Comments on: Top Talent Won’t Pick Pentagon for Pay

By: paul

paul — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:28:49 +0000

If it isn’t broke,don’t touch it!Where did that
matrix go? Too the impotent!

By: md

md — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:14:59 +0000

I find it difficult to believe that in today's economy there aren't qualified engineers and acquisition people to be found. I started out in contracting, moved to HR (hiring), and recently am back to an acquisition position. While in HR primary hiring I did was engineering and aquisition positions (QA, RM, IT). It seems to me they want the cream of the crop from colleges. Our best Civil Service employees are those with C to low B averages who aren't gobbled up right away by the large corporations. They are glad to get the pay, are eager to learn, and once in Civil Service we have only lost two of over 60 new hires in the past 5 years. The key is training, then experience, and ensure you have an incentive to keep them within civil service for a few years so they don't want to leave (i.e. FCIP hiring plans, tuition reimbursement, first job moving expenses, hiring bonuses, retaining bonuses, 6 months for first promotion, and opportunities towards Masters degree courses). Civil Service has the means and programs to entice the new graduates that equate to the corporations!!! The managers and HR personnel just don't want to put the effort forth to utilize the tools and programs we already have - it's easier to complain that we "can't compete" when we really can and some organizations do it successfully!

By: PrahaPartizan

PrahaPartizan — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:34:13 +0000

Cancel a few un-needed programs and you’ll find plenty of people who will be more than willing to take jobs with a one-third paycut. Who are we trying to kid. This has been going on in the non-military private sector for decades and all of the wannnabe militarists just think it’s fine. Tough that the neocon program begins to eat its own. Suck it up.

By: Gov Preston

Gov Preston — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 22:30:35 +0000

A review of the book “The Warping of Government Work” in Federal Computer News shines a bright light on one reason government performance is lacking in areas.

http://www.amazon.com/Warping-Government-Work-John-Donahue/dp/0674027884/

EXCERPT from “The Impact of pay disparities”:
http://fcw.com/articles/2008/07/24/kelman-the-impact-of-pay-disparities.aspx

The book is organized around a simple idea. In the past 20 years, a major change has occurred in the distribution of earnings in the private sector.

With growing demand for knowledge-intensive services, incomes for highly educated, highly skilled people have taken off. At the same time, globalization has brought many unskilled people from developing countries into the international market, and competition has caused incomes for people at the middle and bottom to stagnate.

However, this change has not occurred in the public sector. Because of the strength of public-sector unions (at the bottom) and public hostility to high salaries for government employees (at the top), the government’s wage structure is now far more egalitarian [less differentiation, classless, equal] than its private-sector counterpart. That means blue-collar government jobs pay noticeably more than comparable ones in the private sector.…

That trend also means that professional, highly skilled jobs in government pay noticeably less.…

Donahue uses that observation to explain many of the ills facing government. To protect their safe harbor, employees create strong unions, which act to inhibit changes that would allow agencies to better serve the people.
END OF EXCERPT

Let me say it bluntly (too bluntly for some I’m sure): we are too often regulated and ruled by those of less intelligence who gravitate to government and public sector jobs where pay for performance is almost non-existent. Government performance ratings are still PASS/FAIL in many agencies (unbelievable). The implosion of the U.S. financial system in 2008 due to ideology and political correctness (while ignoring the risk mitigation inherent in sound underwriting and fiduciary controls) indicates that this lack of intelligence extends to elected officials as well.

Because government is a backwater for high-end employees, its effectiveness in handling complex tasks is reduced.

“Handling complex tasks” is a primary job requirement for most knowledge workers, especially management. Government pay scales should reflect the need for smart, multi-disciplined people and not skew the pay of those in lower level jobs when compared to private sector counterparts. Hiring and promoting people based on criteria other than demonstrated performance and experience is a recipe for organizational weakness and the inability to handle complex tasks — whether in government or the private sector.

June 2008 article describing poor DoD program performance arising from lack of systems engineering and poor pay compared to private sector: Pentagon battles a brain drain.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2008015902&zsection_id=2003905675&slug=pentagon25&date=20080625

By: mike

mike — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:41:03 +0000

SecDef Gates, General Cartwright and the Army need to completely revamp the Acquisition organization. Let DARPA and the indepndent DOD labs come up with new ideas and seek input from private labs, schools, etc and then move the REF organizations for each service to handle merchant (COTS) PROCUREMENT and only keep the PMOs for naval ships, fighters, bombers and tactical vehicles. Why does the Dod have to create hundreds and hundreds of program offices for the liitle stuff that can be purchased by buyers who can get requirements from the combatant commands. Also give the money to the combatant commanders and let them control the acquistion purse strings instead of letting the business side of the pentagon protecting their rice bowls. Old institutions need to be elimenated and only keep what is needed. The government should ban hiring of double dippers and hire those from industry whp know how to create, design, manage programs, build things and field them. Not retired military officers who just know how to take orders and add more personnel when they cannot get things done, done on time, etc.. Thirty years of insight have yielded what many on this site see, cut the acquuistion bureaus, stop the revolving doors, AND BAN POWER POINT CHART PRESENTATIONS, and bring in the actual hardware and show me the software code working…

By: Joseph P. Passaretti & Family

Joseph P. Passaretti & Family — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:07:38 +0000

When was a dollar sign put on serving your country ???

By: Hank

Hank — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:12:08 +0000

I worked the federal acquisition system from several sides in my 37 years as a Federal employee. I was GAO for 13 years and ARMY R&D for 20. I saw a lot of good results from both aspects. I witnessed seemingly great programs end on the scrap heap because they were taken over by unforseen events. I saw a lot of truely dedicted people trying to accomplish tasks never tested before and fail. Some failed because what was expected was not technically feasible at that time. However, I believe the decline in Federal Acquisition occurred when the government attempted to change the culture with “We are a business” and should act as a business. It does not fit and will never fit. The government is a completely different animal in the world of consumerism. The items developed and used for the military are not items average persons purchase in Walmart. There are no specific customers other than what Uncle Sam develops for itself and foreign sales. But under the attempt ot be responsible for their product, Program managers also lost sight that funds given to them for project use were not their own money. They forgot this was TAX PAYER funded funds. I experienced many comments of “This is my budget and No one can tell me how to use it”. That my friends was the end of accountable spending for DOD programs.
In addition, many contractors take advantage of Uncle Sam. They see it as a never ending stream of money and believe they can pad every aspect of a program to cover costs for failed endevors they had idea were around the corner when they signed on for a project.
Maybe it all has to do with the concept of Wall Street bonus money.
Wake up America, we are going to price ourselves right out of every market.

By: Colin Clark

Colin Clark — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:47:34 +0000

Mark C.,

You may be right about the incentives, but Congress remains extremely wary about providing a pool of money to the Pentagon to use for bonuses. They also worry about how you oversee signing bonuses and performance bonuses to ensure their proper use.

By: Gary M. Shuler

Gary M. Shuler — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:34:20 +0000

I 100% Agree with Aurora. We can grow our own. You can expand the recruitment to military retirees and transitioning military as well. Alot of us still want to serve and have the experience of working for the government. So many of us go to the contracting side because they pay better. The red tape of “getting in the system” also makes contracting more attractive. If they offer these internships to transitioning military, they will have a readily available pool of qualified Acquisition Pros that will be willing to stay for the long haul.

By: L Berry

L Berry — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:25:29 +0000

As a recently retired acquisition contract employee of USAF I can say that I would not accept a Civil Service position over my Contract position. The endless red-tape associated with being a Civil Service employee borders on insane. They take seasoned veterans and send them to questionable value training courses. Every acquisition professional has a core requirement for training. That is understandable and necessary. After that are continuous "career broadening" courses in quality, management, race, gender awareness etc. A large reason why the civil servant needs Contractor back-up is not their capability, but their availability. Somewhere along the way the leadership determined that the acquisition force didn't have adequate training. In fact, it was experience, not training they lacked then. The force is going through another phase of the lack of experience and Sec'y Gates sees the issue, but may not have the right solution. Classroom training can provide the basics of acquisition knowledge, but can never provide experience. Most of the Contractor professionals I worked with had a full military career prior to re-joining the acquisition force. They had the knowledge and experience and elected to go with a Contracted position to avoid the "required courses' and valuable time away from the job. The last 40 years of repeated "do more with less" has resulted in a lack of qualified bodies. As a contractor I was making 30-40% more than my civil service counterpart. I was often given hints to join civil service at a GS-12/13 position. That was a huge reduction in pay as well as freedom to do the job 100% of time. No mandatory Government "training, endless meetings and additional duties" to interfere with doing the job I was being paid to perform. So I always said thanks, but no thanks. Good luck in an attempt to solve the recurring issue of a qualified Government acquisition force.

By: Mark Calhoun

Mark Calhoun — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:20:25 +0000

There are a ton of acquisition officers out there that have either given up the profession and/or moved to industry where it pays more. If you offer the right incentives, they won’t have any problem getting the people they need. They just need to ensure that they budget the right incentives.…..

By: Rocky Shoals

Rocky Shoals — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:11:35 +0000

Why should it be any different for a retired government worker than a retired industry worker who takes a part time or even full time job with the government and their pensions are not offset by their government salaries? The annuities that we federal retirees have earned was based on over 30 years of being in the government workforce at salaries 25% lower than our contemporaries in industry. What the lifetime annuities accomplish is to spread the lifetime income over an additional 20–30 years (assuming we live that long)with the outcome being that the total integrated sum is the same as that of industry. Why penalize federal retirees twice; the first with lower salaries and then reduced pensions to offset federal employment after retirement. This is not rocket science folks. And as far as the services having insufficient budget I challenge that statement. They can afford contractors for vu-graph engineering and quite frankly prefer to use contractors than tasking their own employees. And why is that? Because that way they will have to take responsibility for the work that is done in-house by their own employees. Now they can just fire the contractor and blame the SNAFU’s on them. By the way most contractors that work for the government are former federal employees. Did they get any smarter or more proficient immediately after leaving government service? I don’t think so!

By: Tony Conner

Tony Conner — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:00:42 +0000

I worked as a subcontractor to the acquisition work force (NAVAIR PMA-260) and the problem often is the services know what they need, but lack the budget to do it. Other times they are in a high risk situation and have to go jump through so many hoops to justify NOT going to the lowest bidder, they simply award to the lowest bidder (almost always the worst choice).
The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) need to be overhauled before meaningful reform can take place.

By: Tim

Tim — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 03:00:38 +0000

With Civilian Retirees heading into the market, why not hire the Retirees from Lockheed, NG, and Boeing to work the system from the other side.

If you want to find low cost way to use them open Acq service centers in Arizona and Florida to reach the Retiree location.

The problem with all of this is that use of Retirees is only a stop gap measure for another 10 years or so.

By: John

John — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:22:38 +0000

Government hiring is increasing while the defense industry is destined to shrink..this is not rocket science.

All you get from these industry pundits is how all efforts to change the system will fail.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:42:27 +0000

“…with a little effort they can contact me and a thousand others like me that would come out of retirement to return to the work force but only if our annuities are not offset by our salaries.”

I guess I was wrong. Some people DO go into engineering for the money. It’s a pretty sure bet that nobody except you is stopping you going back to DoD or a contractor and getting involved again.

I mean…there it is, right there. You want to double-dip. You want us to pay you Social Security AND a full salary plus benefits.

By: Aurora

Aurora — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:24:06 +0000

Rocky Shoals. Good point. There seems to be a general reluctance on both the military and civilian sides of the (DOD) house to tape the retiree talent pool. It’s almost like “we’re in charge and we’re perfectly capable of reinventing this wheel thing on our own”.

By: Rocky Shoals

Rocky Shoals — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:31:06 +0000

And why then do they not reach out to those federal retirees that are Acquisition Corp certified like myself as a Systems Engineer with a Level III certification? OPM knows where I live and have all my records and with a little effort they can contact me and a thousand others like me that would come out of retirement to return to the work force but only if our annuities are not offset by our salaries.

By: DensityDuck

DensityDuck — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:54:14 +0000

The problem is that it’s very clear to everyone in the acquitisions workforce that You Are Just A Chart Monkey. NONE of the people in that heirarchy have any power; anything they do could be overturned the very next day by someone who was not heretofore involved in the process. Who’s going to be confident about working acquisitions when the GAO can come out of frickin’ nowhere and zap a whole program?

I really don’t think it’s about the money. Nobody goes into engineering to get rich. But who wants to have their C.V. be “prepared a presentation for the big meeting that got cancelled” repeated a hundred times over?

By: Aurora

Aurora — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:11:06 +0000

If the hiring pool is that bleak, and I have no reason to suspect otherwise, then perhaps they should take a page from the Services’ play book on medical officers? In other words, “grow your own”. I would recommend a recruitment effort at universities across the country, not just for acquisition types, but across all career fields. The tanking of the stock market will delay some retirement plans, but it won’t put them off indefinitely. Intern programs, complete with financial aid and a service obligation, could be a long term solution. The services do it with doctors and nurses. Why not acquisition types?