The Civil Service Whistleblower
Discussion
The reality is the finite capacity was set by the Army / RAF. If it was effectively 1000/day, then inevitably there were bound to be lots of desperately disappointed people left behind.
A sad fact of life is that s
t Happens, Raab and his Perm Sec not going on holiday would not have changed the outcome.
A sad fact of life is that s
t Happens, Raab and his Perm Sec not going on holiday would not have changed the outcome.rdjohn said:
The reality is the finite capacity was set by the Army / RAF. If it was effectively 1000/day, then inevitably there were bound to be lots of desperately disappointed people left behind.
A sad fact of life is that st Happens, Raab and his Perm Sec not going on holiday would not have changed the outcome.
This will probably turn out to be the most sensible post on the entire thread,A sad fact of life is that s
t Happens, Raab and his Perm Sec not going on holiday would not have changed the outcome.anonymous said:
[redacted]
You are not obliged to do over time and often it is unpaid or Time of in Lieu which you can then not take so really are you surprised. Plus as was noted by others short term evac plan with 1000 a day capacity it was best effort.the truth is we could not fix Afghanistan it turning back to what it was a bloodbath and I have no idea why people there want that to be the case but it is. You would have thought 20 years of freedom we would have seen less people wanting to join the taliban but I also think 20 years of corruption has not helped.
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Aye, the idea that people need to be working 14 hours a day in an office to work online is backwards.
If the rules for the evacuation had been set by the MoD and government, what were the civil service going to be able to do in an office that they wouldn't have been able to do from home?
If the rules for the evacuation had been set by the MoD and government, what were the civil service going to be able to do in an office that they wouldn't have been able to do from home?
TriumphStag3.0V8 said:
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over the years I've been involved in several public sector IT projects for a large corporate IT firm - every single one was exactly like the above. It's exhausting dealing with public sector people.I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over-staffed departments with a high proportion of entitled people who are paid according to length of tenure, not performance. Recipe for disaster.
Yeah, WFH shouldn't have made too much of a dent in productivity, but the anti-overtime attitude is astounding.
I was a civil servant for some years and then spent a lot of years doing contract work for them, and you get a real mix of people. I remember one guy who'd complain every year about how rubbish his pay rise was compared to other peoples, it turned out he was still the same grade as when he was recruited as a new grad over 10 years earlier and was getting a below average "worth score" on his annual reviews. ie he was useless but thanks to his length of time there was paid a lot more than he was worth and would have had no hope of getting a job in the outside world so would never leave...and was still getting a pay rise every year!
On the other hand I worked on a lot of trials and exercises and it was common to do long hours (I think my personal best was a 30ish hour day, but I never beat the 83.5 hours week I once did when working for my father
) for an extended period with everyone putting in the effort, so there were plenty of good people too.
I was a civil servant for some years and then spent a lot of years doing contract work for them, and you get a real mix of people. I remember one guy who'd complain every year about how rubbish his pay rise was compared to other peoples, it turned out he was still the same grade as when he was recruited as a new grad over 10 years earlier and was getting a below average "worth score" on his annual reviews. ie he was useless but thanks to his length of time there was paid a lot more than he was worth and would have had no hope of getting a job in the outside world so would never leave...and was still getting a pay rise every year!
On the other hand I worked on a lot of trials and exercises and it was common to do long hours (I think my personal best was a 30ish hour day, but I never beat the 83.5 hours week I once did when working for my father
) for an extended period with everyone putting in the effort, so there were plenty of good people too.RizzoTheRat said:
Yeah, WFH shouldn't have made too much of a dent in productivity
Obviously and measurably has though hasn't it? And not because they're suddenly doing a straight 9-5. As for the whistleblower Raffy Marshall looks like just the sort to get hired, and then people still wonder why the whole thing is f
ked. The calibre of the 'civil servants' who post on here is a clue too.They're useless because they're useless, not because someone was on holiday. Unless that person took the department brain home with them an organisation should still be able to function perfectly happily with some people not available, and if not what are all these seat warmers employed for?
TriumphStag3.0V8 said:
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Exactly my experience working in IT for a part of the MoD. Had to work with a whole bunch of former civil service IT people who had been TUPEd into the private firm who ran the IT and their attitude was basically "don't try too hard as it'll show everyone else up" and "I've got 20 sick days left to use up, time to book a holiday". One bloke used to leave at 4pm every single day on the nose as that's when his hours were up, he would even get up and walk out of a meeting as the clock struck 4 - he didn't particularly have anywhere to be and used to go home and watch telly.I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Edited by Tankrizzo on Wednesday 8th December 11:53
pquinn said:
RizzoTheRat said:
Yeah, WFH shouldn't have made too much of a dent in productivity
Obviously and measurably has though hasn't it? RizzoTheRat said:
pquinn said:
RizzoTheRat said:
Yeah, WFH shouldn't have made too much of a dent in productivity
Obviously and measurably has though hasn't it? RizzoTheRat said:
Yeah, WFH shouldn't have made too much of a dent in productivity, but the anti-overtime attitude is astounding.
I was a civil servant for some years and then spent a lot of years doing contract work for them, and you get a real mix of people. I remember one guy who'd complain every year about how rubbish his pay rise was compared to other peoples, it turned out he was still the same grade as when he was recruited as a new grad over 10 years earlier and was getting a below average "worth score" on his annual reviews. ie he was useless but thanks to his length of time there was paid a lot more than he was worth and would have had no hope of getting a job in the outside world so would never leave...and was still getting a pay rise every year!
On the other hand I worked on a lot of trials and exercises and it was common to do long hours (I think my personal best was a 30ish hour day, but I never beat the 83.5 hours week I once did when working for my father) for an extended period with everyone putting in the effort, so there were plenty of good people too.
Part of the issue is there is no reason to work outside your contracted hours. The public sector are terrible for not wanting to pay overtime or on call time but then expecting people to just do it and having zero flexibility. Of course people get to a point of going “balls to this. I’m working to rule”. Same goes for many private companies. I was a civil servant for some years and then spent a lot of years doing contract work for them, and you get a real mix of people. I remember one guy who'd complain every year about how rubbish his pay rise was compared to other peoples, it turned out he was still the same grade as when he was recruited as a new grad over 10 years earlier and was getting a below average "worth score" on his annual reviews. ie he was useless but thanks to his length of time there was paid a lot more than he was worth and would have had no hope of getting a job in the outside world so would never leave...and was still getting a pay rise every year!
On the other hand I worked on a lot of trials and exercises and it was common to do long hours (I think my personal best was a 30ish hour day, but I never beat the 83.5 hours week I once did when working for my father
) for an extended period with everyone putting in the effort, so there were plenty of good people too.On top of that long hours are not good for anything more than a very short period of time. The reason why 9-5 with lunch became normal was because plenty of research had shown productivity drops after that. If you go further and go over 40 working hours a week productivity quickly starts to go down and people do less than they would in a shorter week. This is true of almost everyone, as NASA found out to their detriment with the second ISS crew.
Mark Benson said:
TriumphStag3.0V8 said:
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over the years I've been involved in several public sector IT projects for a large corporate IT firm - every single one was exactly like the above. It's exhausting dealing with public sector people.I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over-staffed departments with a high proportion of entitled people who are paid according to length of tenure, not performance. Recipe for disaster.
Guybrush said:
Mark Benson said:
TriumphStag3.0V8 said:
Doesn't surprise me at all.
I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over the years I've been involved in several public sector IT projects for a large corporate IT firm - every single one was exactly like the above. It's exhausting dealing with public sector people.I worked for a short time in the civil service, including a stint working with the Cabinet Office. I came from large corporates into the role (it was to turn around a poor performing IT division). My god the attitude, entitlement and lack of flexibility was genuinely shocking. Fortunately for me, I was able to recruit a number of people from the private sector who had the "right" attitude (wanting to work on what was needed, rather than what they preferred to do) to get the job done. I make absolutely no apologies for the fact that the attitude and work ethic of the new staff dragged some of the incumbents up to an acceptable level purely from the shock of seeing what they *could* achieve (would probably be some sort of "bullying" or "unfairness" claim nowadays).
I achieved what I needed to achieve but it was a battle every single day against workshy, stuck in the past antiques who refused to move with the times or do anything more than the bare minimum. I left shortly after achieving what I needed to as it wasn't worth my sanity. One of the other managers (a lifer) took over my team. Most of the people I recruited left shortly after me as the work ethic dropped back to what it used to be due to the lack of drive from leadership.
In this kind of circumstance, I would have created a crisis room and brought everyone into the office. If overtime was required then it was required. Leaving people to just work their "normal hours" at home would not even be a consideration.
The public sector needs to change, it really does. There are good people there, of course, but their efforts are massively diluted by the dross that they work alongside. Unfortunately politicians come and go and rarely have an impact, Dominic Cummings was/is a massive pratt, but he was bang on about this.
Over-staffed departments with a high proportion of entitled people who are paid according to length of tenure, not performance. Recipe for disaster.
I went straight back to the private sector after that.
Guybrush said:
Absolutely spot on, both of you. The sheer number of vastly overpaid people who fall into the categories you describe is staggering. They are a true drain on the country. Sadly, councils and the NHS (non-medical) are equally riddled with them.
This is true, but the bit that gets overlooked is that ultimately rubbish people have to work somewhere and jobs need to be filled from the pool of available talent. The quality of people working in the Civil Service doesn't sit outside of this and while you can try to change incentives to push rubbish people into other jobs and better people into the Civil Service, it is to a large extent a symptom of wider failings in education and society.This story is amazing though, you can argue about WFH and whether there are limits in what could be done elsewhere, but I know that if my team was involved in this in any way it would have gone without saying that we would all have been available throughout and people would have done that out of choice, because it mattered. It absolutely blows my mind that someone so senior wasn't all over this regardless of whether it needed his attention or not.
We were involved in something of similar urgency (if not as important) last year where our input was limited but important and WFH was a bit of a godsend really because it allowed people to be available without having to sit around doing nothing waiting for someone important to ask for something. I setup a whole load of data extractions just in case we needed them over the weekend and cracked on with some DIY with one eye on Teams as things developed. A minor cost to me, but a whole load of capacity was on stand-by. I can't understand how a 9-5 mentality could have been involved in this.
paulrockliffe said:
Guybrush said:
Absolutely spot on, both of you. The sheer number of vastly overpaid people who fall into the categories you describe is staggering. They are a true drain on the country. Sadly, councils and the NHS (non-medical) are equally riddled with them.
This is true, but the bit that gets overlooked is that ultimately rubbish people have to work somewhere and jobs need to be filled from the pool of available talent. The quality of people working in the Civil Service doesn't sit outside of this and while you can try to change incentives to push rubbish people into other jobs and better people into the Civil Service, it is to a large extent a symptom of wider failings in education and society.This story is amazing though, you can argue about WFH and whether there are limits in what could be done elsewhere, but I know that if my team was involved in this in any way it would have gone without saying that we would all have been available throughout and people would have done that out of choice, because it mattered. It absolutely blows my mind that someone so senior wasn't all over this regardless of whether it needed his attention or not.
We were involved in something of similar urgency (if not as important) last year where our input was limited but important and WFH was a bit of a godsend really because it allowed people to be available without having to sit around doing nothing waiting for someone important to ask for something. I setup a whole load of data extractions just in case we needed them over the weekend and cracked on with some DIY with one eye on Teams as things developed. A minor cost to me, but a whole load of capacity was on stand-by. I can't understand how a 9-5 mentality could have been involved in this.
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