Reply #20: Everything I hear about the VA kind of makes me wish I'd stayed. [View All]

[ieoeja]

My first IT job was 2 1/2 years with the VA. Twenty years in private enterprise later, I still have to say the best IT workers I ever saw were those at the VA. They make everyone I have worked with since look like a bunch of pikers.

Ironically, I left the VA because my coworkers thought I was wasting my talent at the VA. Apparently, they buy into the "government workers suck" meme as well.

On the other hand, I do make a lot more money. But I miss the sensible** challenges. And believe it or not, while they may be embarrassed to admit it, a lot of gov't workers take a great deal of satisfaction in knowing they are serving their country. Beats helping a bunch of bankers or lawyers get even wealthier.


**Sensible: making a hospital work more efficiently.

**Insensible: weeks discussing/determining how we would like the software, we have already decided to purchase, to do certain processes without ever seeing the actual software. Then when the project is done, we get our first look at the software and find that it does it in almost the exact same manner. This leads to the natural decision to just do it the way the software already does it. Which leads less naturally to more discussions about the ideas that we have now rejected because, well, we are being paid to discuss the fucking ideas so we damned well better discuss them.

**I hate my job.