Quote:
Originally Posted by subterranean
I don't doubt any of that in some instances, or that an upper echelon Ivy education, in certain fields, has a lot of sway. Particularly for higher-up positions, or in certain STEM fields that require licensure, or whatever, in the private sector. But that is just not the case in the public sector, with a public or private school education, no matter how good. It's super funny because I keep seeing my classmates who went into the private sector with director level jobs, but those in the public sector have lesser titles but make way better money and much better benefits.
Public sector jobs are all about people you've worked WITH, or grinding from the very bottom-up. People just don't turn over the same way they do in the private sector. Some--many--hang onto jobs for life. There's heavy union activity. They also help and protect their own. It's like a family. I have been on enough NeoGov Subject Matter Expert review panels to understand how it works. It's what you know, but more importantly, it's who you have worked with.
I am 2500 miles away from my alma mater and not a soul in my 250+ person department went to my school (U. of Michigan), and the vast majority of people have such a terrible idea of geography and school rank that it's often the case where people say "you went to Minnesota....err...Wisconsin....?, right?" Michigan is the Berkeley of the Midwest. No one gives a fuck. I could have just as soon gone to Eastern Michigan right up the road for a fraction of the cost, and I should have.
If I would've applied for a planning job in Oregon straight out of college from Michigan, I would never have gotten hired unless it was WELL below my qualifications, and even that would've been a stretch. For my first job out of college, I was told from HR that over 200 people applied for my job in the public sector in Michigan. They only posted the job because they were required to by law. I interned there for 2 years and of course they were going to give the job to me. That is the way 95% of public sector hiring works.
Most senior planner jobs you see posted....if you think there aren't 5 or 6 associate planners in the department waiting to step into that role, you're sadly mistaken. For every associate planner, there are several assistant planners waiting in the wings. A degree from Harvard isn't going to get you anything but an interview when your cube mate has been making minimum wage and doing the grunt work for years.
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That's insightful, thanks for writing that all out. I've never worked for a public entity, but I've had some semi-publics as clients, like state / national boards of tourism or economic development. And it's like you point out: the lead on the client side never changes, it's the same guy or lady for years. Whereas the agency team supporting the client sees typical 20-30% annual churn.
In the advertising and media comms agency world, you often get punished for staying in the same agency for a long time, even if you're steadily moving up the chain of command. There's a real simple reason why: if you move from one agency to a competitor, you can easily negotiate a salary ~20% above your current pay (in a major market). The only time you'll see a raise like that internally is if you jump up a whole salary band, and only for that first year. If you've been a director at Agency A for 4 years, there's no way you're negotiating a 20% incremental. But if you jump ship to competitor Agency B down the street (or in many cases, a few floors up or down) for a similar director role, you can bag that 20%. It's called the Agency Dance, and it's why it's
really hard to retain the best staff for more than 3 years. You better keep them moving up the bands or you'll just need to replace them with people willing to take the role for less than what your current in-house option will accept. And then you need to retrain / re-on-board, all that junk. It's an overhead headache.
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(we should have had a drinking team too). We played athletic powerhouses like Swarthmore, Haverford and, oddly, U. of Virginia. And for the actual jocks, mainly "townies", there was Lacrosse in which we often won the national championship. But our jocks got no special treatment. There were a couple of courses for them like "rocks for jocks" (geology) but you couldn't graduate just taking those.
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