to private sector workers. The taxpayers get what they pay for. I worked in govt for a few years and got paid pennies on the dollar compared to what I make as a private sector government consultant. Government work generally is not very demanding and has little accountability.

 

[OutHouse]

They are also poorly paid relative to private sector workers

I dunno about that. have you looked at usajobs.com?

 

[steppinthrax]

I dunno about that. have you looked at usajobs.com?

Define what you consider as high paid and I'll tell you how much I make.

 

[Thebobo]

They are also poorly paid relative to private sector workers. The taxpayers get what they pay for. I worked in govt for a few years and got paid pennies on the dollar compared to what I make as a private sector government consultant. Government work generally is not very demanding and has little accountability.

Yea that depends what agency you work at and the what you're doing. I could tell you stories of when I first came to the government. Well here are a couple I knew of a boss that had a employe report to their house ever day to do yard work, work on his garage and watch TV and others taking government vehicles out of state to visit a car show lol. But those folks are long gone and it was some 30 years ago and there is nothing like that happening for decades.

 

[OutHouse]

Define what you consider as high paid and I'll tell you how much I make.

ok, lets start with your career and job title

 

[Thebobo]

Define what you consider as high paid and I'll tell you how much I make.

Pay scale varies widely depending on where the jobs is as well. All depends on the coast of living index in your area

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Pay scale varies widely depending on where the jobs is as well. All depends on the coast of living index in your area

This. I worked in the Govt sector for a fair while. Jobs that required Masters and pay $75k in DC don't impress me.

 

[steppinthrax]

ok, lets start with your career and job title

I'm a Software Engineer. I'm not w-2 but 1099 and corp2corp. I'm self employed and do work thru my company. My salary fluctuates depending on the situation. At the worse case I'm around $180K, last year I was around $242K. My goal is to get a nice DoD contract but it will require more maturity in my company. My life goal is $500K a year. And yeah I'm in the DC area.

So now if we look at Gov salary specifically the GS schedule, the highest salary a GS can make is GS-15 step 12 which I believe is NOW $162K. Now to get to that stage in gov you'd have to be working in gov for many many years, be old and have a lot of seniority or a vet/military.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I'm a Software Engineer. I'm not w-2 but 1099 and corp2corp. I'm self employed and do work thru my company. My salary fluctuates depending on the situation. At the worse case I'm around $180K, last year I was around $242K. My goal is to get a nice DoD contract but it will require more maturity in my company. My life goal is $500K a year. And yeah I'm in the DC area.

So now if we look at Gov salary specifically the GS schedule, the highest salary a GS can make is GS-15 step 12 which I believe is NOW $162K. Now to get to that stage in gov you'd have to be working in gov for many many years, be old and have a lot of seniority or a vet/military.

IT has a pretty unique relationship with govt work compared to other sectors, aside from maybe intel. You're far more likely to be able to find better paying jobs in the gov sector through contracting/pseudo-contracting as IT than staying as a GS. Not everyone enjoys that position.

 

[steppinthrax]

IT has a pretty unique relationship with govt work compared to other sectors, aside from maybe intel. You're far more likely to be able to find better paying jobs in the gov sector through contracting/pseudo-contracting as IT than staying as a GS. Not everyone enjoys that position.

I'm not GS...

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I'm not GS...

I know. Hence my statement that you'll probably be making more outside of GS work as IT. That doesn't follow for most other fields.

 

[rh71]

How long has she been in the role? Either way there's no excuse for ripping off someone's work.

I just started C# ASP.NET and have deployed my first project and I have to say it's such a PITA in terms of restriction. I'm used to ColdFusion web apps (yes, it's dying) which is so much more flexible and most importantly, to the point of what you actually want to accomplish (DB connection, email? 1 CF tag and you're g2g). It's only a web app which I've been doing for nearly 20 years and using CF I can churn them out like nobody's business. ASP.NET for web apps = too convoluted.

 

[brianmanahan]

I'm a Software Engineer. I'm not w-2 but 1099 and corp2corp. I'm self employed and do work thru my company. My salary fluctuates depending on the situation. At the worse case I'm around $180K, last year I was around $242K. My goal is to get a nice DoD contract but it will require more maturity in my company. My life goal is $500K a year. And yeah I'm in the DC area.

simple, just change 3 or 4 companies for your hours at the same time instead of only 2