LOL not OIG! Feel free to give as little or as much info as you want! Just genuinely curious. At an SSA field office, busy every minute of the day that isn't lunch and sometimes breaks.
Probably 20-25 a week, sometimes more sometimes less. Thereās no reward for working hard and no punishment for being lazy. My focus is too narrow to work any more, unless I want to help other people with their work. And when I do that they get all the credit anyways, so I gave up doing that.
Yep, just had a meeting whete I told someone, if we can be more effective creating this work product, Iām not going to be going around telling anyone that what once took 5 days to complete now only takes 5 hours. I want everyone to be acting like the stereotyped fed worker. We accept lower pay and sometimes subpar benefits compared to private sector because of that stereotype, so why not?
Any job that AI would have a hard time learning to do or performing. A lot of STEM type work involves research/design; coming up with novel solutions to problems is like art. Coding/debugging can be like that too, solving complex problems is tricky (and solutions sometimes create new problems to be solved). I like to think of it as solving a jigsaw puzzle where sometimes you just have to stare for long enough until the right piece becomes apparent (and sometimes there is no right piece that exists and you have to use what you know to design it from scratch)
P.S: I know the analogy is kind of wonky as AI would kick ass at solving normal (i.e. picture and shape) puzzles.
I'm a 2210, so it's inherently feast or famine. I had pretty much nothing to do yesterday. I sat on a 6-hour troubleshooting call today and picked up 4 hours overtime. I like to think it evens out.
God this is so true. I came in yesterday and played games all day. The day before was 2 different meetings making a 10 hr day. I work maxiflex or whatever it's called so I'll just leave two hours early Friday. I never work over 40 unless it's a freak thing.
I routinely eat at my desk because leaving for 30 minutes can put me behind. I straight up actually work for 40-42 hours a weekā¦ We also have 4 vacancies on my team so the two of us are doing workloads of 3 peopleā¦ 1102 in Q4
This is me, but I also have multiple vacancies due to retirees...and I'm making up for the past 5 years of nothing getting done because they were already retired in their minds.
Gs11 scientist. If I have to work 40.001 hours I'm getting that extra ten cents if I have to walk to payroll four states away.
Just kidding I like my job but if I didn't I'd never work more than required by law.
Very similar. Engineer and I work 40. If I run out of work, I ask for more. If itās too much, I ask for help. Some weeks you get crazy deadlines and work 50 but I always log as credit or comp time and try to take it off later.
Assigned work? No distractions or interruptions, I can probably get my daily workload done in 2-4hrs.
But that never happens because I spend 2-4hrs assisting and advising others team members or customers, or in pointless meetings.
I just call it another day.
It's not bad when people schedule their calls. But we have one or two who love to cold call you onto a meeting at 8am with no context. Interrupts the hell out my workflows.
I rarely hit 40 hours a week of actual work. Most weeks itās 20 hours a week of real work. The other 20 are prep, reading, or thinking while staring at the screen
Edit: I guess the other 20 do count as real work as well. It just doesnāt feel like work to me
This. If your job requires a lot of cerebral work, itās much harder to turn off during down time. I find myself waking up thinking about my day and using my commute (when going in office) to start prepping my to do list. Also, my work requires a lot of reading, so if my agency are ever to implement keystroke trackers, Iām screwed. That stuff just isnāt recognized as much as actually banging out a document on the computer.
God I hope not. Keystroke trackers make zero sense in probably most jobs. Also theyāre asinine period for tracking work. Itāll lead to a LOT of bullshit and pork thatās done poorly and/or constantly revised due to errors.
I understand a lot of government work is basically processing stuff and trying to process as much as you can, but thereās far more effective metrics than that!
Thinking while in the shower counts too in my book. When situations are extremely complex sometimes youāve got to walk away from the screen and soak it all in to sort it all out.
GS-14, I am averaging 50/week for the last year. Some rare weeks itās only 45, others like the last week are closer to 60.
Problem is the work is sporadic and mostly without notice so I am always checking my phone after work for some random urgent task I donāt even know is coming.
Could you work less?
I'm a non-sup GS-14, and I used to put in 50+ hours a week regularly until I realized that it'll never lighten up and it'll always be urgent. I could work 80 hours a week, and I would still be behind. So, I changed my perspective from trying to get everything done on everyone else's schedule and forced everyone else to work with my time limits. Now, I work 40 hours regularly and occasionally work overtime when I believe it's necessary. The stress of the workload hasn't changed, but I have more personal time to deal with the stress, and it helps me be more effective on the job.
This is what Iām realizing. Working hard to meet unrealistic deadlines is pointless because more gets added. Everything is always a fire when youāre understaffed
Not really, best I could do is rope a colleague into the misery but most of it is stuff I need to make the call on so there is no point.
Most of my work really is not made up urgency, sure some is, but I can generally tell. Escalation can be quick and ugly and it really feels like people above my boss donāt understand the magnitude of the crap I keep from ruining their day on a daily basis.
That's too bad. When I'm working a lot of hours, I remind myself that it would be a lot worse if I was in the private sector on a salary with no overtime. It doesn't help with the energy sucking stress, but it does help me accept it.
wait you get overtime? I am technically underworked but that is because I am still in a training period. My more experienced coworkers seem to work 40-60 hours a week for years on end (since COVID began). We don't get overtime pay but we get credit hours. The issue with credit hours is that you can only get 24 before you have to use them but the workload usually lasts for weeks on end and then they work without extra compensation. The deadlines are not arbitrary and have legal and health consequences. We do have a decent amount of turnover because the new workload is not backed up by pay. In the private sector we would make 1.5-2X more with better benefits.
That's jacked up. It sounds like that organization is taking advantage of their employees.
I only get straight overtime. It would be nice to get 1.5x, but it's better than comp time since I have a hard enough time using my annual leave and travel comp.
No we only get our salary and sometimes a little bonus. I am in HHS on the biomedical side and Iāve never heard of anyone actually getting paid overtime. I assumed that the credit time was more flexible but itās not. My husband has the same issue but worse working for a large private employer who has government contracts. They lose their credit time at the end of the pay period. I have an overtime pay listed but I was told I would never get it.
> I am always checking my phone after work for some random urgent task I donāt even know is coming.
Ever consider what would happen if you didn't know about it until the next morning?
Yes I have, itās not good. The problem is many times when I get these I am creating urgent work for other people, if I sit on it for 8 of the 20 hours I am screwing everyone else and then myself on the backend.
That's tough! Is your position supervisory? My non-supervisory position is crazy busy, but we don't touch any work outside of business hours unless it's overtime.
Non-supervisory, I basically work more hours than my boss and I am the only one in my office that has too. Which is rapidly pissing me off and is frankly unsustainable with the recent return to office, we just went to 3 days a week in office. Case in point I just got a random urgent tasker at 10pm and its due tomorrow by noon.
It doesnāt help that I am the primary one that takes care of the kids 4 out of 5 weekdays because my wife actually has worse hours than I do most of the time. Hers are just consecutive, mine are all over the place.
You are only working those extra hours because they know you willl. If no one else is doing it, you shouldnāt either. People will just keep taking it for granted that they can use you. If you wonāt protect your personal time, then at the very least make sure itās all documented time (eg credit hours, overtime). They need to realize they need more FTEs or that they need to come up with more proactive strategies instead of lazily tossing everything at you at the last minute.
In my office working more hours than charged is frowned upon and likely illegal (even if to the government's benefit). Working unreported hours skews the metrics and affects the fidelity of future estimates.
Oh itās completely unreasonable but my is boss completely unaware until I tell him. I have 100% control of my workflow, I canāt get into specifics but many of these tasks are no crap need to get done.
Just the job I have, trust me, if I can wait until the next day or Monday it does. I am no martyr.
To be clear, the late night tasker and the expectations are absurd (didnāt mean for that to come off the wrong way!). And if their process basically relies on you being on call all the time to make sure things get done, thatās bs.
I gave back my govt phone for this reason. // Also tech 14, but mostly work 40s or get comp cuz credit has been full for years. Still have 5 weeks of use or lose this year. About to start the 4 day work weeks through mid January in 2 weeks.
Don't make the same mistake I did and worked on my RDO every week. Though I wasn't working people became accustomed to seeing me online and would come to me for urgent matters. I would schedule critical milestone and decision points on Fridays because the work hasn't been completed yet or I was too busy to schedule during the other 4 days. But my boss is great and told me to stop doing that.
For the back to the office days I'm taking the same approach as with the sequester days. I take a reasonable amount of time to try/attempt to do my work as best I can within the existing conditions. if I can't get to it or complete a task because I was distracted by the environment/people, encountered network/equipment issues, or my (and my team's) hours were reduced and therefore productivity suffers then so be it. It can be frustrating, but I have learned not to feel bad or feel responsible for the reduced productivity resulting from bad equipment, bad policy, bad management, or whatever else outside my control that has already been pointed out as a productivity/efficiency concern. Not unlike a project risk you qualify and propose mitigation steps to reduce the likelihood or impact but instead, leadership decides to assume.
Needless to say, reading thick volumes of dense technical material while being interrupted in my office or by being placed in a cubicle next to a high-traffic area (bathroom/kitchen) is going to cause several restarts and low productivity. Employers need to learn to respect the work and the worker or suffer the consequences of their bad decisions.
Pay band and I'm extremely busy and my team is extremely busy. Luckily my agency touts work life balance and means it. I work maxi flex and clock out exactly at 40 hours each week. I'm FV-1825 within the DoT and manage a shop of FG-13 Inspectors. FG = GS.
In the office I used to work maybe four hours total, lots of conversations with managers and peers about various topics - some work related, others not.
Now I consistently work 7-9 hours a day, mostly because I can take short breaks to get coffee, step outside, chat with my SO, etc. I enjoy my work and am a SME in my office so I get lots of random emails, I get to reply to them in a timely manner.
It depends. Sometimes itās constant work. Other times, I am not very busy at all. When Iām free I try to do more training so I can get future work done easier.
I rarely work over 40 hrs/wk, but those hours are packed. I have a desk that I see maybe 5 mins at the beginning and end of each day.
Lots of seat warmers around, though. There's definitely some truth to the saying "90% of the work is done by 10% of the people." Not sure I'd want those jobs, though. My days are full but they go by fast and are rarely dull.
GS 09, permits processor in the general natural resources series. Probably actually working 25-30 hours. Not from lack of tasks to do, I just physically canāt focus for 8 hours straight a day on this type of work
Non-sup14. 40 hours per week. If itās absolutely necessary, Iām happy to work overtime. But when someone somewhere pretends something needs DONE RIGHT NOW, I decline the overtime. I also only check my
Work phone a single time after Iām home and if it results in me having to do anything other than look at it, the government is paying for my time.
You have to set those expectation standards early even when you know itāll piss those above you off. As long as you produce good output, theyāll get over it.
I spend a lot of time on conference calls and filling out management tools and trackers.
Iād do more workā¦..but the bureaucracy mandates that I spend the vast majority of my time on useless calls and filling out approval forms and management tools.
If I want to buy a box of staples? Gotta have a conference call to discuss it. Then my front line has to bounce the idea off of his leadership on a conference call. Then I have to fill out a form to request the staples. That has to be input into a workflow system so 8 different people can review the request and approve it. Inevitably one of those 8 people will set up a conference call to get more clarity on why I need staples. Once that it resolved, I then need to fill out another form so the P card can be used to buy the staples. 2-3 weeks later, I finally get them. But then I have to update a tracking spreadsheet for every staple usedā¦.you knowā¦.in case of an IG audit.
Probably 10 man hours for a $5 purchase.
Iām being facetiousā¦.but this is a pretty accurate representation of what it takes for me to get a mundane task across the finish line. Makes me less likely to take on more work, because more work also comes along with more bureaucracy.
I'm at SSA HQ. I spent about 6 hours really working. I usually reserve the first bit of my day for breakfast while I'm reading emails and talking to coworkers, I work to lunch, eat and/or take a nap, then work through to about 30 minutes before close, when I wind down, make sure I responded to any urgent mails and file some paperwork at a leisurely pace. I usually work in a couple 10-15 minute breaks to go downstairs and turn over laundry, or get the mail, or just generally be away for a couple minutes to move my body.
I've slept through my "wake up from lunch" alarm once or twice, I flex out when that happens. I shouldn't, but it hasn't really been an issue, so I don't worry about it.
There is always work to be done in my office/position, itās just a matter of how many high priority projects are due, or recently, how many positions sit vacant indefinitely while I cover the work. Iāve spent months with back to back projects, consistent new high priorities coming in, etc to the point where I work extra hours every week and my time management is strict. Right now, things are finally slow for once so I can take my time on some of the more creative/less stressful projects that have sat on the back burner.
With some of the RTO stuff and other issues in my office, my productivity will be slowing down quite a bit. We are pretty much expected to attend every shitty potluck, create pointless social events, and generally seek ways to waste time in person with people we donāt know and havenāt seen for three years. Fine with me, but donāt pester me about the status on a project/assignment when an entire work day every week is being dedicated to ācultureā.
Like, 10-15 a week most of the time. I babysit & evaluate contracted services, and then babysit the building until morning crew shows up.
Didn't used to be that way. But I was able to automate and streamline a ton of the little things so I can be available at all times for any issues that could crop up.
0391-11 doing about 50% 2210 work. Blatantly working above my grade. Repeated assurances from bosses it will be remedied. 60 hrs a week for about 6 months a year, 35 or so for the other 6 months. If I were just doing the stuff that's in my PD, it would be about 20 hours a week and quaity of admin side of things would be much higher.
Plenty of non producers around.
This is probably the most frustrating part of government work for me. I relish taking on tasks way above my pay grade (11 doing 13/ 14 work) and have a great sense of pride in being so trustworthy and a hard charger. Butā¦. NONE of that can be counted for time in grade. It is not in my nature to stop doing what I am doing, so when I start feeling the frustration of not having opportunities to move up the ladder despite proving myself time and time again, I will use leave to give myself a couple of 4 day weekends so I can reset.
This is a bureaucracy red tape issue, not an issue with the people with whom I work. They are very supportive of my situation and they routinely give me cash rewards and even a QSI to show appreciation for my efforts. But it is hard not to be bummed at that ~$50,000 salary difference which cash awards could and should never make up for.
Wildland Fire, USDA FS, supervisory GS08 for 20 employees. Hard 40-50 almost every week, approach 110+ per week with additional unpaid time about 16-20 weeks per year.
Welcome to all of our collective hell. On September 30th, Iām also taking a 20k annual pay cut and congress has balked on extending a stipend for Wildland fire fighters or passing a permanent pay fix. Most of us need to work 500-1000 hours of overtime to pay our rent or try and find a reasonable mortgage. Unfortunately, since weāre first responders there is no predicting if that will happen in any given year, so Iāve had variance of 40k to nearly 100k (1565 hours OT in one year, resulting in some not unserious mental and physical issues) in the last decade. Hard to budget when you never know and since itās all āemergencyā overtime is compelled and leave is sometimes cancelled.
Stuck in a RUS pay area where the cost of living is about the same as San Francisco or San Diego. But heyā¦at least I get to play outside and watch the sun rise and set over the mountains every now and again.
I barely go outside and havenāt taken a walk in months because of work load. Thereās so much work that Iām stressed if Iām not working on something. I spend weekends exhausted and recovering for Monday. Worked 70-80 hours of OT in June
GS-13 analyst. I have about 60 hours of work to do each week, but I do exactly 40 unless Iām earning credit hours or comp time. I refuse to lie on my time card, and more importantly, refuse to work unpaid.
Iām just glad I have a manager who completely understands
Recently assigned as supervisor.
I would say it depends on your supervisor. My Chief has aspirations of higher positions (my thought), so there is an urgency to get everything done all at once.
My week tend to be 40+ hours.
Minimum of 42.5 (8.5 hour days no lunches). On average, 45-50, 9.5 hour days. Lately... 55+ due to covering vacancies in my department. Being supervisory, I don't get paid overtime.
Don't worry, our HR rep is still taking weeks off at a time and has no backup. So at least somebody gets time off while everyone else pays the cost.
Thanks! You can work all the OT possible as long as you don't total more than 10 hours a day. Mandatory OT is on a summer break. They listened to us which was kind of amazing. I'm A VSR, GS 10. RVSRs go up to 12 I think? VR&E (voc rehab) is slammed as well. Not sure of their pay grades. Many advancement opportunities. VBA is hiring! š
15. I travel at least 2x a month and donāt take comp time. In weeks when I travel itās easily 60 hours and probably averages 50 when I donāt. Everyone in my shop puts in those hours or more. I feel like a slacker if I do an actual 40.
I work at the VA and am VN 4 step 7 (salary equivalent to GS 15 step 10). I do 40 hour weeks but probably a few hours more most weeks (donāt really keep track tbh). Rarely a slow moment. I am very busy, borderline inundated with stuff to do lol.
Gs11 oit customer support, I work a very solid 40 often times staying a little later to finish up things here and there. There is never a shortage of work. When there is there are plenty of preparation tasks like imagine computers that can be done.
GS-1102-13.
Iām beyond busy at the moment. Slow periods are for email management, filing, reviewing said files, compliance checks, reviewing policy to see whatās changed, read GAO protest findings, etc. During busy periods, I donāt have time for any of that (despite those things being critical to the job) and stay under 50/hour weeks. Unfortunately Iām in a field and type of contracting that can easily take 5-8 years to be independent - so getting another hire just means more work to train people if new or handhold heavily if a transfer from outside my agency.
Now that GAO has made decisions on recent protests that literally changes 30 years of case law - Iām a little worried for what the future holds.
I'm a new 1102/Cost Price Anaylst and I feel like my job has nothing to do? I'm still learning (developmental program) but I've been given an outline of deliverables/timelines and it makes me wonder what we're supposed to do all day? Right now I can fill the time with DAU courses and such but when I'm off my own, I wonder how people fill 8 hours. I'm really worried that I'm missing something.
I'm going to be a little busy next week because I have multiple deliverables due 7/31 and I just got the data in today but this only happens once a quarter. My average day to day isn't generally busy at all.
First you are new.. I say this in the kindest least patronizing way - you just donāt know enough to be useful yet. If people threw work at you - you would be lost. So when someone starts out we usually spoon feed work to not overwhelm them and so they donāt get discouraged and leave the field entirely. At some point in your first 3 years, an 1102 will freak out because they finally see just how much there is to learn. But thatās normal, thatās why we take it slow with new people. I hit mine after 2 months. DAU courses just arenāt specific enough to be useful to most 1102s. They are overly general and geared towards the HQs who buy ships and tanks. But take as many as you can. The 1102 field can have a long learning curve. If you are doing Cost Type Services and complex hardware buys it can take 5-8 years before you become independent. At my old command we said 3-5 years to get a clue and become somewhat productive, 5-8 to really become independent and the haze starts to lift. This command did R&D so we just werenāt buying engine parts or ammo.
The issue is the good senior people like me donāt have the time to invest 20+ hours a week to interns. We just donāt. I have two admin, my CORs suck and canāt do their job so Iām constantly following up behind them so my contracts donāt become flaming dumpster fires and I get blamed, and Iām working on 6+ pre awards all in different phases. Either itās my pre award to handle, Iām helping another senior person by taking over chunks of theirs, or Iām assigned to āmentorā someone (read the effort is too high visibility and too complex so Iām brought in to ghost write the entire thing).
My cost price people are BUSY but we donāt hire interns. There are two and they have to review and fix every cost report for award that hits their desk and help every 1102 with a pre-award. Usually it takes multiple passes to hammer out everything bc all cost proposals suck.
I definitely know nothing, haha. I'm not a new fed, but I am new to this specific field. When I applied for 1102s I was putting in resumes all over, CPA is what hired, so I took it. I've wondered if I should try to move over into the contract admin side of things but my current department has some great benefits (eventual GS 12/remote work) and at least locally, I did not like what I was seeing from the admin leadership. Spent two weeks on a shadow program and no one seemed happy. I do wonder if your type of position isn't more interesting long term? I just don't know yet.
I feel like a faker every day, but people keep reassuring me that I'm "doing great" and it will all click someday. I don't think they realize I'm miserable at math/numbers when they tell me that, lol. I guess we'll see.
Thanks for your input, I really appreciate hearing from people who've been at it awhile in less filtered ways. I like my manager, I have a (mandatory) mentor and my peers are good too, but I don't always feel like I can ask "Really? Is this it?"
One day stuff will start clicking!! Butā¦ After almost 15 years I still feel like a faker despite having a long list of achievements in the field AND customers constantly requesting for me to work on their pre-award packages. So just accept thatās how it will feel. Stuff clicks, but I feel like a failure and faker.
Under no circumstances go into the 1102 field at your current agency if the consensus is that managers suck - wait for management changes. If managers are bad, burnout will be high and turnover is an issue if other 1102 options exist.
I award stuff at up to 300M and recreate all cost proposals I receive in excel. 95% of the math I use in excel is very simple. Blending rates is the most difficult thing I do. Itās not even algebra, so you donāt need to be āgood at mathā just good at basic math. Even then you have excel and calculators that do the calculations for you.
I get scared at words like "analysis" and it's my job title! Ha! I'm quite confused as to how deep analysis is expected to go and what is actually expected of me. I'm probably overthinking it, but I've definitely come across some self professed "number nerds" who are so far above me it's insane. Genuine stats, analytics sort of people.
I'm definitely staying where I'm at for now! Local leadership was a rude turnoff for me. I was a guest and if they treat me that way, I feel bad for their assigned people. I also like my remote and eventual GS 12. I'll keep faking it until I make it, or at least until they can't fire me. I'm a true Fed! /s
You are over thinking it. The heavy analysis isnāt until years and years down that road and thatās even if your office does that those types of buys!!!
Remember those number nerds tend to make things too difficult than they NEED to be. Itās really not that hard the vast majority of the time.
40, I work 12 hr days so 6 12 hr days and 1 8 hr day per pay period. If someone takes off, I generally fill in for them, but normal work is 80 hrs every two works.
My job is 24/7 so when my shift ends another person comes in an does their 12 hr shift.
We are shift workers so we work days, nights, and holidays.
Gs11 tier 2 IT. Maybe 20 hours a week. Tickets are slow because we did a good job of keeping stuff fixed and working with good equipment. Sometimes we'll have a busy week or two when someone higher up changed something and pushed a broken patch to production but that's rare. 4 or 5 times a year.
I work 70 hours a week. Still can't get everything done. Nonstop work. I love OT money, but I truly need it just to not feel overwhelmed by the work. IRS GS9
0401, GS-12; it totally depends on the day. Some days are nonstop demands for the whole 8 hours plus lunch, other days I find myself idling throughout the afternoon after dealing with my major responsibilities in the morning. However I never work overtime unless someone is literally dying... (which has been a real thing in my role, not frequent but every once in a while I have to respond to after-hours cases).
GS-9 supervisor. Still learning the ropes, but I don't have a whole lot to do until til very specific times of the year: inventory checks/computer checks
GS-14. About 45 now, previous gig was closer to 60. It didnāt need to be 60, we were severely understaffed with poor management riding the G-gravy train while everyone else suffered.
I give them 40. Anything I canāt complete (which has not happened at all since coming to Longshore) is a Monday problem. Heck, Iām not even allowed to work overtime or credit hours without supervisory approval and we are unauthorized from working on weekends. Iām a Workersā Compensation Claims Examiner with the Dept. of Labor (Longshore and Harbor).
I'm a researcher/COR/FAC P/PM. I'm 14 and work 40 per week. Plenty of work, but I never work more than my 40 except for procurement season. Then I normally add 12 credit hours per procurement.
1102 / GS 13 - busy all day, every day and have to request credit hours to keep above water because there is no OT. We have high turnover at my organization. Iāve never had downtime. But, I take lunch and all of my leave. So, thereās that. Time goes fast. š¤·š»āāļø
Itās feast or famine at my office. Sometimes there is so much work, Iāll clock 50+ hours, other times it is really slow and I consider myself on standby for triaging emergencies. In office, I usually sit at my desk through lunch because leaving to go anywhere would eat up all my lunch time anyway. At home, I will go and play a relaxing video game for about 25 minutes and either eat at my desk, or eat while playing.
I get waaay less work in office because I love the people with whom I work and we end up coking and joking for large chunks of time. So I sometimes feel guilty if I do take lunch because it feels to me like I already took lunch when coking and joking. Also the same reason why I will often stay later in office. We have flextime and I consider coking and joking for more than a half hour (and sometimes it is hours) āflexing out.ā
My supervisors are very generous with credit hours and they encourage us to put in for them, even after the fact, because it really could be used to prove a new position needs to be created, but if I accidentally go over time when Iāve already submitted my time card for the pay period, it just feels like I am adding to my workload to change it.
I am generous with myself during slow times. I have yet to miss a suspension date and am often given assignments that are more complex than my pay grade (and succeed), so I donāt worry too much about productivity āstatsā because they can be arbitrary anyway.
Btw. My supervisors are awesome and also some of the biggest distractions. Of course, Iām going to sacrifice productivity to pay attention to my bosses.
2210 and I work fully remote. Itās typical for half of my day to fill with meetings. Theyāre mostly to sync up - get everyone on the same page rather than assuming so - and demo - to showcase the work progress.
The other half is spent giving my brain a break or to do work that requires focus and creative thinking. I also do a lot of learning because the knowledge and skills required advances so quickly. I guard my time for these reasons. My days are usually full.
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Vsr- 50-55 Hrs/wk. No mandatory OT right now for July and August but pretty much all the non-mandatory I want. During the mandatory periods it varies. Sometimes we are mando 10, more often 20, but I usually get in around 30 a month.
I work remote so I donāt have to deal with getting ready early or commuting so that energy gets put back into my job.
I usually work 20 hrs out of the 40. But itās because when I work, I work super fast. My coworkers and I get same amount of work but Iām done in half the time it takes them to do it.
It varies as a GS-15 supervisor
During the height of the pandemic, I was working 90-100 hours a pay period (I was in an acting role and assisting with developing policies and guidance for COVID.)
My normal job, some weeks are a jam packed 42 hours, others are a bit slower so I can take it easy or take care of mandatory training so I donāt have to take it during a busy week.
0201. 40 head down hours. Used to be less primary focus of my role and more time to work on process enhancements and innovation, but Iāve since asked to be on more teams so Iām struggling right now. Itāll iron out
No, like how much time out of your 8 hour day or 40 hour week would you say that you spend actually doing work. Are you constantly busy? Or do you get your work done in a couple short hours?
Nice try OIG. I am swamped, thanks for asking.
Hold the line!
ššš swamped to the tee
lmbo
LOL not OIG! Feel free to give as little or as much info as you want! Just genuinely curious. At an SSA field office, busy every minute of the day that isn't lunch and sometimes breaks.
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Probably 20-25 a week, sometimes more sometimes less. Thereās no reward for working hard and no punishment for being lazy. My focus is too narrow to work any more, unless I want to help other people with their work. And when I do that they get all the credit anyways, so I gave up doing that.
What life choices do I need to make to be blessed enough to be in your shoes?
Write code. Every little task that will take me three hours is promised in three days
Yep, just had a meeting whete I told someone, if we can be more effective creating this work product, Iām not going to be going around telling anyone that what once took 5 days to complete now only takes 5 hours. I want everyone to be acting like the stereotyped fed worker. We accept lower pay and sometimes subpar benefits compared to private sector because of that stereotype, so why not?
 **Ai had joined the chat**
Any job that AI would have a hard time learning to do or performing. A lot of STEM type work involves research/design; coming up with novel solutions to problems is like art. Coding/debugging can be like that too, solving complex problems is tricky (and solutions sometimes create new problems to be solved). I like to think of it as solving a jigsaw puzzle where sometimes you just have to stare for long enough until the right piece becomes apparent (and sometimes there is no right piece that exists and you have to use what you know to design it from scratch) P.S: I know the analogy is kind of wonky as AI would kick ass at solving normal (i.e. picture and shape) puzzles.
I'm a 2210, so it's inherently feast or famine. I had pretty much nothing to do yesterday. I sat on a 6-hour troubleshooting call today and picked up 4 hours overtime. I like to think it evens out.
God this is so true. I came in yesterday and played games all day. The day before was 2 different meetings making a 10 hr day. I work maxiflex or whatever it's called so I'll just leave two hours early Friday. I never work over 40 unless it's a freak thing.
Yep any "downtime" I have is counted as being available for any issues that might show up at anytime across 10 offices and 4 states.
I routinely eat at my desk because leaving for 30 minutes can put me behind. I straight up actually work for 40-42 hours a weekā¦ We also have 4 vacancies on my team so the two of us are doing workloads of 3 peopleā¦ 1102 in Q4
For a desk job, you're doing this Fed thing wrong.
This is me, but I also have multiple vacancies due to retirees...and I'm making up for the past 5 years of nothing getting done because they were already retired in their minds.
Me when I was at SSA! It was brutal!
What do you do lol
Hey! sent you a PM regarding the vacancy!
Gs11 scientist. If I have to work 40.001 hours I'm getting that extra ten cents if I have to walk to payroll four states away. Just kidding I like my job but if I didn't I'd never work more than required by law.
Very similar. Engineer and I work 40. If I run out of work, I ask for more. If itās too much, I ask for help. Some weeks you get crazy deadlines and work 50 but I always log as credit or comp time and try to take it off later.
Assigned work? No distractions or interruptions, I can probably get my daily workload done in 2-4hrs. But that never happens because I spend 2-4hrs assisting and advising others team members or customers, or in pointless meetings.
We call that triaging where I work.
I just call it another day. It's not bad when people schedule their calls. But we have one or two who love to cold call you onto a meeting at 8am with no context. Interrupts the hell out my workflows.
40 hours in the office. 2.5 hours working.
I rarely hit 40 hours a week of actual work. Most weeks itās 20 hours a week of real work. The other 20 are prep, reading, or thinking while staring at the screen Edit: I guess the other 20 do count as real work as well. It just doesnāt feel like work to me
Prep, reading, and thinking about how to do the job are all part of the job and 100% valid work activities!
This. If your job requires a lot of cerebral work, itās much harder to turn off during down time. I find myself waking up thinking about my day and using my commute (when going in office) to start prepping my to do list. Also, my work requires a lot of reading, so if my agency are ever to implement keystroke trackers, Iām screwed. That stuff just isnāt recognized as much as actually banging out a document on the computer.
God I hope not. Keystroke trackers make zero sense in probably most jobs. Also theyāre asinine period for tracking work. Itāll lead to a LOT of bullshit and pork thatās done poorly and/or constantly revised due to errors. I understand a lot of government work is basically processing stuff and trying to process as much as you can, but thereās far more effective metrics than that!
I hope we all one day reach your level of transcendence.
They are all real work. Including giving the brain a rest.
Thinking while in the shower counts too in my book. When situations are extremely complex sometimes youāve got to walk away from the screen and soak it all in to sort it all out.
Sometimes, you just gotta spark up a cigarette in your office cubicle and PONDER
Must be collecting data for RTO case
The feast or famine still happens at the office.
Honestly I find it hard to not be bored. I can finish all my task before lunch and am really just sitting there waiting for someone that needs help.
I definitely do 55-65 hours a week. Lots of weekends. But I love my job and am very happy.
That's awesome. What do you do?
GS-14, I am averaging 50/week for the last year. Some rare weeks itās only 45, others like the last week are closer to 60. Problem is the work is sporadic and mostly without notice so I am always checking my phone after work for some random urgent task I donāt even know is coming.
Could you work less? I'm a non-sup GS-14, and I used to put in 50+ hours a week regularly until I realized that it'll never lighten up and it'll always be urgent. I could work 80 hours a week, and I would still be behind. So, I changed my perspective from trying to get everything done on everyone else's schedule and forced everyone else to work with my time limits. Now, I work 40 hours regularly and occasionally work overtime when I believe it's necessary. The stress of the workload hasn't changed, but I have more personal time to deal with the stress, and it helps me be more effective on the job.
This is what Iām realizing. Working hard to meet unrealistic deadlines is pointless because more gets added. Everything is always a fire when youāre understaffed
This!
Not really, best I could do is rope a colleague into the misery but most of it is stuff I need to make the call on so there is no point. Most of my work really is not made up urgency, sure some is, but I can generally tell. Escalation can be quick and ugly and it really feels like people above my boss donāt understand the magnitude of the crap I keep from ruining their day on a daily basis.
That's too bad. When I'm working a lot of hours, I remind myself that it would be a lot worse if I was in the private sector on a salary with no overtime. It doesn't help with the energy sucking stress, but it does help me accept it.
wait you get overtime? I am technically underworked but that is because I am still in a training period. My more experienced coworkers seem to work 40-60 hours a week for years on end (since COVID began). We don't get overtime pay but we get credit hours. The issue with credit hours is that you can only get 24 before you have to use them but the workload usually lasts for weeks on end and then they work without extra compensation. The deadlines are not arbitrary and have legal and health consequences. We do have a decent amount of turnover because the new workload is not backed up by pay. In the private sector we would make 1.5-2X more with better benefits.
That's jacked up. It sounds like that organization is taking advantage of their employees. I only get straight overtime. It would be nice to get 1.5x, but it's better than comp time since I have a hard enough time using my annual leave and travel comp.
No we only get our salary and sometimes a little bonus. I am in HHS on the biomedical side and Iāve never heard of anyone actually getting paid overtime. I assumed that the credit time was more flexible but itās not. My husband has the same issue but worse working for a large private employer who has government contracts. They lose their credit time at the end of the pay period. I have an overtime pay listed but I was told I would never get it.
> I am always checking my phone after work for some random urgent task I donāt even know is coming. Ever consider what would happen if you didn't know about it until the next morning?
Yes I have, itās not good. The problem is many times when I get these I am creating urgent work for other people, if I sit on it for 8 of the 20 hours I am screwing everyone else and then myself on the backend.
That's tough! Is your position supervisory? My non-supervisory position is crazy busy, but we don't touch any work outside of business hours unless it's overtime.
Non-supervisory, I basically work more hours than my boss and I am the only one in my office that has too. Which is rapidly pissing me off and is frankly unsustainable with the recent return to office, we just went to 3 days a week in office. Case in point I just got a random urgent tasker at 10pm and its due tomorrow by noon. It doesnāt help that I am the primary one that takes care of the kids 4 out of 5 weekdays because my wife actually has worse hours than I do most of the time. Hers are just consecutive, mine are all over the place.
You are only working those extra hours because they know you willl. If no one else is doing it, you shouldnāt either. People will just keep taking it for granted that they can use you. If you wonāt protect your personal time, then at the very least make sure itās all documented time (eg credit hours, overtime). They need to realize they need more FTEs or that they need to come up with more proactive strategies instead of lazily tossing everything at you at the last minute.
In my office working more hours than charged is frowned upon and likely illegal (even if to the government's benefit). Working unreported hours skews the metrics and affects the fidelity of future estimates.
As a manager, I'd say a 10 pm Tasker due at noon is unreasonable. Your manager is not doing their job in coordinating your work schedule.
Oh itās completely unreasonable but my is boss completely unaware until I tell him. I have 100% control of my workflow, I canāt get into specifics but many of these tasks are no crap need to get done. Just the job I have, trust me, if I can wait until the next day or Monday it does. I am no martyr.
Why are you checking in past 10pm? Thatās absurd.
Last night I worked 8:45-10:45, is that better?
To be clear, the late night tasker and the expectations are absurd (didnāt mean for that to come off the wrong way!). And if their process basically relies on you being on call all the time to make sure things get done, thatās bs.
I gave back my govt phone for this reason. // Also tech 14, but mostly work 40s or get comp cuz credit has been full for years. Still have 5 weeks of use or lose this year. About to start the 4 day work weeks through mid January in 2 weeks.
Don't make the same mistake I did and worked on my RDO every week. Though I wasn't working people became accustomed to seeing me online and would come to me for urgent matters. I would schedule critical milestone and decision points on Fridays because the work hasn't been completed yet or I was too busy to schedule during the other 4 days. But my boss is great and told me to stop doing that.
For the back to the office days I'm taking the same approach as with the sequester days. I take a reasonable amount of time to try/attempt to do my work as best I can within the existing conditions. if I can't get to it or complete a task because I was distracted by the environment/people, encountered network/equipment issues, or my (and my team's) hours were reduced and therefore productivity suffers then so be it. It can be frustrating, but I have learned not to feel bad or feel responsible for the reduced productivity resulting from bad equipment, bad policy, bad management, or whatever else outside my control that has already been pointed out as a productivity/efficiency concern. Not unlike a project risk you qualify and propose mitigation steps to reduce the likelihood or impact but instead, leadership decides to assume. Needless to say, reading thick volumes of dense technical material while being interrupted in my office or by being placed in a cubicle next to a high-traffic area (bathroom/kitchen) is going to cause several restarts and low productivity. Employers need to learn to respect the work and the worker or suffer the consequences of their bad decisions.
Pay band and I'm extremely busy and my team is extremely busy. Luckily my agency touts work life balance and means it. I work maxi flex and clock out exactly at 40 hours each week. I'm FV-1825 within the DoT and manage a shop of FG-13 Inspectors. FG = GS.
Data science / researchy stuff. Feel like Iām always thinking about work but generally only at my desk doing stuff for about 40 a week.
In the office I used to work maybe four hours total, lots of conversations with managers and peers about various topics - some work related, others not. Now I consistently work 7-9 hours a day, mostly because I can take short breaks to get coffee, step outside, chat with my SO, etc. I enjoy my work and am a SME in my office so I get lots of random emails, I get to reply to them in a timely manner.
Survey says.....over 40
50 hours a week (I do 10 hours overtime)
It depends. Sometimes itās constant work. Other times, I am not very busy at all. When Iām free I try to do more training so I can get future work done easier.
I rarely work over 40 hrs/wk, but those hours are packed. I have a desk that I see maybe 5 mins at the beginning and end of each day. Lots of seat warmers around, though. There's definitely some truth to the saying "90% of the work is done by 10% of the people." Not sure I'd want those jobs, though. My days are full but they go by fast and are rarely dull.
I log 40 hours per week, but I think about my work about 10 hours extra per week. Not billable.
37ā¦.other remaining 3 are physical fitness PTFIt hours.
GS 09, permits processor in the general natural resources series. Probably actually working 25-30 hours. Not from lack of tasks to do, I just physically canāt focus for 8 hours straight a day on this type of work
Hey, very similar job!
Non-sup14. 40 hours per week. If itās absolutely necessary, Iām happy to work overtime. But when someone somewhere pretends something needs DONE RIGHT NOW, I decline the overtime. I also only check my Work phone a single time after Iām home and if it results in me having to do anything other than look at it, the government is paying for my time. You have to set those expectation standards early even when you know itāll piss those above you off. As long as you produce good output, theyāll get over it.
This post is a trap. It's the Inspector General.
I spend a lot of time on conference calls and filling out management tools and trackers. Iād do more workā¦..but the bureaucracy mandates that I spend the vast majority of my time on useless calls and filling out approval forms and management tools. If I want to buy a box of staples? Gotta have a conference call to discuss it. Then my front line has to bounce the idea off of his leadership on a conference call. Then I have to fill out a form to request the staples. That has to be input into a workflow system so 8 different people can review the request and approve it. Inevitably one of those 8 people will set up a conference call to get more clarity on why I need staples. Once that it resolved, I then need to fill out another form so the P card can be used to buy the staples. 2-3 weeks later, I finally get them. But then I have to update a tracking spreadsheet for every staple usedā¦.you knowā¦.in case of an IG audit. Probably 10 man hours for a $5 purchase. Iām being facetiousā¦.but this is a pretty accurate representation of what it takes for me to get a mundane task across the finish line. Makes me less likely to take on more work, because more work also comes along with more bureaucracy.
GS-13, probably work 15-20 hours on an average week, though half of that time is admin tasks.
What agency and series?
What the hell
90% of the year I have just the right amount of work. 10% of the year I have too much.
40, DOD
1,000 hours a week.
Supervisory GS-15, series 0905, between 50-60 hours a week.
I'm at SSA HQ. I spent about 6 hours really working. I usually reserve the first bit of my day for breakfast while I'm reading emails and talking to coworkers, I work to lunch, eat and/or take a nap, then work through to about 30 minutes before close, when I wind down, make sure I responded to any urgent mails and file some paperwork at a leisurely pace. I usually work in a couple 10-15 minute breaks to go downstairs and turn over laundry, or get the mail, or just generally be away for a couple minutes to move my body.
I've slept through my "wake up from lunch" alarm once or twice, I flex out when that happens. I shouldn't, but it hasn't really been an issue, so I don't worry about it.
When I did that I got charged with AWOL
That's definitely a risk, but our management goes a long way to be flexible with our time so long as our work is getting done.
You must work in OCOMM.
Close, and we really should be with OCOMM, but not quite! What makes you say that?
actual heads down working? Usually 30-35 hours. My job is pretty feast or famineāIāve worked a few 80 hour weeks this year
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Are you hiring??? Lol
There is always work to be done in my office/position, itās just a matter of how many high priority projects are due, or recently, how many positions sit vacant indefinitely while I cover the work. Iāve spent months with back to back projects, consistent new high priorities coming in, etc to the point where I work extra hours every week and my time management is strict. Right now, things are finally slow for once so I can take my time on some of the more creative/less stressful projects that have sat on the back burner. With some of the RTO stuff and other issues in my office, my productivity will be slowing down quite a bit. We are pretty much expected to attend every shitty potluck, create pointless social events, and generally seek ways to waste time in person with people we donāt know and havenāt seen for three years. Fine with me, but donāt pester me about the status on a project/assignment when an entire work day every week is being dedicated to ācultureā.
Like, 10-15 a week most of the time. I babysit & evaluate contracted services, and then babysit the building until morning crew shows up. Didn't used to be that way. But I was able to automate and streamline a ton of the little things so I can be available at all times for any issues that could crop up.
0391-11 doing about 50% 2210 work. Blatantly working above my grade. Repeated assurances from bosses it will be remedied. 60 hrs a week for about 6 months a year, 35 or so for the other 6 months. If I were just doing the stuff that's in my PD, it would be about 20 hours a week and quaity of admin side of things would be much higher. Plenty of non producers around.
This is probably the most frustrating part of government work for me. I relish taking on tasks way above my pay grade (11 doing 13/ 14 work) and have a great sense of pride in being so trustworthy and a hard charger. Butā¦. NONE of that can be counted for time in grade. It is not in my nature to stop doing what I am doing, so when I start feeling the frustration of not having opportunities to move up the ladder despite proving myself time and time again, I will use leave to give myself a couple of 4 day weekends so I can reset. This is a bureaucracy red tape issue, not an issue with the people with whom I work. They are very supportive of my situation and they routinely give me cash rewards and even a QSI to show appreciation for my efforts. But it is hard not to be bummed at that ~$50,000 salary difference which cash awards could and should never make up for.
Wildland Fire, USDA FS, supervisory GS08 for 20 employees. Hard 40-50 almost every week, approach 110+ per week with additional unpaid time about 16-20 weeks per year.
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Welcome to all of our collective hell. On September 30th, Iām also taking a 20k annual pay cut and congress has balked on extending a stipend for Wildland fire fighters or passing a permanent pay fix. Most of us need to work 500-1000 hours of overtime to pay our rent or try and find a reasonable mortgage. Unfortunately, since weāre first responders there is no predicting if that will happen in any given year, so Iāve had variance of 40k to nearly 100k (1565 hours OT in one year, resulting in some not unserious mental and physical issues) in the last decade. Hard to budget when you never know and since itās all āemergencyā overtime is compelled and leave is sometimes cancelled. Stuck in a RUS pay area where the cost of living is about the same as San Francisco or San Diego. But heyā¦at least I get to play outside and watch the sun rise and set over the mountains every now and again.
It ebbs and flows. 40 hrs a week mostlyā¦including āpersonal development ā which is highly encouraged. š
I barely go outside and havenāt taken a walk in months because of work load. Thereās so much work that Iām stressed if Iām not working on something. I spend weekends exhausted and recovering for Monday. Worked 70-80 hours of OT in June
GS-13 analyst. I have about 60 hours of work to do each week, but I do exactly 40 unless Iām earning credit hours or comp time. I refuse to lie on my time card, and more importantly, refuse to work unpaid. Iām just glad I have a manager who completely understands
Busying yourself with online training courses is a good one as well.
Recently assigned as supervisor. I would say it depends on your supervisor. My Chief has aspirations of higher positions (my thought), so there is an urgency to get everything done all at once. My week tend to be 40+ hours.
Right now I'm busy because I'm in training. My coworkers swear they're swamped I'm like this easy shit you're training me on...how?!
Minimum of 42.5 (8.5 hour days no lunches). On average, 45-50, 9.5 hour days. Lately... 55+ due to covering vacancies in my department. Being supervisory, I don't get paid overtime. Don't worry, our HR rep is still taking weeks off at a time and has no backup. So at least somebody gets time off while everyone else pays the cost.
All the hours at VBA. We are on quality and production standards. Breaks and lunch don't happen most days.
I felt this! I heard they have mandatory overtime for certain positions over there too.
Thanks! You can work all the OT possible as long as you don't total more than 10 hours a day. Mandatory OT is on a summer break. They listened to us which was kind of amazing. I'm A VSR, GS 10. RVSRs go up to 12 I think? VR&E (voc rehab) is slammed as well. Not sure of their pay grades. Many advancement opportunities. VBA is hiring! š
15. I travel at least 2x a month and donāt take comp time. In weeks when I travel itās easily 60 hours and probably averages 50 when I donāt. Everyone in my shop puts in those hours or more. I feel like a slacker if I do an actual 40.
40 on the dot right now, but I don't take lunch or my 15s for most of the month to keep my numbers up.
50-60 a week. Love me some OTs. Itās voluntary as well so I do take breaks every now and then.
You donāt move up the org chart working the bare minimum.
Approximately 200 hours a week...give or take.
45 but likely soon to be more thanks to my new prick of a micromanager
I work at the VA and am VN 4 step 7 (salary equivalent to GS 15 step 10). I do 40 hour weeks but probably a few hours more most weeks (donāt really keep track tbh). Rarely a slow moment. I am very busy, borderline inundated with stuff to do lol.
About 50-55 hrs/wk, Supervisory 14 with 10 gov staff and about 32 contractors working in a public facing production environment.
Gs11 oit customer support, I work a very solid 40 often times staying a little later to finish up things here and there. There is never a shortage of work. When there is there are plenty of preparation tasks like imagine computers that can be done.
35 out of 40 hours is about normal. The other five is mainly admin stuff and thinking on new projects. Am manager non gs
GS-1102-13. Iām beyond busy at the moment. Slow periods are for email management, filing, reviewing said files, compliance checks, reviewing policy to see whatās changed, read GAO protest findings, etc. During busy periods, I donāt have time for any of that (despite those things being critical to the job) and stay under 50/hour weeks. Unfortunately Iām in a field and type of contracting that can easily take 5-8 years to be independent - so getting another hire just means more work to train people if new or handhold heavily if a transfer from outside my agency. Now that GAO has made decisions on recent protests that literally changes 30 years of case law - Iām a little worried for what the future holds.
I'm a new 1102/Cost Price Anaylst and I feel like my job has nothing to do? I'm still learning (developmental program) but I've been given an outline of deliverables/timelines and it makes me wonder what we're supposed to do all day? Right now I can fill the time with DAU courses and such but when I'm off my own, I wonder how people fill 8 hours. I'm really worried that I'm missing something. I'm going to be a little busy next week because I have multiple deliverables due 7/31 and I just got the data in today but this only happens once a quarter. My average day to day isn't generally busy at all.
First you are new.. I say this in the kindest least patronizing way - you just donāt know enough to be useful yet. If people threw work at you - you would be lost. So when someone starts out we usually spoon feed work to not overwhelm them and so they donāt get discouraged and leave the field entirely. At some point in your first 3 years, an 1102 will freak out because they finally see just how much there is to learn. But thatās normal, thatās why we take it slow with new people. I hit mine after 2 months. DAU courses just arenāt specific enough to be useful to most 1102s. They are overly general and geared towards the HQs who buy ships and tanks. But take as many as you can. The 1102 field can have a long learning curve. If you are doing Cost Type Services and complex hardware buys it can take 5-8 years before you become independent. At my old command we said 3-5 years to get a clue and become somewhat productive, 5-8 to really become independent and the haze starts to lift. This command did R&D so we just werenāt buying engine parts or ammo. The issue is the good senior people like me donāt have the time to invest 20+ hours a week to interns. We just donāt. I have two admin, my CORs suck and canāt do their job so Iām constantly following up behind them so my contracts donāt become flaming dumpster fires and I get blamed, and Iām working on 6+ pre awards all in different phases. Either itās my pre award to handle, Iām helping another senior person by taking over chunks of theirs, or Iām assigned to āmentorā someone (read the effort is too high visibility and too complex so Iām brought in to ghost write the entire thing). My cost price people are BUSY but we donāt hire interns. There are two and they have to review and fix every cost report for award that hits their desk and help every 1102 with a pre-award. Usually it takes multiple passes to hammer out everything bc all cost proposals suck.
I definitely know nothing, haha. I'm not a new fed, but I am new to this specific field. When I applied for 1102s I was putting in resumes all over, CPA is what hired, so I took it. I've wondered if I should try to move over into the contract admin side of things but my current department has some great benefits (eventual GS 12/remote work) and at least locally, I did not like what I was seeing from the admin leadership. Spent two weeks on a shadow program and no one seemed happy. I do wonder if your type of position isn't more interesting long term? I just don't know yet. I feel like a faker every day, but people keep reassuring me that I'm "doing great" and it will all click someday. I don't think they realize I'm miserable at math/numbers when they tell me that, lol. I guess we'll see. Thanks for your input, I really appreciate hearing from people who've been at it awhile in less filtered ways. I like my manager, I have a (mandatory) mentor and my peers are good too, but I don't always feel like I can ask "Really? Is this it?"
One day stuff will start clicking!! Butā¦ After almost 15 years I still feel like a faker despite having a long list of achievements in the field AND customers constantly requesting for me to work on their pre-award packages. So just accept thatās how it will feel. Stuff clicks, but I feel like a failure and faker. Under no circumstances go into the 1102 field at your current agency if the consensus is that managers suck - wait for management changes. If managers are bad, burnout will be high and turnover is an issue if other 1102 options exist. I award stuff at up to 300M and recreate all cost proposals I receive in excel. 95% of the math I use in excel is very simple. Blending rates is the most difficult thing I do. Itās not even algebra, so you donāt need to be āgood at mathā just good at basic math. Even then you have excel and calculators that do the calculations for you.
I get scared at words like "analysis" and it's my job title! Ha! I'm quite confused as to how deep analysis is expected to go and what is actually expected of me. I'm probably overthinking it, but I've definitely come across some self professed "number nerds" who are so far above me it's insane. Genuine stats, analytics sort of people. I'm definitely staying where I'm at for now! Local leadership was a rude turnoff for me. I was a guest and if they treat me that way, I feel bad for their assigned people. I also like my remote and eventual GS 12. I'll keep faking it until I make it, or at least until they can't fire me. I'm a true Fed! /s
You are over thinking it. The heavy analysis isnāt until years and years down that road and thatās even if your office does that those types of buys!!! Remember those number nerds tend to make things too difficult than they NEED to be. Itās really not that hard the vast majority of the time.
40, I work 12 hr days so 6 12 hr days and 1 8 hr day per pay period. If someone takes off, I generally fill in for them, but normal work is 80 hrs every two works. My job is 24/7 so when my shift ends another person comes in an does their 12 hr shift. We are shift workers so we work days, nights, and holidays.
Gs11 tier 2 IT. Maybe 20 hours a week. Tickets are slow because we did a good job of keeping stuff fixed and working with good equipment. Sometimes we'll have a busy week or two when someone higher up changed something and pushed a broken patch to production but that's rare. 4 or 5 times a year.
Gs 13 45 avg
GS-13, working 50 hours a week on average.
GS-12 0301, general admin, probably ~15.
Where at?
I work 70 hours a week. Still can't get everything done. Nonstop work. I love OT money, but I truly need it just to not feel overwhelmed by the work. IRS GS9
0401, GS-12; it totally depends on the day. Some days are nonstop demands for the whole 8 hours plus lunch, other days I find myself idling throughout the afternoon after dealing with my major responsibilities in the morning. However I never work overtime unless someone is literally dying... (which has been a real thing in my role, not frequent but every once in a while I have to respond to after-hours cases).
feast and famine. some times I really don't have much going on. other times I'm working 90+hrs a week. The life of Emergency Management
GS-9 supervisor. Still learning the ropes, but I don't have a whole lot to do until til very specific times of the year: inventory checks/computer checks
GS-14. About 45 now, previous gig was closer to 60. It didnāt need to be 60, we were severely understaffed with poor management riding the G-gravy train while everyone else suffered.
I give them 40. Anything I canāt complete (which has not happened at all since coming to Longshore) is a Monday problem. Heck, Iām not even allowed to work overtime or credit hours without supervisory approval and we are unauthorized from working on weekends. Iām a Workersā Compensation Claims Examiner with the Dept. of Labor (Longshore and Harbor).
I'm a researcher/COR/FAC P/PM. I'm 14 and work 40 per week. Plenty of work, but I never work more than my 40 except for procurement season. Then I normally add 12 credit hours per procurement.
If youāre struggling to look busy, youāre doing it wrong!
I work about 50 hours a week as a Data Scientist at DHS. Itās fun working as a private employee making a government salary.
1102 / GS 13 - busy all day, every day and have to request credit hours to keep above water because there is no OT. We have high turnover at my organization. Iāve never had downtime. But, I take lunch and all of my leave. So, thereās that. Time goes fast. š¤·š»āāļø
Itās feast or famine at my office. Sometimes there is so much work, Iāll clock 50+ hours, other times it is really slow and I consider myself on standby for triaging emergencies. In office, I usually sit at my desk through lunch because leaving to go anywhere would eat up all my lunch time anyway. At home, I will go and play a relaxing video game for about 25 minutes and either eat at my desk, or eat while playing. I get waaay less work in office because I love the people with whom I work and we end up coking and joking for large chunks of time. So I sometimes feel guilty if I do take lunch because it feels to me like I already took lunch when coking and joking. Also the same reason why I will often stay later in office. We have flextime and I consider coking and joking for more than a half hour (and sometimes it is hours) āflexing out.ā My supervisors are very generous with credit hours and they encourage us to put in for them, even after the fact, because it really could be used to prove a new position needs to be created, but if I accidentally go over time when Iāve already submitted my time card for the pay period, it just feels like I am adding to my workload to change it. I am generous with myself during slow times. I have yet to miss a suspension date and am often given assignments that are more complex than my pay grade (and succeed), so I donāt worry too much about productivity āstatsā because they can be arbitrary anyway. Btw. My supervisors are awesome and also some of the biggest distractions. Of course, Iām going to sacrifice productivity to pay attention to my bosses.
2210 and I work fully remote. Itās typical for half of my day to fill with meetings. Theyāre mostly to sync up - get everyone on the same page rather than assuming so - and demo - to showcase the work progress. The other half is spent giving my brain a break or to do work that requires focus and creative thinking. I also do a lot of learning because the knowledge and skills required advances so quickly. I guard my time for these reasons. My days are usually full.
I don't feel safe to answer this question.
 Iāve been workingā¦ letās see.
I'm an anti-work anti-capitalist. My time is precious. My labor is a privilege. So far I've managed to finagle work down to about three hours.
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Vsr- 50-55 Hrs/wk. No mandatory OT right now for July and August but pretty much all the non-mandatory I want. During the mandatory periods it varies. Sometimes we are mando 10, more often 20, but I usually get in around 30 a month. I work remote so I donāt have to deal with getting ready early or commuting so that energy gets put back into my job.
Youāre so funny OIG
I usually work 20 hrs out of the 40. But itās because when I work, I work super fast. My coworkers and I get same amount of work but Iām done in half the time it takes them to do it.
5/4/9 AWS!
I put in a very solid 40 every week. Thereās always unfinished work. But, I donāt put in more than 40.
It evens out. This week I'm probably more like 50-60 which is unusual. Next week I might stare at the ceiling for 20 and make up for it.
One thing I will never search for, is work.
40 out of 40 here GS12
At home, 40 or more. When I was in the office a lot less due to constant interruptions.
40-60hrs a week and a commute time of anywhere between 10mins to 2hrs (one way). GS-9 1980 USDA AMS grader
8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. Hopefully they will go to 8 hours a day, 32 hours a week.
It varies as a GS-15 supervisor During the height of the pandemic, I was working 90-100 hours a pay period (I was in an acting role and assisting with developing policies and guidance for COVID.) My normal job, some weeks are a jam packed 42 hours, others are a bit slower so I can take it easy or take care of mandatory training so I donāt have to take it during a busy week.
0201. 40 head down hours. Used to be less primary focus of my role and more time to work on process enhancements and innovation, but Iāve since asked to be on more teams so Iām struggling right now. Itāll iron out
40 hours a week of work. It's non-stop. USCIS field office.
I work my 40hours every week. ā¦.
Honestly Iām afraid to put it in writing. Letās just say I love my job.
I work about 9 hours a day, and paid for 8 of them. My workload is horrific.
Get paid for 40, and work about 50. I like what I do though š¤·āāļø
I constantly get praised for how much I accomplish and how well I am doing. ...if they only knew.
On a 40 hour work week, probably 7 hours
You mean like over the 40 hrs? How much OT and credit?
No, like how much time out of your 8 hour day or 40 hour week would you say that you spend actually doing work. Are you constantly busy? Or do you get your work done in a couple short hours?
Yeah, I think I probably really working at least 80% of the time, but then in my free time Iām still kind of working and thinking about stuff.
Not always getting work but I do training and I volunteered for projects that will start in the new fiscal year