You’re on the right track, I think. But, I wouldn’t say it’s about the pay to attract competent workers. I think it has more to do with the incentive structures once you’re in. Incentives and performance management are fundamental problem in civil service. The incentives to set high standards and hold individuals accountable simply do not exist.

The one and only exception is the military, because lives are literally on the line in a way that is not at all abstract.

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Avicebron 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Usually when people say this they are dog whistling privatization. Which is the exact opposite thing people need in infrastructure, ask anyone who has to deal with PG&E.

Paying skilled people highly does actually incentivize people to do better work, especially if they are actually embedded into the community they are essentially working for. If being a civil servant was as "glorious" as being a techie is SF there would be a very different attitude around the work.

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moscoe 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In an environment without accountability, higher pay is just more incentive to lay low and not take any personal risk. Why do anything other than the bare minimum when there is no upside? In a bureaucracy where responsibility is diffused and the culture is purely political and not merit/performance-based, few are willing to step out of line to do the right thing.

The people who climb to the top aren’t the ones who took a risk and got the reward. Quite the opposite, they’re the ones who learned to play the game and didn’t upset the power structure by rocking the boat. No one is going to tell the emperor he has no clothes when the path to power is political and has no grounding in reality.

Highly conscientious, intrinsically motivated people will do the right thing in any environment. And those people don’t last long in political/bureaucratic environments where the incentives are misaligned.

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doodlebugging 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your comments show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you have never worked for the federal government and likely have never worked in state or local government.

>In a bureaucracy where responsibility is diffused and the culture is purely political and not merit/performance-based, few are willing to step out of line to do the right thing.

Federal employment is merit based. Advances are earned, not doled out to the teacher's pet or the ass-kisser with the most perfect pucker. You have no idea what you're talking about.

I have no idea where you or anyone else got the idea that a government employee has no responsibility or incentives and works strictly for political ends and even worse, where none are willing to speak up. You clearly have no experience in that space and should focus your comments on things that you better understand through direct experience.

>And those people don’t last long in political/bureaucratic environments where the incentives are misaligned.

This is bullshit and you are grossly misinformed. Plenty of people fight the polarization of the system on political lines from within the system. They use the laws that are in place in order to prevent systemic abuses. They may not win every internal fight but they do go to battle for the right reasons.

You just have no idea.

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fc417fc802 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't think your attitude here is in keeping with the guidelines (or constructive discourse for that matter). You've made a number of uncharitable assumptions about the other party on the back of which you then launched into baseless personal attacks.

Notably everything in the comment you replied to applies equally to the public and private sector. They are neutral observations about systemic motives and the associated perverse incentives.

Also it's not clear to me that any of the utilities in question have anything to do with the federal government so I'm not sure why you dragged them into this.

	▲	doodlebugging 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>I don't think your attitude here is in keeping with the guidelines (or constructive discourse for that matter). I'll make a note of that. Any comment that I make on this site is made in the hopes that there will be discussion generated. Sometimes that happens and other times it doesn't. I don't spend any part of my life wondering why people choose to or choose not to engage. Most of us have busy lives and this (HN) for us is an opportunity to catch up on interesting things. >You've made a number of uncharitable assumptions about the other party on the back of which you then launched into baseless personal attacks. I am not sure that noting that a poster has no experience in a subject and has no idea how it really works in practice becomes an uncharitable assumption. It may look like a personal attack but it is based entirely on the content of the user's own posts, which support the conclusion that I reached. >They are neutral observations about systemic motives and the associated perverse incentives. From /u/moscoe original comment in the thread: >Incentives and performance management are fundamental problem in civil service. The incentives to set high standards and hold individuals accountable simply do not exist. These two sentences here demonstrate that /u/moscoe does not have any experience working in the public sector for federal, state, or local government entities yet somehow they feel qualified to speak confidently (incorrectly) that those who have worked in that capacity are ham-strung by the system and disincentivized to make waves. That is false. I mentioned federal employees specifically because they are civil servants (referenced by /u/moscoe above) and someone close to me has worked a long career in the federal government under several administrations from both political parties. I think you have your opinions and you are entitled to those opinions. I am also sure that you are wrong about the content of my post. It was not uncharitable nor were there any assumptions. The conclusions that I drew were supported by the statements made by /u/moscoe. If it ends up looking like a personal attack then there was a basis for that personal attack. It's possible that you read my comment without reading the full thread so some of the context was missing.

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throwaway173738 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Corporations have even less accountability to the public than public utility districts. If you don’t like what the organization is doing, vote in different commissioners and make them aware of your concerns. But if you don’t like what your water service is doing, good luck drilling a well to get away from them.

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fc417fc802 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why do you assume that PG&E has a good incentive structure, or that the public sector must necessarily have a bad one? My only objection to the preceding comment would be that struggling with perverse incentives isn't limited to civil service. Incentive structures are a core struggle of approximately all large groups of people.

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mlyle 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think the big problem is administrative capacity.

There are better run governments than we have in the US.

The contempt for the state is a self-fulfilling prophecy. The state is incompetent because many of us believe it is inevitable that it will be. Compensation is just a part of it; coherent administration with continuity is even more important.

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cyanydeez 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We just started replacing our PLCs. They absolutely were setup with default passwords, but weren't put on the public internet.

	▲	fathermarz 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What policies do y’all have in place for this? Is there a program in place or the beginnings of one at least?