Cummings' Jobs Advert

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Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
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Dr Jekyll said:
Eric Mc said:
The description of the people he seems to want indicates to me that the "weirdos" he'd end up with would be exactly the WRONG type of people to lead teams, work in groups, exercise "people" skills etc.
Might be the right type of people to get some actual work done though.
People who are alergic to organising meetings for the fking hell of it, tend to get more actual work done.

There is no doubt that, for some time, we've had a period of different governments but the same st running in the background, by the same civil servants. The hive mindset might benefit from a shake up.

Sway

Original Poster:

26,070 posts

193 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
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Camelot1971 said:
princeperch said:
Good luck with this. He wants to recruit talented people, at the top of their game.

The problem is money. A grade 7 or grade 6 (which are fairly senior roles) earn between 50-70 ish at the moment. A senior civil servant can get promoted and get a ten pc pay rise from the G6 salary.

So the sums involved, especially if you are in London, are pretty small. I know spad roles can pay more (up to about 100k or so) but I doubt they will be recruiting at that level, the roles will be at g7/G6 level.

Pay really is a problem in the civil service. A lot of people simply can't stomach the money.
The money won't be a driver for those who are genuinely interested in shaping government. Anyone who wants to earn more than most ministers or even the PM is looking at the wrong place to work if they apply.
Yup.

I could very easily 'chase the money' - but for loads of reasons simply don't want to.

I'm the sole earner - disabled partner and two teens. Not worth the constant politicking in the 'name' companies within my field. Especially as it's all geared to screwing you over in order for them to advance.

I don't want the constant travel and stress any more.

The work bores me to tears, being able to be described as advanced painting by numbers.

Zero freedom of thought or innovation.

Etc.

So, I work for a firm that I quite admire in what they do.

The people are great, and very little bullst.

The work is varied, complex, challenging, emotionally and intellectually rewarding - oh, and fun.

I get paid around half of what I 'could', doing the same job for a different firm (or a known consultancy). Been there, didn't like it.

In many ways, within it's field, it's become the market disruptor that Cummings seems to be aiming for in Downing Street.

Which is why I'm struggling with this - I'd love to do what I do now, on a wider more important stage. However, the risks are huge personally, due to my circumstances. Probably a risk too far...

andy_s

19,397 posts

258 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Digga said:
Dr Jekyll said:
Eric Mc said:
The description of the people he seems to want indicates to me that the "weirdos" he'd end up with would be exactly the WRONG type of people to lead teams, work in groups, exercise "people" skills etc.
Might be the right type of people to get some actual work done though.
People who are alergic to organising meetings for the fking hell of it, tend to get more actual work done.

There is no doubt that, for some time, we've had a period of different governments but the same st running in the background, by the same civil servants. The hive mindset might benefit from a shake up.
18th C methods in the 21st C - definitely time for a shake up, more so than ever at this moment I think. Not 'change to give the illusion of progress', but being more agile, clever and focused without the constraints of administrative torpor within the confines of duopolous politic.

Camelot1971

2,698 posts

165 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Sway said:
Camelot1971 said:
princeperch said:
Good luck with this. He wants to recruit talented people, at the top of their game.

The problem is money. A grade 7 or grade 6 (which are fairly senior roles) earn between 50-70 ish at the moment. A senior civil servant can get promoted and get a ten pc pay rise from the G6 salary.

So the sums involved, especially if you are in London, are pretty small. I know spad roles can pay more (up to about 100k or so) but I doubt they will be recruiting at that level, the roles will be at g7/G6 level.

Pay really is a problem in the civil service. A lot of people simply can't stomach the money.
The money won't be a driver for those who are genuinely interested in shaping government. Anyone who wants to earn more than most ministers or even the PM is looking at the wrong place to work if they apply.
Yup.

I could very easily 'chase the money' - but for loads of reasons simply don't want to.

I'm the sole earner - disabled partner and two teens. Not worth the constant politicking in the 'name' companies within my field. Especially as it's all geared to screwing you over in order for them to advance.

I don't want the constant travel and stress any more.

The work bores me to tears, being able to be described as advanced painting by numbers.

Zero freedom of thought or innovation.

Etc.

So, I work for a firm that I quite admire in what they do.

The people are great, and very little bullst.

The work is varied, complex, challenging, emotionally and intellectually rewarding - oh, and fun.

I get paid around half of what I 'could', doing the same job for a different firm (or a known consultancy). Been there, didn't like it.

In many ways, within it's field, it's become the market disruptor that Cummings seems to be aiming for in Downing Street.

Which is why I'm struggling with this - I'd love to do what I do now, on a wider more important stage. However, the risks are huge personally, due to my circumstances. Probably a risk too far...
The Civil Service is a brilliant place to work (IMO) and job security is generally very good, if you are competent. However, I don't think these roles will be standard CS ones - SPADs are not Civil Servants and can be hired and fired at will.

To be honest, I think the kind of roles he wants to fill need people who have no outside life and will be obsessively committed to working in Downing St. I have a few friends who were private secretaries to various ministers and you can only do a year or so before burnout starts to set in. Brilliant to have on your CV though smile

Camelot1971

2,698 posts

165 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
andy_s said:
18th C methods in the 21st C - definitely time for a shake up, more so than ever at this moment I think. Not 'change to give the illusion of progress', but being more agile, clever and focused without the constraints of administrative torpor within the confines of duopolous politic.
There are lots of very clever, agile and focused people who work in the Civil Service. The challenge is to keep services going while you try and do new and innovative things. The Civil Service is risk adverse for very good reason - if things break, people's lives are impacted, sometimes very badly. There has been little new money invested for the past 10 years, but hopefully that will change.

There is lots of opportunity to do things differently, but people need to be prepared for things to fail and go wrong when pushing boundaries. Private sector firms can hide all of that when innovating but the public sector can't. I agree with Cummings though, that its worth having a go at something different.

HarryW

15,150 posts

268 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Interesting stuff, can’t wait to the outcome.

Kent Border Kenny

2,219 posts

59 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
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Camelot1971 said:
The money won't be a driver for those who are genuinely interested in shaping government. Anyone who wants to earn more than most ministers or even the PM is looking at the wrong place to work if they apply.
I imagine it’ll be a mix. There’ll be some who are academia for whom the pay will be OK, and others in professions from which they’ll be taking a big cut.

I’d been thinking of trying to working in financial crime after a I’ve done my time in banking, or returning to Science, but something like this might be a good option too.

paulrockliffe

15,639 posts

226 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Camelot1971 said:
andy_s said:
18th C methods in the 21st C - definitely time for a shake up, more so than ever at this moment I think. Not 'change to give the illusion of progress', but being more agile, clever and focused without the constraints of administrative torpor within the confines of duopolous politic.
There are lots of very clever, agile and focused people who work in the Civil Service. The challenge is to keep services going while you try and do new and innovative things. The Civil Service is risk adverse for very good reason - if things break, people's lives are impacted, sometimes very badly. There has been little new money invested for the past 10 years, but hopefully that will change.

There is lots of opportunity to do things differently, but people need to be prepared for things to fail and go wrong when pushing boundaries. Private sector firms can hide all of that when innovating but the public sector can't. I agree with Cummings though, that its worth having a go at something different.
There are, they get paid poorly to do clever stuff, though it's not too bad when you add 50% on for the value of the pension. To progress they move into roles that involve going to meetings all the time and stop doing the clever stuff they were good at. The amount of wasted talent is insane, the level of poor leadership is also insane.

Paying clever people more than thick people so that the clever people stay doing clever stuff rather than getting roles they can't do would make a huge difference, especially as it would open up leadership roles for people that can lead and manage. Too few senior CS roles end up being advertised externally, where there is the talent to do the jobs properly.

Sway

Original Poster:

26,070 posts

193 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Camelot1971 said:
There is lots of opportunity to do things differently, but people need to be prepared for things to fail and go wrong when pushing boundaries. Private sector firms can hide all of that when innovating but the public sector can't. I agree with Cummings though, that its worth having a go at something different.
Whilst I understand the point, I'm not sure I agree.

I've worked in plenty of private sector organisations where things going wrong (either via 'routine' operational failure, or those driven by change/innovation) means plenty of people die, or have major lifechanging impacts to their lives.

What's perhaps different, is that the private sector (generally) simply must innovate and change constantly - whereas (generally!) the public sector, by virtue of no competition, can always choose to retain the status quo to avoid that risk.

Sway

Original Poster:

26,070 posts

193 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
paulrockliffe said:
There are, they get paid poorly to do clever stuff, though it's not too bad when you add 50% on for the value of the pension. To progress they move into roles that involve going to meetings all the time and stop doing the clever stuff they were good at. The amount of wasted talent is insane, the level of poor leadership is also insane.

Paying clever people more than thick people so that the clever people stay doing clever stuff rather than getting roles they can't do would make a huge difference, especially as it would open up leadership roles for people that can lead and manage. Too few senior CS roles end up being advertised externally, where there is the talent to do the jobs properly.
Does the Public Sector have career frameworks that have parallel (and equal) streams for 'professional/sme' and 'leadership'? In my experience, that prevents the pull into the 'wrong fit' progression role purely because that's the defined, sole, path.

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
I certainly agree with this bit from one his blog on ‘Odyssean’ Education:

Cummings said:
Of course there is also a feedback loop: the institutionalised dysfunction of the state makes it hard for any political force to make significant changes – and the more the priority of insiders is to remain insiders (‘to be’, not ‘to do’), the harder it is to make changes.)
https://dominiccummings.com/the-odyssean-project-2/

This seems to strike to the core of why progress is either non-existent or, at best, maddeningly slow.

Randy Winkman

16,021 posts

188 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
HarryW said:
Interesting stuff, can’t wait to the outcome.
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.

Graveworm

8,476 posts

70 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
paulrockliffe said:
There are, they get paid poorly to do clever stuff, though it's not too bad when you add 50% on for the value of the pension. To progress they move into roles that involve going to meetings all the time and stop doing the clever stuff they were good at. The amount of wasted talent is insane, the level of poor leadership is also insane.

Paying clever people more than thick people so that the clever people stay doing clever stuff rather than getting roles they can't do would make a huge difference, especially as it would open up leadership roles for people that can lead and manage. Too few senior CS roles end up being advertised externally, where there is the talent to do the jobs properly.
This! I have first hand experience of trying to recruit train and retain expertise within the public sector. Nearly impossible, the "Everyone needs to be in band, and all bands need to be omnicompetent & JEP - JEGS" mantra is a barrier and the unions are the biggest problem. Everything we tried was blocked as divisive or elitist. There was a revolving door where we sent people on 3 month training courses, to the States, with 6 figure costs, to obtain a qualification. This made their marketplace worth, more than double what we could pay, even with gaming the bonus and "Spot rate" systems, so they left as soon as they could. Two year partial lock ins were the best we could do but this was just about the time it took to complete all the other requirements, and before they were much operational use. They also had a grade that meant they could, in theory, be running large departments elsewhere, with no management or people skills.

Individually negotiated contracts, within all existing budget constraints, is the way to go and the people you really need working for the state would be happy with this.

Edited by Graveworm on Friday 3rd January 10:18

Camelot1971

2,698 posts

165 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Sway said:
Camelot1971 said:
There is lots of opportunity to do things differently, but people need to be prepared for things to fail and go wrong when pushing boundaries. Private sector firms can hide all of that when innovating but the public sector can't. I agree with Cummings though, that its worth having a go at something different.
Whilst I understand the point, I'm not sure I agree.

I've worked in plenty of private sector organisations where things going wrong (either via 'routine' operational failure, or those driven by change/innovation) means plenty of people die, or have major lifechanging impacts to their lives.

What's perhaps different, is that the private sector (generally) simply must innovate and change constantly - whereas (generally!) the public sector, by virtue of no competition, can always choose to retain the status quo to avoid that risk.
I understand where you are coming from. I'm not saying the impact of things going wrong in the private sector doesn't impact lives, because it can, but generally, private sector organisations aren't under the same level of scrutiny, by the public at least. FOIA requests have been the bane of my life biggrin

The other element is that the public, generally, don't like change, so being risk adverse as it is, the Civil Service mirrors that. There's some really interesting work going in the Cabinet Office on behavioural science, where they try things on a very small scale to see if it works, for example altering HMRC letters to certain people to see if they pay their taxes earlier.

Graveworm

8,476 posts

70 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Randy Winkman said:
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.
Another system which makes no sense. Voluntary exit schemes result in losing the marketable staff who can find work elsewhere and keeping those who can't. Most units could lose 10-15 percent of staff and continue to operate at 97% efficiency. IF the people running the unit made the redundancy decisions. However losing 10-15 percent under voluntary exit schemes looks more like a 40-50 percent drop in efficiency.

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Graveworm said:
Randy Winkman said:
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.
Another system which makes no sense. Voluntary exit schemes result in losing the marketable staff who can find work elsewhere and keeping those who can't. Most units could lose 10-15 percent of staff and continue to operate at 97% efficiency. IF the people running the unit made the redundancy decisions. However losing 10-15 percent under voluntary exit schemes looks more like a 40-50 percent drop in efficiency.
This is the malaise across the PS; there is, effectively, no means of firing. So idiots stay on board, generally by means of being promoted out of harm's way.

Randy Winkman

16,021 posts

188 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Digga said:
Graveworm said:
Randy Winkman said:
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.
Another system which makes no sense. Voluntary exit schemes result in losing the marketable staff who can find work elsewhere and keeping those who can't. Most units could lose 10-15 percent of staff and continue to operate at 97% efficiency. IF the people running the unit made the redundancy decisions. However losing 10-15 percent under voluntary exit schemes looks more like a 40-50 percent drop in efficiency.
This is the malaise across the PS; there is, effectively, no means of firing. So idiots stay on board, generally by means of being promoted out of harm's way.
I can only speak for the civil service and whilst the first part of your post makes sense I really never see the second thing happening. People get promoted when I don't think they should do but I've never seen it used as a way of getting rid of people.

anonymous-user

53 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Randy Winkman said:
HarryW said:
Interesting stuff, can’t wait to the outcome.
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.
It’s also about Cummings sending a political message about being different and disruptive to the status quo and getting brexit things done.

Digga

40,207 posts

282 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
Randy Winkman said:
Digga said:
Graveworm said:
Randy Winkman said:
My view is that the number of people who will be recruited this way will be so minimal we'll never really know if there was any impact. The civil service in London has been recruiting big numbers of well qualified people for the last 2 years and must be about to have voluntary exit schemes to save money. It's not really a good time to be trying to get more people.
Another system which makes no sense. Voluntary exit schemes result in losing the marketable staff who can find work elsewhere and keeping those who can't. Most units could lose 10-15 percent of staff and continue to operate at 97% efficiency. IF the people running the unit made the redundancy decisions. However losing 10-15 percent under voluntary exit schemes looks more like a 40-50 percent drop in efficiency.
This is the malaise across the PS; there is, effectively, no means of firing. So idiots stay on board, generally by means of being promoted out of harm's way.
I can only speak for the civil service and whilst the first part of your post makes sense I really never see the second thing happening. People get promoted when I don't think they should do but I've never seen it used as a way of getting rid of people.
I have a friend who works in PS. Very long story short, there was an opening (promotion) which she and other members of her team were invited to apply for and, basically, the least constructive, unproductive and most awkward member of their team got the gig, to the disgust and amazement of the others. Their pragmatic assumption was, their manager saw it as his best/only way to pass an HR problem onto someone else.

princeperch

7,911 posts

246 months

Friday 3rd January 2020
quotequote all
In my experience the management in the civil service is actually very poor.

There are some very good managers (my boss is one) but overwhelmingly management is poor. That is because people become managers because it's a relatively easy way of getting more money. That is a key problem - how do you recruit, retain and motivate someone when you can't give them a meaningful pay rise ? How do you maintain motivation when the employee doesn't want to become a manager and therefore can't get a meaningful increase in pay?

When the st hits the fan and you get a problem employee, then it really does hit the fan. I routinely deal with matters where a staff member has either been suspended or has been off sick for a considerable amount of time - sometimes a year or more. Employees know how to play the system, lodging multiple grievances which half the time the department doesn't have the resources to deal with.

The civil service is a decent place to work (I wouldn't have been there for over ten years if it wasn't). But it has significant problems - most of which is linked in one way or another to pay and reward.

As my boss once said to me, in the civil service you generally get two types of people. Rich women, and strange men. He isn't wrong really imo.