Civil service jobs

[Workfear]

Sorry not really an aibu but I keep seeing a lot of people saying how much they hate working for the Cs, and to get away from the job I hate I recently applied for the Cs.

Is it really that bad? Bit nervous now about going for it.

I love the flexibility of the role, and I love the policies I work on! I’d just make sure you’re joining a department that interests you. I’m not a senior civil servant though, wouldn’t ever want to be as I know how stressful and awful it can be.

Well I guess it depends on what grade/what department you are applyng for. I've worked for the CS for 31 years and am very happy. I joined as an AA and I've progresed through the grades up to G7 and have been supported and paid to study for professional qualifications. Go for it OP. I could bugger off based on my experience and professional qualification but I don't want to. I'm really happy where I am.

We're underpaid and understaffed. Morale passed rock bottom long ago. We regularly get a pasting in the press for our supposed incompetence and gold plated pensions. It feels like our senior managers have no real idea what happens on the factory floor, so to speak.

But it can't bet that bad, because I've been there for eighteen years. Right..?

I enjoy working for the civil service although things have become more stretched in recent years. I get a sense of purpose from the work.

PsychoSyd

This is what I'm worried about. Oh god.

I have worked for Civil Service for 30 years and fully agree with SycoSyd

Psycho

I just started last year. In a relatively junior role
Bloody love it! I've found everyone to be lovely!! I do however find the management side of things quite difficult (I don't have a civilian manager so no one really knows how to answer some questions on things like annual leave/sickness etc).
However The actual job....LOVE!

PsychoSyd do you work with me

I'd say at least it's a job for life but we are being outsourced and/or generally done away with.

Exactly what Syd said.

Love it.
Flexible
Interesting
Lots of people contact
Superb career prospects
Had three babies whilst working with fully paid 6m for 2 and 1 yr for youngest mat leave
Worked term time only while they were at school.

Opportunity to have my ideas listened to and acted on.
Good pay
Good pension.
I'm a very happy CS even after 33 yrs. I feel very lucky especially as I started as a temp.

I've been in CS for 14 years now, I've done a lot of shit jobs in there, think call centres, but in the last few years i have had job moves and promotions and now find myself in a job and team that I absolutly love and couldn't be happier. Job is exciting and different to most jobs out there. My team are fantastic and I generally do not mind going to work. The job is fully flexible 7 days a week so fits around family life.

I’m an HO

it’s an ok job

Very much depends what department you're in, at which grade and the nature of your role - an AO working frontline in a Jobcentre is going to have a very different experience from a Whitehall G7 team leader doing policy and ministerial briefings all the time.

What sort of role (in general terms) are you going for?

I love it! I'm really busy which is great and would never say i'm underpaid! Flexibility, working from home, love my team and my work

I have a real love/hate relationship with my job. On one hand, the responsibility I have is far too great for the grade I am (very junior) but it's a new area and everyone is pitching in.

My office has a culture of 'it doesn't matter what grade you are if you're capable of doing the work' which is great for building skills, but not so great when you suddenly realise you're working harder than the majority of others at the same grade, but seeing no monetary pay-off. You have to do it though if you want promotion, which I do.

On the other hand, I have amazing flexibility in my hours that I wouldn't get outside the CS and the work I do is truly life-changing. Truly. I've found my niche and I wouldn't work anywhere else.

I joined CS a few months ago from private practice (lawyer) and I love it. So much more flexible, pension is amazing, culture is so much better than private practice, great perks like maternity pay. I do feel for the admin staff as their job in my area of CS is insecure at the moment but I think in general people in the civil service think they're hard done to but haven't worked anywhere else. Having worked in private practice for years it's so much better you can hardly compare it.

Like all jobs, there's good bits and bad bits. I don't agree with the entirely negative posts above, or rather, my experience doesn't reflect theirs, and it sounds like they're in very poor parts of the CS.

It's a massive workforce, with a lot of variety so it's hard to generalise.

Why not tell us a bit about what you like doing, what you're looking for, and we can tell you more about whether we think it'll suit you?

The good thing about the CS is that once you're in you can shift from Department to Department - it makes job moving a lot less stressful because you're not handing your notice in and starting anew, you're arranging a transfer, and your seniority and pension goes with you. So if you find you don't like where you are, it's not quite as difficult to move somewhere else and try that.

There is a huge difference between working as frontline staff (Job Centre Plus etc) and working in Whitehall (I've done both). The first is soul destroying a lot of the time, the second can be fantastic. Going into the House can be really exciting, you feel as though you are right at the heart of things.

But there is still boring drudge work to do in Whitehall. Departments are very risk averse and it can take years of meetings and paper pushing to achieve a small policy change. The office politics can be a killer too.

I'm really happy in my civil service job (lawyer). Only been there a year though. Really flexible around the kids which i love.

And the people are so nice!

Also in recent years, jobs have changed in some Departments, with junior staff taking on the work of more senior staff. In my last Department HEOs and SEOs were often doing G7 level work.

Not a civil servant but worked as a contractor for years. I worked with a great team of people doing some interesting things. The bit that drove me crazy was the crap decision making because of politics, rather than any sort of logic.

I left the civil service because of all the whining, passive aggressive, lazy people working in it. Around 20% of my colleagues were good. The rest were hopeless and spent most of their time complaining about how things weren’t as good as they used to be.

I’m back in the private sector now. Benefits nowhere near as good but it’s still miles better.

Incidentally, being a senior civil servant is a piece of piss compared to private sector roles of equivalent seniority.