Private to public sector - struggling to adjust

[Anxiety17]

Hello,
I was wondering if anyone had been in a similar situation or could offer any advice.
ive worked in a career in the private sector my entire life. My original job was a vocation which morphed into a field adjacent (think film making to marketing even though it isn’t quite that).

my last role was extremely intense in the private sector. I was promoted several times and ended up with a lot of work on my plate and was very well respected and regarded - until a management change ended up with me having to leave.

Ive taken quite a large pay cut to do a role of the same title technically in the public sector. I am extremely grateful for the job and how quickly I got it, plus the fact it seems at present like the public sector is a better work life balance etc.

i am hired on an FTC for a specific project. The team is 9 people large and everyone on the team is from a different area (eg project management, engagement etc) so I’m not sat in a team who all have the same role as me. I do have a dotted line to the head of the department my role would conventionally sit in.

im finding the pace of work so painfully slow. It feels like the project is taking a while to get off the ground and I’ve done everything I can do until things start moving - I’ve been proactive, provided plans and forecasts, connected with colleagues, trying to learn what I need where I can. But I can’t deliver anything yet and I feel like everyone is looking at me like I’m twiddling my thumbs.

im used to doing so much that I didn’t look up from my desk all day, spinning lots of plates and being good at it despite how it ended. It feels here like there’s a lack of speed and although I want to enjoy the slower pace as I know the last role was unhealthy I’m struggling to not feel guilty day to day about not doing anything? My manager is fine, I regularly communicate what I’m up to but I can’t shake the feeling.

anyone else had this?

there’s meetings about setting up task and finish groups, and the task of that group is to set up a task and finish group. Also working groups and delivery groups? I worked in CS at a lower level in Covid and never heard of them - are they the latest buzz word?

Having worked in investment banking and City insurance, I work far harder at the local authority. I think my managers are extremely hard working and often end up working their weekends or during holidays due to an unpredictable issue. Every now and again someone senior from the private sector comes in promising the counsellors they can save millions. In a decade I’ve yet to find one that could. They disappear again after causing havoc because they had no clue of the widespread impact of their decisions. It may look slower. It’s more that it’s a massive machine and if you aren’t cautious, you can end up causing huge losses or very real harm to the service users. If it’s not for you move on. But please don’t bash the public sector workers when you’ve been there a very limited amount of time.

This post could have been written by me (bar the pay cut)!

I find local authority painfully slow and things have to move up and down the chain of command, I'm not allowed to question or speak to certain levels, pretty much all has to go via my manager.

I've learned over the last couple of years to let go and settled into my own groove. I have enough to fill my working day. I can sleep at night, switch off at the weekends now. I probably wouldn't be here if I'd stayed in my old job so am very grateful for it.

how intense is investment banking ? and how high stakes is it or is it more on the zz side ?

That public sector was not designed to work efficiently, otherwise it wouldn't exist. It's bloated, it's full of make-work jobs and is not meant to be value for money. Just remember, at the height of the British Empire, the number of employees in the civil service was about 50,000 people. Now it's half a million and still growing. The private sector (where I work) is propping this lot up.

I work in comms and marketing for the LA but on theatre and events. Watching colleagues who work in other areas or projects is painful. Working with the services themselves is painful. As I have 20 years experience i will get on and plan the full marketing campaign with costs etc even before signing off certain elements as you know it will happen, just not when. Can you do this? Also, could you implement new processes to make things smoother when the project does get off the ground? It seems ridiculous be twiddling your thumbs because of this and for them to say you dont need to take on other work in the meantime is crazy. There must be another area that needs help. Public sector is always short staffed.

this is part of the problem with capitalism, if all businesses were truly efficient etc then there would be a lot more workers needing jobs, etc

I’ve recently moved from public to private sector. Public sector is so different. Snails pace, soooo many layers of sign off, resistant to change, so much stupid game playing, lack of understanding that they’re spending public money. It got utterly frustrating and I lost patience in the end (stuck at it for 17 yrs mind…).

I always say that if you’ve worked in the private sector you’ll either leave public sector within 2 yrs as you can’t adapt or you bloody love it and put your feet up!

Christ, this has been a depressing read. What a waste of taxpayer money.

Not bashing the workers - I know that individually everyone will have their own challenges to overcome systemically and also get that it’s a far less agile beast that some private sector companies, which will be reckless with process and also the people they employ. I just am struggling in certain areas when I’ve always been told to operate leanly and dynamically

in terms of me changing processes because I’m only one specialist part of a wider project i can’t really do that but I am trying to work on things to have in the bank for when they are needed

I feel your pain, making the private to public switch and realising the ovary aching bureaucracy and sign offs and governance makes the job like wading through treacle is so frustrating.

I get it - it is public money so has to go through lots of checks but I expect it would be cheaper to just make some decisions and get things done rather than all the costly naval gazing.

Drove me mad at first but then I was getting married, doing up a house, having a baby. I didn't go back.

My DIL entered local government after having three children. She said they're so laid back. Her boss has been on sick leave for six months, caused no issues. She's adjusted to the role saying that the flexibility with young children, working from home four days, suits her. But yes the pace is slow, u turns frustrating. But the holidays are generous, pension decent so she'll paddle along for a few more years.

This resonates so much with me. I moved from a very stressful, fast paced private sector role to a public sector one a couple of years ago. The pace is so agonisingly slow! I've realised that I actually thrive on a fair amount of pressure and I crave the buzz I get when meeting a deadline - and I've none of that here. I've taken to asking my manager to set artificial deadlines for me, because otherwise I'll sit on a task and do it last minute, but often I'm twiddling my thumbs.

It's no coincidence that the people I get on best with there have also come from industry and understand what it's like. One of them gave me a good bit of advice, telling me to expect it to take at least two years to get used to the difference in pace. The trouble is, it's been almost two years and I'm still not feeling it so I'm in a bit of a quandary. At least I like the surroundings and I really like the people, and my mental health is probably better overall because in my previous job the pressure ended up getting too much and that's why I left. But I really feel like I'm not performing at my best and meeting my potential and that's difficult.

Maybe I shouldn't mind slowing down because I can retire in a few years, but I do mind! And at my age I'm not going to stroll into another job easily - I feel very fortunate to have landed this one.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. I just wanted to say, OP, that you're not alone in feeling as you do.

I've gone the other way, public sector to a big private sector organisation, and I found the opposite. I honestly went insane the first six months in the private sector with how slow everything was and how long it took for anyone to respond. My job in the public sector was very busy and everything was time sensitive (think criminal justice type of work). The pay is much much better in the private sector though, so I've adapted and done additional qualifications to keep me busy.

I’m a Project Manager who has worked mostly in private sector but was seconded to a public sector client in my last company. Never, ever, ever again. I couldn’t stand it - so slow, so bureaucratic, so much waste!!!! The money the public sector waste on inefficiencies in projects made me sick to my stomach.

My commiserations to you. After the secondment I said I would purely stick to private sector or charities (marginally better and much more rewarding!) from now on.

I knew what you were going to say before I read your post lol.

Unfortunately government agencies tend to be a lot slower paced than private organizations so the choices are to accept that's what it is and get used to it or continue to search for another job. You will nyo change how things work there so don't waste your time and energy trying.

I remember getting laid from one of the big 4 consulting firms a while ago and getting a job with Lloyds Banking Group, it was similar transformation work and they and be a prior client but the week I started I knew I wouldn't last, the culture was very slow and bureaucratic with people who had been in their roles for ages, and very different from what I was used to and 2 months later I resigned to join another big 4 firm.

In my sector i have switched between the two, and now I’m back in the private sector (for the last 6 months), I’m staying here! Part of job satisfaction is successfully completing tasks and projects to give you that sense of accomplishment - I didn’t have that working for Government as nothing was ever completed! The chokehold on decision making meant that things moved at a snails pace and then that fed into the culture - slow paced and attracted people who were fine with only doing one or two things a week. As taxpayers it’s incredibly frustrating that this is why we have such an expensive public sector. I’ve worked alongside a lot of other Governments in my sector (in Europe and Asia mostly), and generally it’s faster paced and more autonomous.

This is the civil service in a nutshell, it’s where all the shit people conglomerate, those that wouldn’t make it in the private sector. It is slow paced, illogical, people are literally just there for the flexi time/pension etc. dare I say, it’s where careers go to die. If you’re ambitious and good at your job, you won’t like CS culture.

I moved from investment banking to HMRC. I lasted 7 weeks before I went running back to IB as fast as I possibly could. It’s not just that the pace is so slow, it’s that they have absolutely zero interest in changing the culture. They don’t want to listen to ideas about how to improve efficiency, productivity, save costs. There was a way that they worked and that was going to be the way forever and a day.

Our photocopier broke down one day and when I asked for the telephone number to call the engineer to come and fix it, I was told I wasn’t allowed to do that because I hadn’t been trained on it yet. Only management were allowed to call photocopier engineers apparently.

Yes public sector is much slower, and for me it has been less stressful and saved my sanity. I have found some people have rose above their ability (face fits) and don't make decisions and take forever to sign things off. There are also a few people who are very good, could achieve everything in the private sector, but prefer less stress and better work life balance in the public sector.

Some teams are mismanaged and poor (thinking of the one where the manager got the job through who she was sleeping with, and has over the years surrounded herself with people just as useless, so she doesn't get caught out) and some teams are actually excellent. In the private sector the poor manager would have been moved out years ago, and many of those she's recruited not got past interview stage.

I've only worked in the public sector so can't compare, however I would point out 2 things.
The job I did was very stressful, I had to obey legislation and guidelines. I had no say in how many people I dealt with in a day, or how complicated the casework was. I was on the go all day, there wasn't a day that I could slack off. My work was driven by the needs of my customers. In addition, because there was a chance that the customer could appeal my decision, right up to judicial review, I had to record in full my notes of the interview, any investigations, subsequent conversations, everything that had happened. My notes were pages and pages long. All of that takes time. In my working life my decisions were subjected to judicial review twice. Both were dismissed as my notes were clear, in depth and detailed. I had covered everything. I produced nothing at the end of that, nothing that could make a profit by, by law, I had to fulfill that function.
In addition, being publicly funded, scrutiny of how funds are spent is the only correct way to behave. Yes, it's slow, for that reason. If I wanted to have funding as part of my work I had to justify it and know that I wasn't wasting money.
I'd also state that we did have people join us from the private sector and sometimes they just couldn't do the job. Dealing with people, members of the public, who are themselves stressed is in itself stressful and upsetting for the worker. We didn't just say, ' that's not my job', we tried very hard to sort out other issues. Yes, that might just have been a phone call to a colleague, or waling over to speak to the colleague, but do that several times a day to multiple organisations to try to improve a person's life!
This isn't a rant, I'm just trying to give a perspective on how my life at work was. It's hard when I was called a jobsworth because I had to follow legislation and do a thorough job. All the while being sworn at by customers and worse.

My experience has been:

Private sector - the need to make money so every minute had to be productive

Public sector - no pressure or deadlines, very steady pace, no stressful demands

I am managing in a role within the public sector as I have a side hustle and can take time out to keep on top of household chores. I am VERY lucky but am guessing my good fortune may not last but enjoying it while I can.

I am in month 6 of waiting for MOJ to do pre employment checks after having 2 enhanced DBSs come back fine. I am going back to CS as it’s the only security in this employment reality right now. My god it’s slow every few weeks they message me to say still on going who is going to wait a year for a basic admin job 🤦‍♀️

Why is the public sector so slow and everyone seems to accept it as it is?! Isn’t this tax payers money being wasted on salaries and gold plated pensions for people to work at half the pace of the private sector

@ladykale nobody will reform it my friend did some work for a government department re AI on the presentation the manager said how it would be losing jobs even though it would be massively cost effective they opted to pay for the work then not implement it. If you’re never worked for the CS you cannot imagine what it’s like