HACKER Q&A
📣 throwawaydays

Should I get out of gov as engineer?


Due to a certain turn of events, I ended up as a software engineer at a government institute at a relatively young (<25) age and sticked there. Not developing Java EE applets but very enterprisey (MQ, non-REST SOAPy stuff) Spring-based Java law-to-software-systems nonetheless for a few (~5) years now. The work is pretty challenging yet non-demanding (9 to 5 and you are expected to have left by then). The salary is obviously not top of market but competitive (Europe) and has a steady growth curve but you know what you are making 10 years from now unless you actively pursue promotions to a different function profile (middle/upper management, PO, architect role etc). Making sure you have more days off than you will normally spend seems to be govt's top priority and peers are often cheeky jealous about how I seem to have an infinite amount of vacation hours.

The biggest problem I have is thinking "is this it?". I like my job and my colleagues but working in govt I feel no commercial pressure whatsoever. Of course, we have deadlines but we are delivering the software regardless and our "clients" have no choice. We will never compete or have to fear that work is drying up, only that we have to do it with less people and we don't go too far over budget (and if it runs out, other work under a different budget code gets higher priority). As a result of this, innovation isn't really a thing. Optimization, really making things better, is not a concern or objective even though on a daily basis my hands itch to "fix" stuff. The law abiding citizens won't ever complain about inefficiencies in processes, why his data model is too complex for what it is doing or why some forms aren't 1 step instead of 5 of which we could already fill in 4.

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  👤 throwawaydays Accepted Answer ✓
There is also a completely lackluster vision on staying up to date and having everything deprecate into legacy because _it still works_ (until the law or interpretation of it changes which happens more often than you think). This is also very noticeable within the organization where we are running on so much end-of-life/extended-life-support software/services that it's an insult to the tax payer's money.

My biggest fear is getting stuck and also becoming legacy. I am definitely keeping up with the industry and becoming a better engineer/problem-solver but looking at some of my colleagues they might think the same yet having worked for the same institute for 15+ years they wouldn't be able to function outside of it. I am also concerned I am "wasting" my best years by arguably under-performing for my abilities and drive. My ideal job would be working here but as an outsider, challenged to improve systems throughput, listening to the "client" and making things better (there is no "conversion" to optimize but I can think of several KPIs which are lackluster and am certain I can improve). There is also this kind of stigma in working for govt (your requirements/software cannot possibly be complex!) which I think will spiral most people into staying in govt for ever because they are seen as a "window staring" underperformer.

So yeah, even though it's not that bad and I like my job should I challenge myself more and try to switch to a more commercial organization? Is my experience too limited to make a proper judgement or am I vastly over estimating the difference between commercial and govt software engineers? Perhaps consider a path as consultant? Thank you for your time.

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