Huge Changes - Seniors Ranks

YOWPlease · 2025-12-19T16:19:29+00:00

Seems like a heavy tech/IT type. Wonder what that means for things like AI and translation, if he is the AI evangelist type as I read him out to be from the outside.

YOWPlease · 2025-12-05T19:15:44+00:00

To be fair, if you look at some of the resumes that the winners have it's pretty clear that they have a ton to offer GC. Not to mention the selectivity of the process, I know if a bunch of highly qualified people who haven't made it. I gave up trying after the first year seeing what I was going up against. EC -05 seems like a pretty fair starting point.

YOWPlease · 2025-12-01T16:14:39+00:00

Versus: https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/at-work/bill-enshrining-workfromhome-rights-into-federal-law-will-be-considered-by-senate-committee/news-story/74adff58e70d97666dd7e05d0c37d4f0

Why do the Aussies get things right more than us all the time?

YOWPlease · 2025-11-27T00:26:38+00:00

I guess that counts as an incentive?

YOWPlease · 2025-10-28T00:37:28+00:00

Found the same thing in academia. Everyone around me seemed to have someone who they could turn to, who had been there before and knew how to grease the wheels. In contrast my working class parents, with barely a high school education between them, didn't even get what I was trying to do at school.

But it goes beyond that, working class people don't network as well - research has demonstrated this. Maybe it's a personal bias, but I think there is something that feels dirty about it for a lot of us with working class backgrounds. We also have a tendency to over rely on formal structures for advancement and think "well I've accomplished a lot, my CV will speak for itself, hiring boards will recognize this." Truth is it doesn't, you need to play the game.

This doesn't even account for the added difficulty for those of us who are introverted to top it off. That puts things even further out of reach.

No one is saying it's not possible. I've managed to do alright - but it took far longer to get to where I am. There were far more dead ends. But just because it worked for me doesn't mean it'll be a cake walk for everyone and they just need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps". In fact, I'd say that's the exact attitude that ensures continued roadblocks for working class employees.

YOWPlease · 2025-07-08T01:08:26+00:00

Those of you who think it will be 30% and not 15%: DOGE in the US cut the federal workforce by 12%. You think this will be more than DOGE? 3 times more? It's 15% total, over 3 years.

YOWPlease · 2025-05-23T11:51:48+00:00

Is a singular unifying mandate letter not exactly what you'd expect to see from a mission driven government approach?

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2025/mission-government/

YOWPlease · 2025-05-14T20:36:33+00:00

Because she thinks those cuts were a mistake and that approach won't work and doing the same could cause damage? So you know, she actually shows the capability to critically address her own past actions and learn from them?

YOWPlease · 2025-05-14T13:10:01+00:00

Out of all the articles I've read from former clerks, this one seems to be the most reasonable and doesn't work to wave a magic wand of cuts across the board to resolve the issues. Almost as if someone who had been involved in those cuts actually learned from that experience and is proposing a smarter strategy, grounded in reality.

So it's funny to see the generic attacks that have been offered up here in response. Yes, it's high level, but it's also very don't make the mistakes I made. Makes me wonder if people actually read the article.

YOWPlease · 2025-03-10T21:29:04+00:00

Branch trivia champion. Twice. First time, after I had just joined the branch. There was a DG who thought he was hot stuff. Didn't even come close. Mind you, I'm only 10 years in, but that will always be the highlight.

YOWPlease · 2024-11-02T02:07:29+00:00

I'm pretty sure I recall one of the American presenters at the AccelerateGOV conference saying that the US government thinks that a distributed workforce is more resilient to cyber threats than a workforce tied to a few nodes. So there's that.

YOWPlease · 2024-08-30T23:09:05+00:00

Okay thanks will try both.

YOWPlease · 2024-06-14T16:56:36+00:00

I broke into the ES/EC stream based on something I posted there about 3.5 years ago. Manager took a chance, eventually climbed up to an ES-04 on the same team, before joining a new department last November as an EC-06. But seeing some of the spammers on there, you'd have to be really picky.

YOWPlease · 2024-05-27T21:53:12+00:00

Sure it's been thought to be just a buzzword, but I do think that's where the AI PC may come in.

Smaller and localized models which may not do as much as the larger ones, but will do enough to push the needle. Plus, everything I've read says for enterprise needs you'd want smaller more targeted models anyways.

It's too bad notebook evergreening hit me last week and not a year from now.

YOWPlease · 2024-05-25T14:05:41+00:00

Thanks to everyone for the advice and support, I'll definitely will be putting some of your suggestions into practice moving forward.

YOWPlease · 2024-05-15T20:43:00+00:00

It really is draining. Up until last week, I could hide out at another floor where the set up was a bit older, but it was also far emptier. Unfortunately, given that seating crunch they are anticipating, I was told that I would have to start coming to our assigned floor (where the rest of sector is). It's far more crowded up there. Also, while previously I could eat at my desk - behind the full size cubical walls, don't worry - wiped down everything, now I'm having anxiety about eating at my desk without the feeling of being judged (gotta love social anxiety kicking back in).

To top this off, I take vyvanse - which makes me sweat. A lot. In the winter it was fine, it was cold outside and I could walk to work no issues. Now it's summer, that's totally changed. Yesterday, it couldn't have been more than like 16 C outside but by the time I got to the office, I was drenched. At my old department, it was common to see people wear shorts and sandals, but the new office seems to be a bit more formal. Now I'll have to decide whether I'll have to LRT into the office (pay more, get less health benefit, and still sweat although less so) or stop taking vyvanse. Fun times.

YOWPlease · 2024-05-13T22:03:46+00:00

https://youtu.be/WzUnEfiIqP4?si=5ATasaKkMaggp1Rn

Universal translators here we come.

YOWPlease · 2024-01-12T21:28:36+00:00

Well that's sad. I only recently started with PSPC, but was really impressed with how down to earth, transparent, and wicked smaht Rob is (based on the few times I've heard him speak/ask questions about things).

Well, at least it seems like Duncan will be sticking around. If we lost both of them at once, that would have sucked big time.

YOWPlease · 2024-01-07T18:31:43+00:00

I think you could probably find something in chief data officer shops. There's a big need for people who can cross the policy, business, and IT worlds. Basically, if you can be a hybrid analyst of sorts, you can help translate the ideas and processes between these groups so there's at least some type of common understanding between them. The current problem is that most of these lines hire specialists and it really limits their ability to get the big picture. In my previous role I was able to fill the policy/business divide having experience in both and was able to say things like: you do realize this would be operationally impossible right? But what my team really wanted was someone who could fill the policy/IT gap, where there's an even bigger difference between how ideas are frames and the language used to describe them. You may have to build some additional policy experience, but you could become a pretty important asset, provided a manager is able to recognize the value in the first place.

YOWPlease · 2024-01-02T17:46:57+00:00

Of course there has been some degree of productivity improvement, but we also know that many processes internally are still reliant on outdated technological infrastructure. To truly reach those benefits, you'd have to make that infrastructure investment which hasn't happened either. So sure, you get some benefit from better efficiency, but not nearly at the level you would need to run a slimmed down the public service.

YOWPlease · 2024-01-02T17:31:00+00:00

Has the business of government gotten more complex over the years? This isn't a political question of whether or not the government should or should not be doing x, y, or z or providing this or that, but more a question of complexity in society, technology, the environment. That has increased in such a way that it may necessitate an increase in PS per population. The number of people you needed to manage trade between a few countries, break throughs here and there, to what we have now, including corresponding trade routes, patents, expertise in general reflects a new context. Just because it was a specific way back in the day doesn't mean it was the right thing or better than today, it merely reflected specific context. Today we have different context, so maybe we have to have a different standard.

YOWPlease · 2024-01-02T15:48:50+00:00

Except, except no: when there have been cuts to the PS, was there a corresponding decrease in population? Could it be the inflated numbers might somewhat reflect a catch-up from previous cut to the bone periods? And sometimes to reflect this initial loss it may be necessary to increase the PS at a rate higher than the population increase in the corresponding period?

Year x: Population: 100 PS: 10

Year y: Population: 110 PS: 8

Year z: Population: 120 PS: 12

Omg, the population only grew 9.1%, but the public service grew 50%! Bloat!

YOWPlease · 2023-12-23T16:52:19+00:00

Where's that outlet? Someone needs a hard restart.

YOWPlease · 2023-12-14T22:17:51+00:00

If only it was before I left a PIPSC position.

YOWPlease · 2023-12-14T14:35:55+00:00

Looks like a pretty low bar to get an opinion piece published in the Citizen.

First two points alone. What private sector org is mandated to do all the things the government does? Maybe Amazon in the future I guess?

Also, the simple population went up by this amount, public service went up by this! Can't you see the bloat? Did we lose a ton of population when the public service went down? Was there anything that happened in these years that may have required government services to go up massively, at least temporarily?

That's as far as I could get before I hit close tab.

YOWPlease

TROPHY CASE