Occam's Razor

When it gets a little too comfortable or too familiar, life seems to conspire to kick you in the pants. If you are seventeen going on eighteen, this is the time of year when you are about to graduate high school and are thrust, usually with some trepidation, onto a larger and more chaotic adult stage. If you are a civil servant like me, age 54 going on 55 next year, you are pondering a looming transition called “retirement”.

For me, the transition from high school to college was more welcome than scary. Unlike the singer Vitamin C (Colleen Ann Fitzpatrick) whose high school memories must be pretty good, mine were anything but that. My fond memories extend primarily to a few teachers who inspired me. The high school I attended did not. I felt bound for success elsewhere whereas my apathetic classmates seemed bound for a surfboard and lives full of loafing. While I hope they did not turn out that way, thirty-five years later I still cannot be bothered to go to my high school reunions. I’m not sure any of my classmates’ names would even ring a bell.

In my spare time at the church I attend I facilitate a youth group. They are a tight, eclectic and interesting bunch, and one of the few reasons I have to hope for our future. It would be hard to overstate how intelligent, compassionate and interesting they are as near adults. It’s unclear to what extent our church molded them, but as long-term recipients of years of religious education this group of high school students have bonded amazingly well. And yet next month they will be handed diplomas and will likely never see each other again, at least as a group. Before they tackle the world of adulthood, they get to lead a youth service planned for later this month and give the congregation their thoughts on this transition. Tonight, as one of the adult advisors, I get to facilitate planning for the service.

Meanwhile, I get to ponder transitions of my own. I am now a year away from being able to retire. I doubt I will retire the day I turn eligible, but it is strange to be able to count when that date could be in months rather than years. While no one is forced to retire when they are eligible, I am beginning to wonder if I will be nudged, if not shoved in that direction. The federal workforce, already actually quite lean (about 150,000 fewer employees than when Ronald Reagan was president) is likely to get leaner in the years ahead. I will be watching legislation carefully. I suspect Congress will be eyeing our pensions fund for cuts. I doubt I will come out unscathed. I may find it advantageous to retire to avoid pension cuts that might happen if I hung around. My pension may be cut regardless. I sense a job transition is ahead for me and it is likely to be sooner rather than later.

Knowing that my time as a civil servant is likely quite limited, last week I was pondering if I should attend a conference in June. I can go myself or send someone else instead. Perhaps I should go and consider it a perk of the job. On the other hand, if I were to retire within the next few years, the value of my attendance would be diminished. Instead, I should send others further away from retirement instead. This is one small sign of many that another transition is looming for me.

Just like the seniors in our youth group so used to hanging with each other that their pending separation is likely a cause of anxiety, I am having mixed feelings about my retirement. If you are happy with your work, why retire? I work with a wonderful staff of dedicated professionals, we do excellent work and unlike many jobs, the meaning of our work is quite obvious and easily measured. Moreover, I am paid very well to do it. In short, I am in my optimal comfort zone, productive and generally happy to do my work. A transition, even for the alleged comfort zone of “retirement”, is not necessarily comforting.

My office

For I know I would miss certain things, like doing excellent and meaningful work. I would also miss my employees and those who work for me who are all wonderful folk. You cannot help but think of them more as friends than colleagues after a while because you see far more of them than you do of any of your friends, including often your spouse. I would miss my boss, who can retire soon herself, my chain of command and the ancillary support staff who supported me. I would miss chatting with Melissa down in the credit union, the wonderful soups in the cafeteria and the opportunities to regularly travel the country on someone else’s dime. I would miss the view from the fifth floor of my office window. At the same time, I know it is pointless to hold onto these things. The institution I am a part of will change with political winds, which are likely to be harsh. People younger than me with arguably more talent are ready to assume my work, and really should. I know I cannot hold onto this good job indefinitely and even if I did it would not stay the way it is.

What would I do to fill the void it would leave in my life? I know I would keep working, at least part time, but I also know whatever I do next is likely to feel anticlimactic. Professionally, I have peaked. Teaching or whatever next career I pick will probably have its own unique challenges. Like the seniors in our youth group, I too will have to step into my own murky future.

Just like our youth, which get to try to enjoy the ephemeral feeling of a last month together before they step across a one-way threshold, I too sense a one-way threshold ahead of me and I sense I will be taking that step sooner rather than later. Life is mostly about change. It is sometimes good, sometimes bad but most often a mixed experience. It’s about moving outside your comfort zone whether you like it or not if life gets too comfortable and embracing the less comfortable. Ideally retirement is about moving toward a more comfortable zone, but there is also a great deal of comfort from forty years of meaningful work in the workforce. Finding a next job, albeit a part time one will be in some measure a move back toward the comfort of the workforce. My boss will likely be younger than me, my coworkers probably far less fun to be with.

And the comforting view outside my window is definitely going to change.

The Washington Post, the newspaper of record in this federal city and whose suburbs I inhabit decided to poll the country. The subject: me, or more specifically, the 1.9 million employees of Uncle Sam, and whether Joe and Jane Citizen thought we were overpaid and under qualified for our jobs. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the country does not have much good to say about us. Fifty two percent of Americans surveyed said people like me were overpaid, while only 33 percent thought we were paid the right amount. More than a third of those surveyed thought we were less qualified than those with similar positions in the private sectors.

Opinions, of course, may or may not have a basis in fact, but particularly in a hurting economy, it’s understandable that so many would feel miffed at us feds. After all, our jobs are very secure and come with a pension component (although it is significantly less for those hired since 1984). We can select from a broad cafeteria plan of health insurers and Uncle Sam will pick up somewhere between half and two thirds of our premium. We even have 401-Ks or their equivalent, something called the Thrift Saving Plan.

With nearly thirty years as a civil servant, I’ve seen this show before. It often peaks before elections when Republicans are trying to get back in power. Federal employees make easy targets. It’s not like we are likely to dissent, at least not very much, and we certainly cannot go on strike, as it is illegal. So we make for convenient piñatas right before important elections. Republicans are making snarling noises about cutting our inflated salaries once they control Congress again.

In fact, few in the private sector even consider federal employment, in spite of the obvious benefits. Why? Well, federal employment has an undeserved reputation for not being meaningful work. Citizens seem to understand that when you join the civil service no matter how much talent you have, your salary will be limited by law. So why try harder when recognition will come mostly in the form of pats on the back, rather than cash in the pocket?

There is no question that President Obama lives quite comfortably on his $400,000 a year salary. Only four elected officials make more than $200,000 a year, including the President, Vice President, Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. This is obviously not small change, but with a 1.9 million federal workforce, that says a lot. The Senior Executive Service consists of about a few thousand high level managers, often with political appointments, who earn about $146,000 to $200,000 a year. As a percent of the total workforce though, the SES is tiny.

The “rank and file” civil service workforce consists of people like me, usually attached to the General Schedule. Under the General Schedule, the complexity and responsibility of your work is assessed at a grade somewhere between GS-1 and GS-15. The median grade is probably close to a GS-11. A person at the GS-11 level typically has a college degree along with at least several years of specialized experience. Within each grade, there are ten steps, and steps bring a higher salary (but not a promotion) based on satisfactory performance. You never get above a Step 10. A GS-11 Step 5 makes about $57,000 a year, but the actual amount depends on the area where your job is located. Obviously the cost of living in Washington D.C. is a lot higher than in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. A GS-11 Step 5 in the Washington D.C. region is making about $71,000 a year.

Since the public thinks we are so overpaid, you would think the competition would be keen for most jobs. In some cases, there are hundreds of applicants, but often the list of qualified candidates is small. Sometimes there are no qualified applicants at all! This is because many jobs are quite specialized. For example, where do you go to find new hires for inspectors for the Transportation Safety Board? Not a whole lot of us can piece together the causes of transportation accidents. There are many jobs like this in the federal government. There are also many jobs like mine in the computer and information technology area. So it’s easier for me as a supervisor to find qualified applicants.

After 28 years, I have progressed from a GS-4 clerk typist to a GS-14, one step below the highest rank in the civil service. In the interim, I acquired a ton of experience, lots of sterling performance reviews and a master’s degree in Software Systems Engineering from George Mason University. My salary is in the six-figure range. Am I overpaid? You be the judge.

I am responsible for a large, real-time web site. We serve critical near real-time data, as well as a wealth of historical data used in studies and analyses, from redundant hosting centers so our system never goes down. Flood forecasts are developed from our data and many decisions are made as well that can save lives and minimize property damage. Data constantly streams in and is put on the web and all of it has to be both timely and as accurate as possible. In a typical month the site I manage gets thirty to 50 million successful requests. My employees and me must make sure our frequently queried real-time data is available 24/7/365, including during major storms. I have four employees who report directly to me, and five others whose time I buy, either part time or full time. I make more than $120,000 a year, but less that $130,000 a year. We run the whole operation for about $1.3 million dollars a year. Am I overpaid?

Or take my boss, a program manager. She is a GS-15, the highest you can go in the civil service. She manages twenty to thirty people nationwide, has overall responsibility for her entire program, deals with innumerable reporting requirements, large customer communities with diverse needs, has a fistful of certifications that demonstrate her competency in areas like project management and manages her whole program, worth about $6 million a year. I don’t know her salary, but it is probably between $140,000 and $150,000 a year. Is she overpaid? Could it be that a comparable job in the private sector with this level of visibility and responsibility would pay better? It would not surprise me. I suspect she is underpaid.

Or what about a new employee I recently hired? She hesitated to take the position when offered. Why? It did not pay enough. That’s right, she made quite a bit more in the private sector than she would if she joined the public sector because she would have started as a Step 1. However, I was impressed enough with her qualifications to go through a convoluted process so the government could just match salary in the private sector. Is she overpaid too? That does not seem likely. Now I could have thought like a Republican. I could have saved the government money by hiring someone less competent and maybe at a lower grade. Would this have been a smart thing to do given the complexity of the system I manage and its critical nature? Or would it have been pennywise and pound foolish to do so?

The truth is, at least here in the Washington metropolitan area, it is hard to convince any candidate who does not already live here to take a position. Why? Because of the cost of living, but also because of other negatives, like the Washington area’s legendary traffic jams. If you are lucky enough to work eight-hour days, you often have to tack on another two hours or more for commuting every day. Even GS-15s like my boss live modestly. $140,000 is certainly a lot of money in Sioux Falls, South Dakota but not in Reston, Virginia. If you lust after a good single family house in a respectable neighborhood a few miles from work then be prepared to pay at least $500,000 for the privilege, and this price is after the recent decline in home prices.

I do not think that civil servants are overpaid; I think we are fairly compensated. A GS-11 Step 5, my hypothetical “average” civil servant, doubtless depends on a spouse’s income, or is living a very modest lifestyle because $71,000 is not enough income to purchase even a townhouse around here, unless you want to drive two hours to get home. I am certainly grateful for the steady income, in good economic times or bad, as well as our benefits, which twenty years ago were seen as good, but due to the decline in many private industry benefits, now look excellent. Nevertheless, I also know no matter how innovative and creative I am, I cannot be a public servant and make $200,000 a year. The same is not true in the private sector. You can ascend to salary levels as high as your talent takes you. Any performance bonus I get is likely to be in the 1.5% to 3% of salary range, if I earn anything at all. It certainly helps pay some bills and an indulgence or two, but it won’t make me independently wealthy.

So some perspective please. If federal salaries seem higher than the median private industry salary, it’s not necessarily because we are overpaid. It is because the government does not need the equivalent of a lot of busboys, retail workers, truck drivers and hotel maids on its payroll. (Because that kind of work is very generalized, it is typically outsourced.) Most federal jobs require rather specialized skills and the vast majority of us have bachelors or graduate degrees because we need that level of education to perform competently in our jobs.

If you are unhappy with the way government is run, look to policymakers. They decide what government shall be. My job is to deliver it and I am glad to do so at a fair wage and to the maximum extent of my talents.

(This was written on July 29, 2010.)

I am traveling east to west today. We are chasing the sun at 37,000 feet, making something close to a beeline between Washington Dulles International Airport and Seattle, Washington. Our 5:25 PM flight actually left the ground sometime around 7:30 PM, delayed by a combination of a recalcitrant cargo hold motor and cells of thunderstorms. But finally we are aloft and chasing the sun. Twilight is slowly unfolding outside our window. Perhaps by the time we arrive in Seattle around 9:45 PM it will finally be fully dark. Meanwhile the view outside the jet’s window shows a sky still somewhat light but with the ground largely shrouded in darkness. At 37,000 feet, the low stratus clouds hovering over the Great Plains look like waves of sand on the beach and sit far, far below us.

Technically this is the start of our vacation, but flying commercial rarely feels like vacation. The view is interesting but there are too many people too tightly pushed together in this fuselage, waiting for what seems like an interminably long flight to finally finish. Then perhaps my vacation will really start, but I know it really starts after a long sleep because I am already starting to feel the jet lag. It will take a day or two to get used to west coast time.

I leave at somewhat of an inopportune time. Some part of me wants to still be holed up in my office at work, answering email, listening to teleconferences, chatting with coworkers and grabbing a salad at the cafeteria. At least these days my work seems more like play than work. It wasn’t always this way, of course. The first few years in this new job were challenging as I adapted, not always without friction, to a new agency. Moreover, this is my first managerial position, and there was much for this neophyte to learn. Managing, I have learned, is more art than science. An effective manager is also a good people person, which I am not. I am learning strategies to cope with this deficiency. Now, finally, six years or so into the job it is finally coming all together. I feel a bit like a bewildered conductor with a talented but temperamental orchestra that is finally making the excellent new music that I wanted to hear. It is a nice feeling.

Seemingly gone are the old animosities that I felt but which were rarely not articulated. Perhaps after six years you finally become part of the furniture. Perhaps that is what it takes to finally feel the respect you feel is your due. Or, more likely, perhaps I have finally earned the respect that I craved. Now doors open and things happen. My big picture ideas that I felt were so important and have national impact are now on the cusp of fruition. It is a satisfying feeling.

Most of us search for relevance, perhaps in part to feed our own egos but also to feel that our life might have some tiny sliver of enduring value. I know that like most of us I will never achieve greatness. The odds are too large so trying is probably counterproductive. That doesn’t mean that individually and collectively we cannot all do good work. “Think globally. Act locally,” says the bumper sticker. That has been sort of my professional model all these years. Do your best to optimize that part of the universe that you can control but add touches of audacity, vision and perseverance. That’s really all any of us can do. In reality, no one achieves greatness alone, but only through other people. That is certainly the case with me. My contribution is largely one of leadership and perseverance. Others largely did the heavy lifting.

I can rail about global warming, the likely extinction of mankind, and the countless stupid ways we are mismanaging our country and our world. I can contribute to the dialog (this blog is part of that effort) but in the end I must acknowledge that my influence will be marginal at best. We are all within the swirl of larger forces. However, in the tiny area of life within my control, I can still aim and maybe just hit the bullseye.

I am also within a few years of Retirement Number One. I do not have to retire in 2012, but I could opt for a retirement. I already know that Retirement Number One would only be a stepping stone to my next and likely more part time job, which will be something not too dissimilar from the IT work I already do. I do sense though that I my professional life has crested. The view is nice and satisfying, but in the future I will have to set different and likely downsized criteria for my satisfaction and fulfillment. It might involve inspiring community college students who, I have learned, seemed largely inured to inspiration. In many ways, that would be a harder professional accomplishment and perhaps more satisfying. However, whatever large-scale impact I am to have on the world will shortly come to fruition. It remains to be seen whether my strategy will bear the fruit that I think it will. Time will tell.

So I feel wistful. Even if I choose not to retire and stay working until a heart attack fells me at my desk, things would still change around me. Bosses and coworkers would retire. Organizational dynamics would change. New problems would emerge that might be beyond my management ability. I would like to keep my professional life exactly where it is indefinitely. Yet, it cannot stay this way. Life moves too quickly. Too many chess pieces are in play. I know that others will follow in my footsteps and likely be just as competent, if not more competent, than I have proven to be. They too deserve the chance to stretch and to make the world a better place. Part of vindicating your success is to time your departure before the law of averages strike and you screw up something major.

Vacation is about relaxation, about seeing new places, and looking at life from a different perspective, like the suffused rose glow outside our window now alighting the atmosphere. I will get that in the next twelve days out here in Washington State and Oregon, and you will read some of it here. I look forward to tuning out the work side of my brain but right now, at 37,000 feet, it is not yet possible.

Tomorrow though, our latest adventure in the Pacific Northwest begins.

Upset about large payments to AIG employees to encourage them not to quit? Join the rest of us angry taxpayers. In some cases these payments amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars per employee. AIG says they are necessary to keep these valuable employees from quitting. It is hard to imagine where else these employees would go with the financial industry in a tailspin. 724,000 jobs were lost last month alone, which is far more than forecast. They should feel lucky to have a job.

Moreover, if they were let go they might have to get a real job. AIG workers, like many of us white collar workers, may find their jobs feel a bit surreal at times. Today many of us are blessed with careers, not jobs. Careers are jobs that require significant education and that at least in theory you should enjoy. The rest of America gets by with working class jobs where you are not particularly valuable and are easily replaced. This is reflected by their inadequate wages and the sad fact that many of them are shuffling two or three jobs trying to make ends meet. Health insurance? For the working class, most of them cannot afford health insurance premiums, in the unlikely event their employer offers health insurance in the first place.

For a well paid white collar dude like me it helps to get grounded every once in a while. This week, like I usually am twice a year, I am in Denver. Actually I am in Lakewood, Colorado, in a hotel near the Denver Federal Center, which today was nearly socked in by a blizzard. From eight to five this week I am helping to manage a set of people testing some upgrades to a software system I manage. At five p.m., I get to go back to my hotel. While I do not have a car at my disposal as we carpool to save money, there is plenty of company and convenient restaurants in walking distance. I have several hours every evening to socialize with my coworkers or just relax in my hotel room, where I can surf the ‘Net, watch HBO or blog. It’s a bit like a partial vacation at my employer’s expense.

For most in the working class, an 8 to 5 job, Monday through Friday with weekends off must seem surreal. Moreover, I would think they would puzzle over the fact that we are so well compensated to basically sit around all day, look at our computers, type things into them, talk to other people on the phone and chat with fellow employees. Most of us never get our hands dirty. That is not the case at Jason’s Deli, which sits on Union Boulevard in Lakewood adjacent to the Denver Federal Center. Twice so far this week I and a few coworkers have ventured to Jason’s for lunch. It is the closest restaurant to our building and the food is both good and relatively inexpensive. It also offers a modicum of exercise, since it is about a mile walk there and back.

The people who work at Jason’s Deli work harder than any other group of people I have ever seen. Granted I am at the deli at lunch, which is its prime time. Often a line stretches out the door. It pays to arrive a little early to avoid the line at Jason’s. We queue up to order the usual: soups, various hot and cold sandwiches and to create a salad at their enormous salad bar. While the food is good, I often spend much more time watching the people at Jason’s than I do savoring their food or even the company of my coworkers. There but for the grace of God go I. There, but for the incompetence of our federal government, employees at AIG get to stay in their well moneyed white collar jobs and get fat retention bonuses instead of working for a living like the employees do at Jason’s Deli.

Maybe Jason’s employees do see Jason’s as a career. I’ve been coming here two or three times a year now and I recall the same lady behind the register and even the same Hispanic busboy. Maybe the days go fast because they never seem to stop. The energy level coming from each employee in the place is phenomenal. So to say they bustle in their work is to damn them with faint praise. They work frantically trying to keep up with the demand and the lines. The sandwich makers have a system which must be efficient but involves a lot of scurrying and yelling to each other. The cashier has an exceptional voice. She must have one to be heard over the din of the diners. “One bowl of red bean rice soup!” she will bellow, with many variants, to the assembler across the aisle.

Patrons queue up at the salad bar, which is next to the drinks machine, which seems to never stop servicing people. While we search for a table, a busboy scurries through the dining area frantically removing plates, bowls, silverware and glasses from tables so that other patrons can take their place. It is a crazy sort of ordered chaos. Jason’s is not a high tech place. That it works at all depends on the relentless energy of its employees. No doubt behind the walls is another crew of cooks, dishwashers and ancillary personnel necessary to choreographing this daily event.

Of course I have no idea what Jason’s pays its employees. I hope they are well compensated because they more than earn whatever salary they are paid. As a class, restaurant workers are near the bottom of the compensation scale. Republicans looking for a model of American industry need look no further than this Jason’s. Naturally they would not take one of these jobs even if they were desperate, but it models everything they claim to believe in: hard work, duty, obedience and doggedness. It likely lacks a whole lot in the compensation department. I don’t know how much the general manager of this restaurant makes, of course, but I am willing to bet he works twice as many hours as I do probably for half my salary.

The late Mao Zedong had a peculiar way of making sure people in the cities knew what the real world was about. He shipped them off to the country where they slaved away on collective farms using farming instruments that were medieval. Most likely most of those sent away to these collective farms loathed the experience because hard work and poverty are not natural proclivities for most human beings. His passing and China’s embrace of capitalism no doubt came not a moment too soon for those he sent to the collectives.

I wish as penance for their sins that the Wall Street brokers and those at AIG who brought us our latest financial calamity could spend a couple years working at this Jason’s Deli. It could be the American version of China’s Cultural Revolution. It is clear that many of these people do not understand where wealth comes from. It comes from exploiting the bottom feeders of the labor market like the good and hardworking people at Jason’s Deli. They daily perform minor miracles of food delivery.

Yet I strongly suspect their souls are being crushed, their lives shortened and their bank accounts emptied so we can enjoy really good and inexpensive food. Perhaps if these Wall Street brokers are lucky enough to return to Wall Street, rather than invent new collateralized debt instruments, they will create investment products that can move hard working employees such as those at Jason’s Deli out of the bottom of the labor market into something that resembles a middle class lifestyle. They too should have the realistic expectation of one day having an 8 to 5 job.

Two things are abundantly clear to me: the workers at Jason’s deserve it more than Wall Street barons and even well educated people like me. Also, if you could somehow educate the employees at Jason’s in the ways of finance, I am confident they would do a much better of managing my money than the crooks on Wall Street have done.

Here is a basic truth about American history that you are unlikely to find revealed in our history books: our success as a country is due to immigration. Most likely, our country’s decline will start when immigrants decide to go elsewhere.

Immigrants have always been crucial to our country’s success. When we could not get enough immigrants, we captured slaves and brought them over here instead. Yet through much of our history, whether here legally or illegally, immigrants have been scorned. In truth, immigrants are the gasoline that fuels our economy. We say we do not want them in our country, at least the ones who are not here legally. Yet if they were to go, our standard of living would decline precipitously. Inflation would go through the roof. Immigrants make it possible for the rest of us to live the American Dream. My vaunted six-figure salary is directly due to the guy making $15,000 working for Goodwill who doesn’t seem to speak English and who hauls away the trash from my office everyday.

Thankfully, there is little chance that people will stop coming into our country, no matter how impressively we build our barriers. It does not matter how low on the totem pole immigrants will be when they get into this country. Invariably they will be better off than where they came from. Cleaning out toilets in airports may not be your idea of a great job. It is probably not their idea of a great job either, but it beats starvation, or regular dysentery drinking the polluted water back home, or raising an uneducated child in a tarpaper shack.

Thank goodness, we have people willing to clean toilets at any price. How long do you think your local airport would be able to stay in business if they had no one willing to do this disagreeable task? How many restaurants would be in business at all if all the illegal dishwashers and potato peelers in this country suddenly disappeared?

The argument I hear is that, “Well, if they all went tomorrow, businesses would have to raise salaries. Good Americans would fill those jobs. And what’s wrong with that?” As a liberal Democrat, I like the idea of our citizens making more money. I just hope it will actually improve their standard of living. I do suspect though that if there are 200 jobs needing to be filled and only 100 people willing to work for wages businesses can afford to pay, there are going to be some economic adjustments and they will not be for the better. Of course, businesses would do their best to cope. They would try to become more efficient and resourceful. At some point, we would end up with an effective unemployment rate of zero. Then the excrement would hit the fan. I am not sure which businesses would be the first to go under, but I bet people who are asked to do the most disagreeable jobs would be the first to bolt. Dishwashers would become very hot commodities. Those restaurants profitable enough to employ them at higher wages would thrive. Those which cannot, and restaurants tend to survive on tiny profit margins, would close shop. I can even see a new version of the draft, not to fight our wars overseas, but to make sure restaurants have enough people to serve meals, sweep floors and do the dishes.

Perhaps with higher wages more of us who are already employed would be willing to work a second job (if we are not already, trying to keep pace with the cost of living). At some point, that market would exhaust itself too. The likely result would be a phenomenon we remember from the 1970s: stagflation. Stagflation is rapid inflation during a period of recession. We would be lucky though if this were the worst of it. The short-term result would be that as unemployment up the food chain increased from the fallout, more and more people would be willing to work in these relatively low wage jobs. The effect though would be to push down standards of living for all of us. These jobs, while necessary, are simply not as productive as those that generally pay more money. Decreased productivity is one of the major drivers of stagflation.

A workforce of course is the fuel of any economy. We may think we can automate everything using computers, but even if that were possible, someone has to keep those computers going. Goods do not magically get from points A to B. It is our willingness to be employed, and in effect be the lubricant that keeps our complex society functioning, that makes our advanced society possible.

In effect, our economy, much like our social security system, is a great Ponzi scheme. Growth, as is always the case, comes from the bottom up. If we cannot convince lots of poor people to start at the bottom and engage in economic Darwinism to try to ascend the economic ladder, the system eventually collapses. I see signs of it already. My daughter, though she has never held a full time job and just recently graduated high school, refuses to work just anywhere. She has her standards. She has decided that she can work at a Barnes and Noble or a Vie de France, but not at a Bloom supermarket, nor at a McDonalds, nor at a Subway … in fact, her list of places she is not willing to work is much larger than her list of places she would work. Fortunately for her the labor market is pretty tight here in Fairfax County, Virginia so she has the luxury of being somewhat choosy.

Of course, she has to survive. If her choice were between starving and working at a McDonalds, I am sure she would choose working at McDonalds. However, why should she do what she considers demeaning work in a business that she does not like? For example, why work at a Wendy’s when she would likely be the only Caucasian woman working there and she cannot speak more than a dozen words of Spanish? Why get hot and sweaty trying to keep up with jangling timers continually going off on the French fries machines when she can work behind the counter in a nice, cool and air-conditioned Vie de France restaurant instead? Others, who came from a harder school of knocks, are supposed to work at Wendy’s. For them a Wendy’s job probably really is opportunity. She perceives it as a low-grade horror.

Arguably, if all the Wendy’s in America went out of business we would probably be a lot healthier. Still, Wendy’s alone pumps a huge amount of money into the economy. The parent company Wendy’s International had sales of $2.45 billion dollars in 2006, owned 12.7% of the burger market and employed 57,000 people. If it closed because it could not profitably stay in business, more than 57,000 people would be affected. Its suppliers would be laying off people. Cattle ranchers would reduce herds. Grain prices would fall. Perhaps other businesses would pick up its market. However, if we did not have enough people willing to work at the bottom of the labor scale the effect on the labor market would quickly spread across the economy, likely causing a chain reaction.

If there were no more immigrants I would end up mowing my lawn again, which might not be a bad thing either. It would cost me more to get my roof replaced, if I could find anyone willing to do it at all. Either my six-figure income would feel a lot more like a five figure income, or I would be a lot busier incompetently trying to do the things I pay people to do for me. I would have to hope that I would die in my bed. It is unlikely I could afford a nursing home at any price. It would be a luxury only for the richest among us. Perhaps the poor house would make a comeback.

While I do not particularly like the idea of immigrants streaming across our borders illegally, I also understand why it has been in our economic interest to look the other way for so long. That our standard of living is rising at all is largely due to our glorious cognitive dissonance on this issue. If we could actually fully enforce our immigration laws then within a year we would be protesting en-masse on the Mall in Washington demanding the immediate repeal of these laws. The last thing we will give up is our slice of the American dream. Immigrants serve us that slice.

The good news is the immigrants who come to our country choose to come here, often at the cost of enormous peril. They understand the tradeoff. They will do our scut work for us, gambling that in time given their perseverance, luck and circumstance they will be in our shoes someday. They might aspire to be Bill Gates, but even if they only get up half the ladder, they are better off than they were. So are the rest of us.

Therefore, instead of railing against immigrants and protesting at local day laborer sites, as some want to do here in Herndon, Virginia, perhaps, if you speak their language, you should be thanking them for coming instead.

Having turned 50 recently, I realized that I have finally mastered some major lessons from the school of real life. I thought I would use the excuse of my birthday to pass on some of these lessons to younger generations. While I enjoy pretending to be a fountain of wisdom, in reality, like most bloggers, any wisdom I have achieved is likely more the result of successful marketing than anything else is.

Today I am starting an occasional series of entries in a “Real Life 101″ series. Maybe you can find these on Motley Fool or in a Dummies Book, but here you can get them free. These strategies have been tried, tested and proven true in the sphere of real life. Unlike a stock market investment, where you earnings are never guaranteed, these principles will work. They have been painfully acquired from navigating through real life for five decades and in many cases through making the wrong choices. They are not always easy to implement, but life never is.

Today’s topic: job basics.

Unless you happen to have inherited a large estate, the most important factor in avoiding misery is a good, steady and well paying job. Ideally, the job will be one that you will also enjoy. While there is no lack of jobs out there, few of them meet all these criteria. Most likely, you do not have one of these jobs. Here are some strategies that will get you there.

When it comes to any job, consistently going beyond the expected almost always reaps rewards. I am amazed by how many workers cannot seem to grasp this basic truth, even after their fourth or fifth job. Strive to be exceptional in whatever you are doing, no matter how menial or mundane. In the unlikely event that your efforts are not noticed in your current job, your attitude will be noticed by some future employer. Save the snarkiness for when you get home. When you are at work, focus on your work. Be the first to volunteer to do difficult or not so glamorous work. Unless your chain of command is full of pointy haired bosses, most likely your work attitude will be quickly noticed, and you will be given more challenging and interesting work as a reward. It is quite possible that you will earn a promotion and/or more money too. Having demonstrated your value you are much less likely to be pink slipped or downsized.

Constantly steer toward jobs that offer the three critical factors: steady employment, good wages and benefits. While I generally do not like debt, I have gladly gone into debt so that I could compete for better paying jobs that advanced my career. Be hard nosed. For example, it is better to go into debt to get a degree than a certification. It might seem a worthy goal to be a Microsoft Certified Software Engineer, for example. Nevertheless, certifications have a limited shelf life. A degree in software engineering though will carry the broad education that you will likely be able to apply for the rest of your career.

Few things have the potential to be more personally catastrophic than unemployment. This means that you should always do your best to avoid being fired or laid off. Regardless, you will probably get a few periods of unemployment in your career. If it happens to you, expect to feel devastated, but do not think that you are unique. Unemployment happens. You will recover from the experience and reemerge on your feet. In most cases, you can anticipate your termination. If you sense that you are likely to lose your job then take action. Start aggressively looking for your next job. Rats know when to desert a sinking ship. So should you.

Another rule of thumb: the best job for you will likely not come from a newspaper or an internet jobs site. It will come through a referral from someone you know. You would probably not pick a doctor out of the phone book. Instead, you will get recommendations from friends. The same applies doubly with jobs. People’s actual experience with employers will tell you a lot. After all, you do not want to waste your time dealing with the trauma of a job that does not fit you. Consequently, you need to develop networking skills.

Recently a contractor I have not worked with in seven years sought me out. We kept in touch and traded occasional emails and holiday cards. We would meet for lunch every year or two when our schedules allowed, which they usually did not. She was interested in applying for a job and wanted to know if I knew anyone who worked at the place where she was applying. It just so happened that yes I did know and worked rather extensively with someone who worked there. Although it had been several years, I contacted the man I used to work with, who I considered part of my own personal network. He gave the background on the culture of the place and what they were likely looking for. It sounded like a good match for her. She has applied for the job and will use me as a reference. I suspect that if she is interviewed she will do well. In addition to having the skills, she will have an understanding of the culture of the place to carry into the interview. We all know people with whom we can network. It could be your friend, a neighbor, a coworker’s spouse, or someone you know at church. By marketing yourself to these people, you are actually marketing yourself to a larger number of people, and they will likely keep you in mind and let you know of opportunities. Make networking a habit and if you are in the position to return the favor, do it.

Since unemployment will visit most of us at least a couple times in our life, devise a proactive approach so you can be prepared when it strikes. If you are chronically low on cash, your backup strategy might be to move back in with your parents for a time. (Please check with them first to make sure they will agree.) Putting your expenses on a credit card is the wrong way to go, so strive to create a nest egg that will play for at least three months of expenses. The current trend, unfortunately, is that while unemployment is happening less often, when it does happen it lasts for longer periods. Most experts are now recommending saving six months of expenses to emerge from unemployment financially intact. Whatever your strategy is, you must be realistic about it. Even if it is to live off your credit cards, you will still need income to make those monthly payments. This means that while being unemployed you will likely have to be underemployed by doing some work that you would normally consider beneath you.

Your first jobs are likely to offer little in the way of benefits. If you are young you may be able to go without health insurance for a while, but it is always risky. Benefits should be a primary consideration for accepting any job. Health insurance in particular is a crucial factor. Granted, the job has to pay enough so that you can afford the health insurance premiums, but you should make it your goal to find a job that offers health insurance benefits.

Another way to judge an employer is to find out how much money, if any, they will contribute toward your retirement. Many small employers simply cannot afford to contribute to a 401-K plan, but will let you contribute your own money into a plan. Others cannot be bothered. A decent employer will match your contributions to at least three percent of salary. An ideal employer would double this amount. If you can find an employer that also provides a traditional pension that would be nirvana, but it is not realistic anymore. If you want this degree of protection, look toward state, county or federal employment.

Of course, if you get benefits like these do your damnedest to take advantage of them as soon as possible. Health insurance is most important, since any condition you may have or develop can leave you financially devastated. Otherwise contribute to the 401-K as much as you possibly can. You will pay less in the way of taxes and, of course, the sooner you start, the more you will reap when you retire. You may not believe that the money will actually be there when you retire. Do not be stupid. You too will age and if you are lucky, you will live to see your retirement. You will not want to eat dog food in your retirement. While social security may be problematical, your 401-K will generally be invested in commercial stocks and bonds. Our financial system has shown extreme resiliency. Even the Great Depression did not wipe out the stock markets. Invest early, invest regularly and invest until it hurts.

More job and career advice will follow in subsequent entries in this series.

About a year ago, I wrote about wearing a suit and tie to work again. This happened because I attended an event in downtown Washington D.C. It was my first foray into the city on business after more than a year. I used to have to play dress up every day when I worked in DC. Fortunately, in my latest job, I get to wear jeans, a polo shirt and sneakers every day, despite being a senior mid level manager in the civil service. It was like going to heaven.

Today I was at another meeting offsite, only it was not downtown. It was in Arlington, a few miles from downtown, in a building near the Virginia Square Metro Station. Because I was meeting with thirty or so people from a variety of federal agencies, many of them making more than I do, I knew it was time to dust off the fancy duds again. So it was back into the pressed pants, the permanent press shirt, the matching tie, the shiny shoes and the sports coat. Dave, one of my employees, was attending with me. I felt the need to warn him to do the dress up thing. It does not come naturally to either of us anymore.

So there I was at 8 a.m. in Arlington munching on the continental breakfast and trying to be good by drinking bottled water instead of bottled juices. From our sixth floor “Executive Conference Center”, we had a lovely view, not of the National Mall, but of Wilson Boulevard. It is hard to distinguish the City of Washington from its suburbs anymore; they all blend. It was not long after having had my fill of the compulsory highly caloric carbohydrates that we settled in for our executive conference in, er, the executive conference room I guess. Anyhow, the table was big and there was a large projector mounted into the ceiling with a Powerpoint slide show queued.

This is what executives do, I guess: sit in conference rooms, feel a bit hot in their suits, try to sound interested and most important of all, and refrain from falling asleep. I should not be here. I could have been in San Jose, California in a convention hall doing “outreach”, i.e. showing the system I manage to a bunch of strangers who wander by. That would not be particularly interesting either, but at least it would be 2500 miles away, and was a much more interesting way to get out of the office for a few days. It is nice to press the flesh with real users of our system and hear what is on their mind. I am supposed to do some of that anyhow. The devil is in finding the time. If my booth attracted little interest, thanks to the wired internet connection we paid for, I could at least read email. But alas, two others who would normally attend this Arlington meeting bowed out. One had the audacity to retire. I do not know what the other person’s reason was. Maybe he had to take his daughter on a field trip. Anyhow, I was left holding the bag. So there I was in Arlington, Virginia learning far more than I ever wanted to know about metadata issues relating to ocean observing systems.

I assumed I could not bring my laptop with me, so I left it at home. My last trip on business in that direction was at National Science Foundation. There the laptops were quarantined until the security folks ran it through a comprehensive virus scan, which could take hours. Today’s meeting was in rented space though, and the conference facilitators had an unsecured wireless network available for our use. Not that I was allowed to use their wireless network. Heavens, no! Our official agency policy, put out by our always well meaning and hyper-vigilant IT security folks, is you cannot connect your government laptop computer to any wireless network without an explicit waiver granted in advance. The effort required to actually acquire a waiver is much larger than any benefit it would provide. Yet I still I know many an executive who routinely use the wireless connections on their government furnished laptops anyhow. It may be against policy, but an executive has to get his work done. Even federal employees are expected to multitask. Anyhow, everyone else at the meeting had brought their laptops and were dutifully doing things like taking notes, answering email or surfing the internet when they weren’t passionately engaged in the exciting topic of metadata standards. I was sitting there taking sporadic notes and occasionally kicking myself in the shin to stay awake. Must not fall asleep, especially in front of my own employee!

So as I sat there doing my level best to stay interested in the dry topic of the moment, my subconscious was busy. It was asking me why I felt so uncomfortable being in a suit and tie again. This is how I spent every workday for about twenty years. It should be second nature to me. Yet it was not. I have joined the comfortable side of the workforce. Give me my blue jeans every day to work, please! Just being in a suit and tie makes put on my manager mask. I cannot seem to be just Mark when I am in a suit and tie.

The chairs were nice and cushy but still I was not comfortable. I squirmed. I was hot. Then I was cold. (Their heating and cooling system apparently needed some work.) My neck felt constrained. My underarms perspired. My dress socks had a death grip on my legs. In addition, my bladder was telling me I needed to make a discrete exit from the conference room. The discussion had been going on for two and a half hours with no end in sight. I needed relief.

Nature won. I slipped out of the conference room. And I felt … liberated. The adjoining hallways were empty. The blood moved in my legs again. I took the first full breath of air in a couple hours. After I did my business, I walked outside on the sixth floor balcony … just for a minute. I felt the sun on my face. I felt a gentle breeze drift through my hair. I heard the muffled sound of humanity, buses rounding the corner and the occasional rhythmic chant of a bird. I felt alive. Then guilt recalled me to my duty. I slipped back into the conference room and back into my chair. I squirmed. I tried to take more notes. I succeeded in not nodding off. I was grateful that the topic has shifted from metadata recommendations to transport protocol guidelines. At least it was a different topic

And I thought, only two more days of this.

Occam’s Razor fans will have to forgive my inability to post much lately. I have just finished a weeklong business trip in Denver. Between work and visiting family, I have been kept fully engaged. It is only now on a 777 moving across the country that I have something resembling sufficient personal time in which to order my thoughts.

My work took me to the Denver Federal Center in Lakewood, Colorado. This is my third trip out there for the agency I joined two years ago. The trips now have a certain familiarity to them, which will only increase when I return again the first week of June. So far, we have stayed in the same hotels: a pair of Marriott hotels in Golden, Colorado a couple miles away from the Federal Center. They are clean and comfortable and provide an excellent view of the Rocky Mountains. Like most hotels these days, they offer a decent complementary breakfast consisting mostly of foods most sedentary adults should avoid.

On Monday evening, I went to sleep in my room at the Residence Inn at Golden, only to awaken unexpectedly at 1 AM. A fire alarm was putting out a deafening ring. 1 AM must be the worst time for me to have to awaken unexpectedly. I knew where I was but mentally I was on some other planet. For the longest time I could simply not figure out what was happening. Once my foggy mind put the facts together, I was unable to figure out how to do the simplest thing like turn on the light. When after a minute or so I had finally mastered that act, I could not figure out what to do next. Should I dash outside in my underwear? Eventually I decided to throw on my bathrobe, slip my shoes into my sneakers, and grab my room key. I staggered out of my room into the hallway in a dazed state. Fortunately, I was only a dozen feet or so from an exit.

It may have been 1 AM, but one of my employees, Dave, was still awake and in his business attire. Apparently, he is a night owl. Some birdbrain a few floors above apparently hung something on a sprinkler head, causing it to rupture, so there was no actual fire. After a few minutes outside, we were allowed back into our rooms. I went back to sleep, wary of another fire alarm. I could hear the sound of water coming down between the walls and a wet/dry vacuum above me. Needless to say, the rest of my sleep that night was restless. The next day we were all a bit groggy.

Linda, a coworker from my office in Reston, had a rental car. I became both one of her passengers and one of her dinner mates. Fortunately, Linda is an adventurous person. Despite having been to Denver at least twice a year for a decade, she felt there was much more to see. On Tuesday night for example, she took us on I-70 over the continental divide. This was my first time crossing the continental divide by car. The drive fifty miles or so into the Rocky Mountains was quite awe inspiring. For this east coast person, the mountains on either side of us struck me as incredibly steep and high. We made it through the Eisenhower tunnel before turning around. We dined at Beau Jo’s in the small town of Idaho Springs. The restaurant offered something called “Colorado Pizza”. I later asked my brother Tom, a resident of Boulder, if there was such a thing. He had never heard of it. Colorado pizza apparently consists of very thick crusts around the rim of the pizza pan and thin crusts in the middle. Since there is plenty of crust remaining after consuming the pizza, you are supposed to spread honey on the remaining crusts and eat them for dessert. While the pizza itself was okay, by getting dessert “free” it made for an inexpensive meal. It was also the first pizza parlor that I have ever been in where you order pizza by the pound. A two-pound pizza can feed three normal people more than adequately.

There is hardly room for the town of Idaho Springs between the Rocky Mountains. Except for the restaurants, there was little in the “downtown” that remained open after 6 p.m. For someone looking for an authentic small town experience, it seems a great and inexpensive place to live. We passed a realtor’s office and learned we could rent a mobile home for only $250 a month. The town is not big enough to justify a Wal-Mart.

Thursday night Linda took us to Mataam Fez, a Moroccan restaurant in Denver. I had never eaten Moroccan food before. The entertainment was as much a part of the experience as the meal. If you have never eaten in a Moroccan restaurant, be prepared to remove your shoes and sit on cushions on the floor. Expect the table to be about two feet off the ground. We had a five-course meal and shared our food. The food was overall quite tasty (though expensive), but rather elemental too. My Shrimp Pel Pel, for example, came in the shells with the feet still attached. A partner’s salmon was quite good but still had the scales on it. Moroccans apparently dispense with silverware. We ate everything with our hands. Before eating we had to wash our hands at the table. The waiter had us place our hands above a pot while he poured lemon water on them from a pitcher. After trying to eat dishes like creamed spinach with our fingers, I realized why silverware was invented.

The entertainment came in two forms. First, there was the belly dancer, an achingly beautiful and buxom woman half my age who I suspect was a local American co-ed, rather than a Moroccan. No matter, she was excellent at being both alluring and doing impressive things with her abdominal muscles. For example, she was able to balance the edge of a sword on her tummy and work it down her abdomen. Many patrons stuffed dollar bills into her skirt. In addition, the waiters had a unique talent of pouring tea into cups from behind their backs. They also demonstrated they could pour it from a high height into three cups stacked on top of each other. As best I could tell, not a drop landed on the floor. The spiced tea was excellent.

The business part of my trip was intense and exhausting. There were about fifty of us. Most participants were users who were rigorously testing changes to a system we manage. A typical day consisted of three or four formal meetings where they gave reports on the problems they were uncovering. Since these meetings have a critical mass of important users from across the country, it is hard not to have many other ad-hoc meetings too. I was sucked into many of these, and some of these meetings were intense.

While the testing part went quite well for my team (no underpowered web servers crashed this year), discussions with customers about delays in projects closing up and underway were less successful. I am under a lot of pressure to complete a current project, which, by some measures, is a year late. There are good reasons why it is a year late. Inadequate planning was certainly part of it, but it was also late because we spent much of the latter half of last year scrambling to install new web servers to keep up with demand from the public. (Demand is increasing by about a third a year.) However, our customers are wholly inured to operational issues. (They would have cared had the system come to a screeching halt last year, which it did not. Naturally, my team gets no credit for preventing this from happening.) Missing deadlines are perceived as bad management on my part. I am confident that over the next couple of years that most of these problems will be ironed out. Putting in place predictable processes and teaching excellent scientists the discipline of software engineering takes time.

As I told my boss, things will and in fact are already improving. However, given flat funding and a staff that is constant, changes occur in an evolutionary manner only. There is no magic wand to wave that can make long-term problems disappear overnight. Instead, solutions require much up front thought, planning, careful execution, rigorous monitoring, and integrating the many concerns. Bill Gates said managing programmers is like herding cats, and the same is true with my developers. Change is effected by getting their buy in and earning their respect. Over time, new and better practices will become institutionalized, and then plans will more accurately reflect reality.

While struggling with this I had to drop a bombshell on another set of customers. A key contract employee may have to leave us. The new contractor may not pick him up. In the federal government, contracting works in mysterious and often counterproductive ways. Against my wishes, the contracting officer selected another contractor because it bid lower. That makes a certain amount of financial sense if you assume two contractors can provide precisely the same service. Real life, of course, does not work that way, no matter how carefully you write the statement of work. That something like this would result in a six month or more delay in this project was irrelevant to the contracting officer. She had to follow the contracting laws. Apparently, I did not sufficiently plan for this specific contingency, and for that, I came up lacking. At the time, I was busy doing other things that seemed a whole lot more important, like instituting better ways of doing requirements management and system design. I occasionally get miffed by the pointless and counterproductive pressure, but I usually succeed in not taking it personally. I know that my strategy is sound and will prove itself in time.

Therefore, Friday found me glad to put the week behind me. My brother Tom lives in Boulder. The transit strike in Denver made it hard for me to get to Boulder from Lakewood via established means. Fortunately, Kip, a coworker who lives near Denver, drove me up to Boulder. We went along U.S. 93, a lovely road through the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Tom and some of his friends from NOAA do a regular Friday night dinner in a restaurant on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. I was glad to enjoy their company. The Indian food at the Himalayan Restaurant was quite good too.

Saturday, Tom took me biking. My feet are a bit challenged at the moment, due to a recent toe injury, but I was able to enjoy a bike ride of about twenty miles with him by peddling with care. Boulder is a very bike-friendly city, with numerous wide and well-maintained biking trails. Most roads have extra space for bike lanes. I am impressed by how its residents take exercise and proper eating so seriously. A car is not an absolute necessity in Boulder if you are adventurous and an outdoor type. The prevalent obesity I see in the East is largely missing in Boulder. The cultural values are to be trim, eat organic foods and stay in shape. Boulder is really a model of how a city should be laid out and managed. It also demonstrates a pragmatic way for modern Americans to live healthy and engaged lives. It should be proud of its sensible land use planning and a pedestrian friendly infrastructure. As the age of oil ends, cities like Boulder will prosper while others that depend on hydrocarbons for transportation are likely to whither.

Tom’s girlfriend Beth invited me to spend last night at her house with Tom. Her townhouse was more home-like than Tom’s rather small condominium. It was good to meet Beth again, who I met for the first time in January. She is a skinny, intelligent, attractive, athletic and caring woman, which means she is a good match for my brother. Beth has a 9-year-old daughter named Erica who was fun to get to know. She reminded me of my daughter at that age. Beth must be a better parent than I am though, because Erica seems to be about as well adjusted as a nine year old can be. Beth also has two cats, one of whom is a lap kitty and deigned to sit on my lap for a while and be worshipped. While certainly not as affectionate as my recently departed feline Sprite, it was nonetheless comforting to be in a house with felines again.

In my absence, my wife has had about a dozen friends over for a party. She has also purchased a fish to replace Fred the Ferocious Fish. The fish is another betta and I understand she has named him Sid Vicious.

Tomorrow it is back to the salt mines. Those pressing problems I put on hold Friday afternoon will be back to challenge me again.

For about two years now, I have been working for the U.S. Geological Survey. I work at their headquarters building in Reston, Virginia. I am a civil servant with twenty-three years of federal service. The USGS is actually the fourth federal agency where I have hung my hat. For me there is absolutely no question about it: working for the USGS is a wonderful and stimulating experience. For twenty years, I worked at agencies full of mediocrity. Sometime they bordered on being dysfunctional. Consequently, sometimes my hard work was not appreciated. Now, I look forward to coming to work. There is no reason for me to look anywhere else in Club Fed. USGS is where I will hang out until I retire. The only thing that upsets me is I had to spend twenty years wandering the federal wilderness before I found a home at USGS.

If you take the time to visit the USGS jobs site, you can read exactly why it is a great place to work. For the most part the information on the page would apply to any federal agency. Arguably, these days any one of these standard federal benefits would qualify it as a great place to work. Try getting a defined pension benefit plan as a new employee even at IBM these days.

One of the reasons I like working at USGS is that, of the four agencies for which I have worked, it feels the least like a bureaucracy. It is more than the casual dress. USGS is part of the Department of Interior, and our unofficial department motto seems to be, “We don’t need no stinking suits and ties!” Of course, since we manage federal lands many of us spend our days outdoors getting very personal with nature. However, many of us are still tied to our desks. Except for some in the Department of Interior headquarters in D.C. and various senior executives scattered across the country, few of us do the suit and tie thing. Even my Associate Director usually arrives in slacks and a button down shirt (no tie). He keeps a sports coat and some emergency ties discreetly in his office should the situation warrant. Casual Friday? I am trying to imagine how that would be different. Every day is casual day where I work. I wear jeans to work every day. I generally avoid wearing T-shirts, although many employees wear them routinely. I could wear sneakers too but I prefer wearing modest hiking shoes instead. The only time I have to play the dress up game is when I am going to an important meeting offsite. For example in December, I had to attend a meeting at the National Science Foundation. I still skipped the suit, but I felt compelled to do the dress pants, shiny shoes, long sleeve shirt and tie thing.

Of course dressing casual is more the business norm these days than dressing up. However, those of us who live and work around Washington, DC usually have to play the dress up game. The degree of dressiness is directly proportional to your distance from the White House. Particularly if you reach a certain federal grade level (generally GS-13 or above) the peer pressure to dress up can get quite strong. For more than twenty years, I did the dress up lite routine, which meant everything but the suit. In later years as I advanced to the upper grades I learned to keep a sport coat in my office for those occasions when I had to interact with people more than a grade above me. Needless to say it didn’t fit me. I always felt I was projecting the wrong image of myself when I dressed up for work. I am more of a jeans and polo shirt kind of guy.

So perhaps the casual dress culture is not that much of an asset. For me the most amazing thing about the USGS is that employees are fully empowered. There is of course a top down hierarchy; it is just that most of the time it does not matter. My associate director, for example, is a man named Bob. He expects a relative peon like me to also call him Bob. Everyone I meet feels fully vested in the agency and knows that their work matters. It matters because their work really does matter. USGS is, after all, an institution chock full of scientists. Scientists as a rule are far more concerned about science than they are about politics or hierarchies. Nothing is more precious to us than our reputation for accurate science.

In other federal agencies where I worked, many employees were clock-watchers. It’s not that they hated their jobs, it’s just that their evenings were far more enjoyable than their working hours. At USGS, most of us do not watch the clock. We are too busy happily engaged in our jobs. I trust that all of my employees will accurately account for their time and I am sure they do. Some I know will routinely work many more hours than they can charge for without authorization. They do it because they are involved with their work. They know that their contributions make a tangible difference to the quality of our science and the products that we put out. Consequently, their job becomes fun instead of a chore.

USGS is a very spread out agency. It has to be that way since ours is a big country. We need to be close to where the science is happening. Each state generally has a central office, and most have branch offices. To collaborate you have to work across geographical boundaries. Of course, this means a lot of conference calls and online Webex sessions. It also means a fair amount of travel. I am sure we have employees who never travel anywhere, but I think they are the exception. It is an unusual employee who does not have to travel somewhere on business at least once a year. Last year I was on an airplane five times for my job. I could have likely been on an airplane many more times had I elected it. Mostly I go to Denver, but last year I also visited Helena, Atlanta, San Francisco and Portland, Oregon. It is good to get out of the office during the year for a change of perspective and scenery. My job has just the right amount of business travel. Often I have the opportunity to see some unique aspects of the areas that I visit. In my other jobs, I could go years between business trips, if I went on any at all.

No matter where I go though, the people who work for USGS are uniformly friendly, professional and interesting. Despite seeing many of them only once or twice a year, it is as if they are just down the hall from me. The many conference calls between business trips fill in the gaps. We are truly one big team. The only challenging part is dealing with the time zone problems. Invariably for those of us on the East Coasts this means our many conference calls are packed into the afternoons.

As far as I can tell, the only downside to working at USGS is we cannot own certain kinds of energy stocks. Since geology is the best-known part of our business (we also do water resources, biology and cartography), those engaged in geology may have insight into areas that are profitable for oil and natural gas exploration.

I suspect there are other federal agencies that are similar to USGS, but not many. I would bet NOAA and the National Science Foundation share many of our values too. I do know that I feel very valued and engaged at USGS. I appreciate the non-hierarchical culture; it is a perfect fit for me. If you want to impress people at USGS, do better science. For the most part though we are too engaged in our science to care too much about whether our own egos are puffed up or not. We are professionals in the best sense of the word.

I am in retirement class this week. No, at age 49 (effective tomorrow) I am not quite ready for retirement. However, I am ready to start actively planning for successful retirement. Thus far my strategy has been to throw as much money into my 401-K as I can afford. I need to do better for myself, so I am in two days of learning the ins and outs of federal retirement. It is quite a revelation to me.

I am a federal employee with nearly 24 years of federal employment. I understood when I joined the government in 1981 that the retirement benefits in the government were good, but today they are excellent. My retirement benefits are excellent not because they have improved over the years. They seem better today because many companies have reduced or outright eliminated their retirement benefits. Pensions seem to be going the way of the dinosaur. Even IBM is going to require new hires to consider a 401-K their retirement system. United Airline employees are fighting to retain their pension plans, but it is unclear whether in the airline will even still be in business in a couple years. You can bet Southwest Airlines does not have no stinking pension plans beyond a 401-K. Similarly, GM and Ford are groaning under the weight of their own pension plans and would get rid of them if the UAW would let them.

When I joined the government at age 24, reaching retirement was as otherworldly to me as my setting foot on Mars. I started my career with the Defense Mapping Agency (now the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency). After some months doing boring clerk typist duties I found a job as a production controller. It involved monitoring the production of the agency’s many maps through its printing plant. I was a young buck in an office chock full of Korean War veterans. The veterans in the plant had one big career goal: retirement. There was a ten-year calendar in one of the offices I frequented. Each employee had marked on the calendar his or her name and the month in the year when he was eligible for retirement. I remember looking at it and not being able to grasp even the notion of holding on to the same job for ten years.

Now, turning age 49, those grizzled Korean War veterans from the early 1980s are looking very wise. Yes Virginia, there is more to life than working 9-5 for the rest of your life. Having some time in life to enjoy financial security without the press of work is indeed a noble goal for a human being. We are truly privileged to live in an age where this is now possible for many of us. Rather than the end of something, retirement is looking more and more to me like the beginning of something that quite wonderful.

Staring in 1987 new federal employees had to enroll in a newer and less generous retirement system called FERS, the Federal Employees Retirement System. While most of the retirement benefit depend on building wealth in a 401-K like system called the Thrift Savings Plan, there is still a true pension component to FERS. A federal employee wise enough to save systematically can enjoy quite a comfortable retirement. He also will enjoy partially indexed cost of living raises in his pension and social security benefits. In 2006, this is a good deal.

Because I started federal employment in 1981, I belong to the original Civil Service Retirement System. This system is even more generous than FERS, with fully indexed cost of living raises on its pension. Both plans allow you to maintain your membership in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan (FEHBP) in retirement, providing you retire having been insured for a number of years by one of its plans. Even in retirement, the government will keep paying about three quarters of your health insurance costs. As a retiree, you are still free to switch between one of the many myriad health plans during the annual Open Season.

These are just the highlights of a suite of benefits and services that federal employees take for granted, but should not. Frankly, the benefits are so superior to what you can get in private industry these days that you would be a fool not to consider government employment as a career. Certainly as I can attest, being a government employee has its downsides. However, unemployment is usually not one of them. Moreover, the plethora of real and meaningful benefits, many of which continue until the day you die, now seem almost surreal.

Today I find myself grateful that I am a federal employee. At the time, it did not seem like a great career choice but I stumbled on something truly wonderful. Now I feel protected from many of the sad but harsh realities of modern living. I can understand why many in the private sector would feel resentful. However, I wonder if their anger is misplaced. Maybe instead of feeling resentment they should be ask why they are permitting so many of the benefits we used to take for granted to slip away. Maybe they should be demanding that their leaders invest as much energy in the health and welfare of the people as they do catering to the needs of business. It sure seems to me that business has an increasingly unenlightened attitude toward is employees.

I take health insurance for granted. I pay an excellent rate because my employer values me enough to pay most of these costs. The government also buys health insurance for millions of employees at a time, likely garnering significant discounts. The FEHBP is a model for how a health plan should work for all Americans. I do not understand why we cannot open it to all Americans. I think Americans would embrace it, even if they had to pay the full price of the premiums. I also think employers, sick of double-digit health insurance price increases every year, would welcome the relief.

When it comes to my retirement, I can retire on a full pension when I have thirty years of service, which should be in 2012. I am not sure I will actually retire then, since I will be only 55. Yet it is nice to know that I have that option. I have many options. I can buy term life insurance and long-term care insurance. If I want, I can set aside money into dependent care and health care savings accounts and have this money subtracted from my taxable income. Of course, there are survivor benefits should I die, become disabled, or get injured on the job.

It may be that the federal government is the last place where a worker can get a square deal in this country. Perhaps you deserve better too. If you are a private sector employee who feels like you are getting the shaft from your employer, perhaps you should consider Uncle Sam, or your state and local governments as an employer of first resort.

You can view and apply for thousands of federal jobs at the Office of Personnel Management’s USA Jobs web site.