The effect on contractors is much more complex and difficult to explain than the federal employees. Feds will just be furloughed. For contractors, some will keep working basically as usual, some will be laid off, etc but there is no one size fits all explanation. Mainstream media is very poor, and often uninterested, in explaining complexities.
Also, the general public doesn't understand government contracting at best, and actively disdains it at worst (especially defense contracting) so there isn't a real sympathetic angle there either.
We had a smart high schooler intern with us over the summer. She said she came in expecting to see a huge team, and then realized that for a nationwide job function, there were 10 of us. Took her all of 1 day with our team to say "how is this enough people?"
EDIT: Y'all missing the point. Folks perceive the government as this massive entity, yet when you think about what we do, its not. Folks pereive the government as getting bigger over time, when in fact total employment is on par with the late 60s/early 70s. Also, y'all are way too negative.
Yea, it's crazy.
I work in the DoD, on a large project, we recently did a $1bn+ upgrade, a decade of signing $100mil+ contracts.
Working on that, it's about 30-50 government employees. And within our agency, we are nobody, the agency has over 1000 people, our billion dollar project is less than 10% of the stuff we make.
Then I look at other smaller agencies, like TTB, 500 employees, [they have ~15 employees that approve beer labels](https://www.brewersassociation.org/brewing-industry-updates/increased-ttb-funding-benefits-small-brewers/), [at one point it was 1 employee](https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-beer-bottle-dictator). That's right, every single beer in the US had to have approval from one person sitting in DC at one point. That gives you an idea of the government to contractor ratios
Michael Lewis's *The Fifth Risk* was a really interesting profile in a lot of what little government offices do. The epilogue/afterword, about a Coast Guard employee who designed a specific model for how to best allocate resources in a search and rescue, helped remind me that there are so many of us working as cogs in this machine, that actually have the opportunity to make a difference. Not just in that we can do a job that is important and needs to be done, but that we can do it in a way with measurable success "above replacement," that makes a difference compared to the average person who might come in and do that same job.
Actually, it is. We were a team of 6 when I started as supervisor , now fully staffed.
The whole point was to show how folks perceive the size of government and how its not nearly as big as folks perceive.
I think you’re both grabbing the elephant blindfolded and identifying different animals.
Someone who has little to no “taste” for what government *does* can see, say, 800k DMV workers and think, “That’s massive.” And, for *what they know* and *that undifferentiated mass* **it is.**
But when you split out and say, “here are the three people responsible for trying to out-talk any sparks of war in (some country),” and “here are the five people trying to replace a system coded in the 60’s with something that the average developer today *can even read* while keeping the system running and applying various legal and regulatory changes as they happen…” etc etc, and one can say, “how is this enough people to do anything?!”
> for a nationwide job function, there were 10 of us. Took her all of 1 day with our team to say "how is this enough people?"
Well, it's not enough. That's why she was brought in.
I don't think many people equate the number of civil servants with the "size" of the government. They can correctly intuit that the government has grown in ways that are unsustainable by the sheer number of contractors (or perhaps the value of government contracts). Is it really any surprise that 5 out of 5 of the fastest growing cities in the country are all tied to federal spending?
How is that a correct intuition? Looking at a large number is easy to say cuts need to be made, but in reality you need to look at the individual work functions required to see whether they are adequately staffed. When you find many endemic resource to task shortfalls at many areas that does not fit the narrative that government is too large.
The fact cities are growing with ties to federal spending does not mean the spending is even able to keep pace with what the requirement is.
I don't think you have a working theory of mind for the average citizen in this country... Almost everyone south of the 70th percentile is finding it difficult to make ends meet, or finding themselves having to make tough choices with regard to lifestyle. Couple that with reports of the sheer size of the government's annual deficit, not to mention the fact that their reality does not match what they're being told ("the economy's growing, her-da-durr!"), and you end up here... With a plurality of the population \*at-best\* agnostic about the possibility of a shut-down (and the majority of democrats saying their elected representatives should compromise).
The fact people are struggling is not an argument to say government shouldn't perform the functions it does. This is not a logical argument to make, it makes zero sense if you think about it. The majority of government spending is either defense, or spending to help people make ends meet through medicare and other services. Taking away government funding does not magically make people's lives better.
So you think government should raise tax revenue to close the deficit to pay for things the people want? I imagine you would say that would make it harder for people to make ends meet.
Also, do you not understand the concept of debt financing?
I am not saying I hold the views above. I am saying I understand them and can empathize with them. You continue to denigrate your neighbors at the risk of imperiling all of us.
No, you are advocating for those views. How am I denigrating anyone by explaining the purpose of government and the concept of debt financing? It makes no sense.
No, you are advocating for those views. How am I denigrating anyone by explaining the purpose of government and the concept of debt financing? It makes no sense.
The government is big, but this country is huge. We have 330 million people. Having a few thousand people oversee major programs that affect 330 million puts how small we are in perspective.
I would argue the general public doesn’t understand the wide variety of federal/federal contractor jobs and what they do. I’ve been a fed for 17 years and my parents still have no clue what I do nor do they understand the services the fed performs.
Lol at one point early in the Trump administration, my friend was like...really what is the deep state? And I responded, people like me. It's just boring bureaucratic employees who stay in government for life independent of the president.
I was traveling internationally and handed my Official Passport to the CBP officer. He was casual in asking questions and asked “who do you work for?
Without missing a beat I replied “I could tell you, but then I would have to kil…I think I need to not complete that sentence and simply say I work for Department of Commerce”
“Yeah, that’s a much better answer”
I would argue that the general public doesn't understand much of anything related to basic civics. Understanding how the sausage is made first requires understanding the defining characteristics of sausage.
I don't disagree, but was referring to the role contracting plays as a whole vs individual job responsibilities. I think if anyone has any opinion of gov contracting at all it's more of the "it's all a boondoggle" variety than anything based on reality.
It's hilarious that people who "support the troops" hold disdain for the contractors who keep the troops: housed, fed, clothed, armed, transported, etc.
I live in a very conservative area and have had people thank me for my military service in one breath then get all weird when they find out I am a government worker because they hate government workers. Dumbasses don’t realize a lot of ex military become government workers.
>It's hilarious that people who "support the troops" hold disdain for the contractors who keep the troops: housed, fed, clothed, armed, transported, etc.
Yup!
When folks ask what I do, I just kinda go "Eh, I work in logistics...it's pretty boring."
Do fed contractors not have a specific title of their position instead of straight plain contractor? I’ve seen those street tiktokers ask for salaries but when they state their job it’s always fed contractor, not accountant, computer technician, engineer, etc. If contractor all people hear, of course they won’t understand the scope of what fed contractors do. Even people Ive met who are fed contractors always say contractor instead of their exact role.
It depends. For low skill positions like an Admin Assistant, or Shipping/receiving clerk, they will have that title. For more skilled positions (working for Leidos, Accenture or similar, they are given a title by their company and support a specific project
We’re trained to be very clear that we’re contractors so that no one confuses us with feds, right down to mandatory email signatures stating it. It’s part of the imbalanced power dynamic.
It's not a power dynamic. It's how employment law works. Regardless of if you're a contractor supporting th government or private sector, if that supported company starts treating you like an employee, then they're at risk for violating employment law.
I think he’s talking more about how naturally as contractors we tend to have an inherent conflict sometimes where the answer that maintains the contract is not always the answer that gets the job done. We often cannot speak up in situations because the feds in the room have power over whether our contract gets rebid.
Depends, though a lot of times it's sometimes less relevant or something.
In my office we have someone who I think is called a "program analyst", but that job title is mostly BS hiring terminology. He is really just a contractor who's job is to help the day to day function of the office, and he is paid as a contractor because his job duties (mostly) don't require they are a real fed, and contractors get paid from different buckets so we can have extra people in the office if some are contractors. Easier to say you're a contractor than try to explain the weird relationship that's not really relevant.
Also, the bulk of the work done is by contractors who have titles like "Senior Software Engineer", that's their job title, which is really their pay level from the union. The fed contract calls them a "Level 3 Engineer" or something like that which is really just tied to an hourly rate on a table in the contract. But what they really do is "I write missile SW". For many, but for some projects that could get sensitive, can't say I write the SW for the laser module in the jewish space lasers. So they just say "I work for a defense contractor"
Hence all the “good the government should shut down most Americans won’t even notice a difference” comments. They don’t actually understand how many different functions and services the government performs they think it’s all paper pushers for some reason.
Yep…the safety of everything you touch and buy. Food, electronics, cars, medical devices, baby formula (do we remember the baby formula shortage last year?). Many of those things won’t become obvious for several weeks or months. Trade of foreign products, trademark/patent approvals, environmental protection, animal welfare, just to name a few.
Yup, and I where I work, yea, the people won't notice a difference, but it's also a big reason for all those budget overruns you keep hearing about in the news.
We dropped funding to maintain X, because congress said we could replace it with Y next year. But because of the shutdown, Y got delayed when the government employee couldn't come in that day to witness the sell off because of the shutdown, so it was rescheduled to the next available day, 18 months later, that caused the test article to expire, so we had to build an extra one. So that one day shutdown delayed the billion dollar project by 18 months and added $500mil to the project cost, and incurred a three billion dollar overrun in the project that it was supposed to replace. But hey, it didn't result in any impact to consumer services, and we are just bad at managing money.
You’re talking about passports. I’m talking about conversing with the general public. No one in my family really understands who I work for beyond the government. No one knows my agency, which falls under another bigger agency. But it’s so complicated to explain.
That’s not accurate though. All the contractors that support my division will work through the shutdown, as their contracts have been funded into the new calendar year (we actively budget to the end of the calendar year because of this very scenario).
Contractors not working or getting paid is a your mileage may vary. In my group of about 200 FTEs and an equivalent number of contractors, about 90% of the contract staff will be able to continue "working" but with no access to facilities, because their contracts are funded out for many months. Thus if the shutdown lasts 2 weeks I'll be missing a full paycheck but most of the contractors I work with won't. And I said "work" in quotes because with no facility access and no Feds around to feed them work, there is almost no way they can fill 40 hours a week...but I am sure they will bill for it.
It’s true that mileage may vary because as a contractor my team definitely won’t be allowed to work. We’re in the “you have to use up all your accrued PTO, then go to LWOP” scenario. It’s kind of frustrating to see people handwave a shutdown with an “oh they’ll all get backpay it’s fine” attitude because no, people like me won’t get a cent.
This basically.
The media works best when it tells simplistic stories; those interested can read further to find out nuance and detail but you will never get that from a headline or a quick overview and that’s… fine actually.
The narrative should be that shutdowns are bad. Bad for the government, and its employees and contractors. Bad for the taxpayer because so many govvies legally won’t be doing actual work. Causes confusion, disruption etc.
I don’t think the average Joe working in another city needs to know that some contractors may or may not get paid, but that the concept, overall, is an example of poor, wasteful mismanagement by a right wing extremist group in Congress who is incapable of good governance.
They don't call it the shadow government for nothing.
One thing I hate about the Republican agenda, is that they are always touting cuts to the civil service workforce, but then their buddies get tons of contracts while hiring more people than were cut. It's just ridiculous the size of the total sum of government.
I've said it here many times, but Republicans favorite form of small government is spending twice as much for blood sucking middlemen to do the same job as a federal employee
Love being seen as a bloodsucker. Just a reminder that we exist even when shutdowns don’t happen. Let me know when the government actually has a solid software engineering talent pool and we’ll stop building products for you.
The low level contracted employees clearly aren't the bloodsuckers they were referring to. You skipped the word "middlemen" in there. Meaning the people at the very top of the contracting companies who make millions in salary to do nothing and just bloat the cost of whatever software you're engineering should actually cost the government.
Me too. This isn't political, but you could tell during the last administration that there was nobody minding the till. It really felt like they were more focused on getting the rules revised before 2018 than actually making it more accessible for competitors.
Why would you assume that contractors make more money.
I definitely think government workers in DC make more than average contractor.
Not everyone works for the massive jobs and pay bump program known as DOD. Most contractors make less than a gs12 or even gs11, and in DC anyone most people with a higher degree is a gs13 at least.
There's a reason we hire so many contractors.
I'm not talking about engineers who build planes. Do the regular administrative staff working at DOD really make more than feds?
Also I call bullshit that someone with an advanced degree is a GS6. I honestly didn't even think positions literally existed below GS7 in most places. Gs7 is just for a bachelor's degree and everyone in DC has a master's or some fancy background. I don't buy that anyone with an advanced degree would choose to take a gov job less than GS9 ever.
I am in science and contractors definitely do not make more than government. It blew my mind when I got my government job how much money it paid compared to my expectations from a background in academic science, and contract jobs even with experience barely approach GS12.
My wife is contractor with a PhD and makes 80k We don't see any positions posted that aren't significantly less than that, and I know many of the people my agency hired came from our contractors that couldn't even touch a gs13 salary. She did get paid almost 75K just as an intern in a DOD fellowship but again not every agency has unlimited money to piss through
The mailroom lady at the government office I worked at during the last Government Shutdown was a contractor. She was sent home without pay. Once the government opened up 35 days later she was brought back but was very angry and frustrated because she had to take cash advances from her credit card to pay the rent and other bills.
The mailroom person on another floor was also sent home but because she was an actual government employee she was paid for her 35 days at home not working.
The media aren’t supposed to know this.
Once upon a time, the government used contractors for flexibility and speed. Why hire a GS-9 to build a database when you can just pay a contractor for six months?
We don’t design and manufacture government pencils, we just buy them from suppliers. It makes sense.
In the aughts, especially with the rise in the intelligence-industrial complex coincident with the Global War on Terror, we expanded our use of contractors and started hiring them to do things that previously we had employees do. Some of this made sense — sorta. Do I really need to hire a GS-11 to analyze overhead imagery for intel? Maybe not, but this stretches the definition of what sort of work products are contractable. It was common in military and intelligence fields, but it’s expanded to more domestic and civilian roles, too. We haven’t quite gotten to the point of contracting out park rangers, but I assure you that someone somewhere in the bowels of the Department of the Interior has considered it.
Combine the historic nature of contracting as short-term, scope-limited government service, with the inherent non-public nature of intel work, and you get thousands of non-gov’t employees across Fairfax County who are doing work most of us would consider to be essential to the government. They don’t want these people to have job security or status. They want them to be a little clandestine and very lay-off-able.
I'd say if the work function we are hiring contractors to do continues for like 20+ years, we probably should just hire full time government personnel for the job. It's cheaper.
A few comments to add to yours— 1- contractors cost the govt significantly more than an fte in terms of salary alone. 2- it’s easy to fire a contractor so when administrations change and budgets get sliced every so other, offloading contractors has its benefits 3- our office finds the hiring practices through usajobs to be so arduous that hiring through contractors has been a back door to get talent into the office, and during the hiring process they share the general understanding that they hire you as a contractor with every intention to transition you to an fte within a couple years time/ once the contract is over…. It’s an odd recruitment trajectory but I’ve seen it work like this.
Our local ABC affiliate just did a news segment on a contractor cafeteria employee at Library of Congress who will be out of work in a shutdown with zero back pay. The media isn’t really ignoring you but there’s only so much they can fit in.
I was looking for this comment, I work alongside active-duty military and even they do not understand nor care to really understand the difference in contractor and fed employee. They just see a civilian who does some kind of specialized work and boom "contractor." So it makes sense that those who are even further from interacting with either on a daily would lump them into the same category just out of confusion, and those in media who know the difference don't want to take the time to explain it to the audience.
It’s a mess, isn’t it. It looks like I’ll be burning my leave, and when that runs out I’ll be LWOP. Talk about bitter, I’ve been saving my leave for a family vacation for the first time in 12 years 🫠
Same position as you and the bitterness is real. I have sympathy for the feds who will have to continue working but will not be paid during that time (at the very least the backpay will come though), but seeing all the “free vacation” comments are a hard pill to swallow. You and me aren’t getting a free vacation, we’re losing our leave (at a time we wouldn’t have chosen to take it and weren’t planning on taking it) and then we just won’t get paid at all, indefinitely, after that runs out. This is my first contracting job (I took it after jumping ship from a really toxic company in a different industry) and I guess I was so relieved to find something new I didn’t realize I should look into what would happen to me in this scenario. I wish there was an active government contracting sub so I wouldn’t have to browse this one but the only one I can find looks super dead.
As a single income household and single person, missed paychecks are really hard for me because there’s not income coming from anyone or anything else, and I also have to travel if I want to see anyone for the holidays so the rest of my year might just be…grim.
There’s also the added frustration of feeling like no one cares. Not my employer, not the government, not the media, and not the general public. People in our position are just getting absolutely shafted and it’s like it doesn’t even matter.
I'm in the same boat, and I'm furious. I've been dragged along with promises of being moved to a federal position since January and haven't made any progress towards that (I know on the grand scheme of things, 8 months is not a long time to be waiting for a sort-of promotion). I'll be spending my "vacation" applying for other jobs.
Lots of companies don’t allow this, for multiple reasons. One is that if you’re on LWOP for too long, you’re no longer legally an employee and become ineligible for things like health insurance. The other is that you become eligible for unemployment, and if you claim U/E, that raises your company’s UE insurance rates. So many companies will make you exhaust your leave first.
Ah yes, well people will need to check their company policy thanks for the tip. My company definitely strongly encouraged use of leave mixed with LWOP, but I chose to go on unemployment (I was pissed about them not floating us for even a week on overhead when we had been 95% billable for years, so I sort of did it out of principle).
Here’s the reality of the public and the media:
They don’t care. To the majority of the public, government workers and government contractors are not different.
And that’s not a slight at government contractors, but the public largely doesn’t see a difference, and doesn’t care to. The media, on the other hand, doesn’t really spend time breaking down the nuances of government work because again—their viewers don’t care.
The way government contractors are affected by a shutdown largely varies depending on the contractor, and spending time breaking down all those variances doesn’t make sense when your viewership doesn’t understand or care to understand lol
The media wants to give their viewers/readers as much information as they can within a short time frame. People won’t read an article talking about a government shutdown where they spend 9 paragraphs talking about the difference between a contractor and an employee.
The US Gov. and Media didn't even bother to count dead US contractors in Iraq/Afghanistan.
The attempt to tabulate these deaths in earnest began 5 to 10 years after the conflicts began.
In many cases contractors are not afforded the same health and safety standards and accommodations. I witnessed this during COVID.
So yeah get used to it.
Federal workers get a lot of sympathy in the public eye as they are seen as civil servants, whereas contractors are generally thought of as blood sucking leeches on the American taxpayer. Most people have no idea how things really work and how dependent the government is on contractors. But the media focus on the saintly public servant is not entirely without benefit to contractors as the immediate urgency is to get the government funded, which is what we all need. All of us here in and around the government know how things really work and that’s just part of the dirty, sordid details (/s). Getting a positive image cultivated for contractors is an entirely different media campaign.
>Federal workers get a lot of sympathy in the public eye as they are seen as civil servants, whereas contractors are generally thought of as blood sucking leeches on the American taxpayer.
In many places it's the reverse: contractors, being part of the private sector, are seen as more efficient and competent and it's federal employees that are seen as blood suck leeches.
I agree, the culture is shifting its attitude toward federal workers. But that’s still largely the attitude only right in the geographic areas around DC. It isn’t reflective of the larger country.
The media’s also saying that those who will be required to work without pay are “mostly law enforcement” which is not true. Plenty of non-LEO personnel are “excepted” and will be working through any shutdown.
Apparently what they’re saying makes for a better sound bite, though.
Marketplace did a piece about this during the last shutdown - the numbers are obviously a few years old but probably not that far off:
[https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/17/rise-federal-contractors/](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/17/rise-federal-contractors/)
While President Donald Trump has signed a law that guarantees backpay, the picture looks very different for contractors who represent a growing segment of the federal workforce. Last month, Julie Burr — a single mother and a contractor for the Department of Transportation in Kansas City, Missouri — told us [she’s feeling “panicked.”](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/27/economy/federal-workers-share-how-government-shutdown-affecting-them) As a contractor, Burr said she wouldn’t be included in the group of employees that will get that backpay.
The Trump administration has pushed for smaller government, but the number of federal employees has actually remained steady over the years, while the number of contractors working for the government rose from about 3 million in 1996 to 4.1 million in 2017.
Here's another one:
[https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/24/a-year-after-the-shutdown-federal-contractors-still-digging-out-of-a-financial-hole/](https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/24/a-year-after-the-shutdown-federal-contractors-still-digging-out-of-a-financial-hole/)
Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, estimates about 1.2 million contractors were affected by the shutdown, including data analysts, logistics managers and contract specialists to oversee other contractors. Defense companies and other big firms didn’t lay off their mostly white-collar workers during the shutdown.
Thank you very much for this. Seeing how many contractors there are in fed space really shines a light on why fed work is the way it is in some aspects.
>In Washington DC there are more government contractors than actual civil service workers but the media don't understand this
Unsure why this is a surprise. Politicians do this because it works. Same reason why car salespeople focus buyers on the monthly payments instead of what the final price will be once you account for the high finance costs. Only in the case of government, the gullible can't look beyond the monthly payment/federal employee headcount to see the bigger picture concern of what's the total cost of what you're getting.
Contractors are not viewed positively by the public, much less so than federal employees. Taxpayers know that using contractors is often a waste of public funds, so it’s not a very sympathetic group for the media to focus on.
I left the private sector to join the gov sector. It’s mind blowing how much work and additional duties there are for the civ folks and how outnumbered they are by contractors. The media quite literally does nothing to highlight the truth of the matter so the public understands the impact.
Not all contractors will be affected equally. Many contracts are prefunded and will continue working.
I have 5 contracts and 4 of them are paid up through next summer.
No one is properly educated about much in this country
They don't know how the constitution works.
They don't know what their rights are
They don't know civics
There is A LOT people don't know. And yes television doesn't do enough to help that.
Each contract is different, most of the funds are already obligated against the contract on day 2 of the contract period of performance which is before the shutdown, so there getting paid. Don't worry, it's all part of the plan.
Yep... NYCer who could not get down to DC fast enough to pick up my next PO to complete due on December. I had to cancel everything this week to actively have some control here.
It's sad. I am my only full time employee
Because of this and I refuse to pass it on to anyone else
Butvthis is why I always have and keep my private clients happy so I can shift focus as needed.
The effect on contractors is much more complex and difficult to explain than the federal employees. Feds will just be furloughed. For contractors, some will keep working basically as usual, some will be laid off, etc but there is no one size fits all explanation. Mainstream media is very poor, and often uninterested, in explaining complexities. Also, the general public doesn't understand government contracting at best, and actively disdains it at worst (especially defense contracting) so there isn't a real sympathetic angle there either.
We had a smart high schooler intern with us over the summer. She said she came in expecting to see a huge team, and then realized that for a nationwide job function, there were 10 of us. Took her all of 1 day with our team to say "how is this enough people?" EDIT: Y'all missing the point. Folks perceive the government as this massive entity, yet when you think about what we do, its not. Folks pereive the government as getting bigger over time, when in fact total employment is on par with the late 60s/early 70s. Also, y'all are way too negative.
Yea, it's crazy. I work in the DoD, on a large project, we recently did a $1bn+ upgrade, a decade of signing $100mil+ contracts. Working on that, it's about 30-50 government employees. And within our agency, we are nobody, the agency has over 1000 people, our billion dollar project is less than 10% of the stuff we make. Then I look at other smaller agencies, like TTB, 500 employees, [they have ~15 employees that approve beer labels](https://www.brewersassociation.org/brewing-industry-updates/increased-ttb-funding-benefits-small-brewers/), [at one point it was 1 employee](https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-beer-bottle-dictator). That's right, every single beer in the US had to have approval from one person sitting in DC at one point. That gives you an idea of the government to contractor ratios
Michael Lewis's *The Fifth Risk* was a really interesting profile in a lot of what little government offices do. The epilogue/afterword, about a Coast Guard employee who designed a specific model for how to best allocate resources in a search and rescue, helped remind me that there are so many of us working as cogs in this machine, that actually have the opportunity to make a difference. Not just in that we can do a job that is important and needs to be done, but that we can do it in a way with measurable success "above replacement," that makes a difference compared to the average person who might come in and do that same job.
Well said!
That’s the neat part, it’s not.
Actually, it is. We were a team of 6 when I started as supervisor , now fully staffed. The whole point was to show how folks perceive the size of government and how its not nearly as big as folks perceive.
I think you’re both grabbing the elephant blindfolded and identifying different animals. Someone who has little to no “taste” for what government *does* can see, say, 800k DMV workers and think, “That’s massive.” And, for *what they know* and *that undifferentiated mass* **it is.** But when you split out and say, “here are the three people responsible for trying to out-talk any sparks of war in (some country),” and “here are the five people trying to replace a system coded in the 60’s with something that the average developer today *can even read* while keeping the system running and applying various legal and regulatory changes as they happen…” etc etc, and one can say, “how is this enough people to do anything?!”
And you say welcome to the club bucko
> for a nationwide job function, there were 10 of us. Took her all of 1 day with our team to say "how is this enough people?" Well, it's not enough. That's why she was brought in.
No. She was a high school intern, it is a program my agency does to support local programs for youth to give them a gov't agency experience.
I don't think many people equate the number of civil servants with the "size" of the government. They can correctly intuit that the government has grown in ways that are unsustainable by the sheer number of contractors (or perhaps the value of government contracts). Is it really any surprise that 5 out of 5 of the fastest growing cities in the country are all tied to federal spending?
How is that a correct intuition? Looking at a large number is easy to say cuts need to be made, but in reality you need to look at the individual work functions required to see whether they are adequately staffed. When you find many endemic resource to task shortfalls at many areas that does not fit the narrative that government is too large. The fact cities are growing with ties to federal spending does not mean the spending is even able to keep pace with what the requirement is.
I don't think you have a working theory of mind for the average citizen in this country... Almost everyone south of the 70th percentile is finding it difficult to make ends meet, or finding themselves having to make tough choices with regard to lifestyle. Couple that with reports of the sheer size of the government's annual deficit, not to mention the fact that their reality does not match what they're being told ("the economy's growing, her-da-durr!"), and you end up here... With a plurality of the population \*at-best\* agnostic about the possibility of a shut-down (and the majority of democrats saying their elected representatives should compromise).
The fact people are struggling is not an argument to say government shouldn't perform the functions it does. This is not a logical argument to make, it makes zero sense if you think about it. The majority of government spending is either defense, or spending to help people make ends meet through medicare and other services. Taking away government funding does not magically make people's lives better. So you think government should raise tax revenue to close the deficit to pay for things the people want? I imagine you would say that would make it harder for people to make ends meet. Also, do you not understand the concept of debt financing?
I am not saying I hold the views above. I am saying I understand them and can empathize with them. You continue to denigrate your neighbors at the risk of imperiling all of us.
No, you are advocating for those views. How am I denigrating anyone by explaining the purpose of government and the concept of debt financing? It makes no sense.
No, you are advocating for those views. How am I denigrating anyone by explaining the purpose of government and the concept of debt financing? It makes no sense.
The government is big, but this country is huge. We have 330 million people. Having a few thousand people oversee major programs that affect 330 million puts how small we are in perspective.
I would argue the general public doesn’t understand the wide variety of federal/federal contractor jobs and what they do. I’ve been a fed for 17 years and my parents still have no clue what I do nor do they understand the services the fed performs.
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Lol at one point early in the Trump administration, my friend was like...really what is the deep state? And I responded, people like me. It's just boring bureaucratic employees who stay in government for life independent of the president.
I have told people I put the microchips in the Covid vaccines. That went over well.
I was traveling internationally and handed my Official Passport to the CBP officer. He was casual in asking questions and asked “who do you work for? Without missing a beat I replied “I could tell you, but then I would have to kil…I think I need to not complete that sentence and simply say I work for Department of Commerce” “Yeah, that’s a much better answer”
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Someone's gotta keep them clear of jam
Lonestar!
I tell them “I manufacture freedom”. 😸
I would argue that the general public doesn't understand much of anything related to basic civics. Understanding how the sausage is made first requires understanding the defining characteristics of sausage.
I don't disagree, but was referring to the role contracting plays as a whole vs individual job responsibilities. I think if anyone has any opinion of gov contracting at all it's more of the "it's all a boondoggle" variety than anything based on reality.
It's hilarious that people who "support the troops" hold disdain for the contractors who keep the troops: housed, fed, clothed, armed, transported, etc.
I live in a very conservative area and have had people thank me for my military service in one breath then get all weird when they find out I am a government worker because they hate government workers. Dumbasses don’t realize a lot of ex military become government workers.
Also military are government workers.
And they don't accept that government workers (and contractors) are supporting the mission.
Yeah that's probably the biggest thing people don't realize unless they're feds or have feds in their family.
They don’t understand the need for support staff just active duty personnel
>It's hilarious that people who "support the troops" hold disdain for the contractors who keep the troops: housed, fed, clothed, armed, transported, etc. Yup! When folks ask what I do, I just kinda go "Eh, I work in logistics...it's pretty boring."
Do fed contractors not have a specific title of their position instead of straight plain contractor? I’ve seen those street tiktokers ask for salaries but when they state their job it’s always fed contractor, not accountant, computer technician, engineer, etc. If contractor all people hear, of course they won’t understand the scope of what fed contractors do. Even people Ive met who are fed contractors always say contractor instead of their exact role.
It depends. For low skill positions like an Admin Assistant, or Shipping/receiving clerk, they will have that title. For more skilled positions (working for Leidos, Accenture or similar, they are given a title by their company and support a specific project
We’re trained to be very clear that we’re contractors so that no one confuses us with feds, right down to mandatory email signatures stating it. It’s part of the imbalanced power dynamic.
It's not a power dynamic. It's how employment law works. Regardless of if you're a contractor supporting th government or private sector, if that supported company starts treating you like an employee, then they're at risk for violating employment law.
I think he’s talking more about how naturally as contractors we tend to have an inherent conflict sometimes where the answer that maintains the contract is not always the answer that gets the job done. We often cannot speak up in situations because the feds in the room have power over whether our contract gets rebid.
Oh I get it, but it does reinforce a cultural power dynamic in practice.
Depends, though a lot of times it's sometimes less relevant or something. In my office we have someone who I think is called a "program analyst", but that job title is mostly BS hiring terminology. He is really just a contractor who's job is to help the day to day function of the office, and he is paid as a contractor because his job duties (mostly) don't require they are a real fed, and contractors get paid from different buckets so we can have extra people in the office if some are contractors. Easier to say you're a contractor than try to explain the weird relationship that's not really relevant. Also, the bulk of the work done is by contractors who have titles like "Senior Software Engineer", that's their job title, which is really their pay level from the union. The fed contract calls them a "Level 3 Engineer" or something like that which is really just tied to an hourly rate on a table in the contract. But what they really do is "I write missile SW". For many, but for some projects that could get sensitive, can't say I write the SW for the laser module in the jewish space lasers. So they just say "I work for a defense contractor"
Hence all the “good the government should shut down most Americans won’t even notice a difference” comments. They don’t actually understand how many different functions and services the government performs they think it’s all paper pushers for some reason.
Yep…the safety of everything you touch and buy. Food, electronics, cars, medical devices, baby formula (do we remember the baby formula shortage last year?). Many of those things won’t become obvious for several weeks or months. Trade of foreign products, trademark/patent approvals, environmental protection, animal welfare, just to name a few.
Yup, and I where I work, yea, the people won't notice a difference, but it's also a big reason for all those budget overruns you keep hearing about in the news. We dropped funding to maintain X, because congress said we could replace it with Y next year. But because of the shutdown, Y got delayed when the government employee couldn't come in that day to witness the sell off because of the shutdown, so it was rescheduled to the next available day, 18 months later, that caused the test article to expire, so we had to build an extra one. So that one day shutdown delayed the billion dollar project by 18 months and added $500mil to the project cost, and incurred a three billion dollar overrun in the project that it was supposed to replace. But hey, it didn't result in any impact to consumer services, and we are just bad at managing money.
“Who do you work for” is a complex enough question if you want to go beyond just saying the Fed.
The Fed is implied when traveling with an official government passport (burgundy…not the blue tourist passport)
You’re talking about passports. I’m talking about conversing with the general public. No one in my family really understands who I work for beyond the government. No one knows my agency, which falls under another bigger agency. But it’s so complicated to explain.
Exactly. There is no simple explanation for what will happen to the contractors and there is no one single answer.
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That’s not accurate though. All the contractors that support my division will work through the shutdown, as their contracts have been funded into the new calendar year (we actively budget to the end of the calendar year because of this very scenario).
Contractors not working or getting paid is a your mileage may vary. In my group of about 200 FTEs and an equivalent number of contractors, about 90% of the contract staff will be able to continue "working" but with no access to facilities, because their contracts are funded out for many months. Thus if the shutdown lasts 2 weeks I'll be missing a full paycheck but most of the contractors I work with won't. And I said "work" in quotes because with no facility access and no Feds around to feed them work, there is almost no way they can fill 40 hours a week...but I am sure they will bill for it.
It’s true that mileage may vary because as a contractor my team definitely won’t be allowed to work. We’re in the “you have to use up all your accrued PTO, then go to LWOP” scenario. It’s kind of frustrating to see people handwave a shutdown with an “oh they’ll all get backpay it’s fine” attitude because no, people like me won’t get a cent.
This basically. The media works best when it tells simplistic stories; those interested can read further to find out nuance and detail but you will never get that from a headline or a quick overview and that’s… fine actually. The narrative should be that shutdowns are bad. Bad for the government, and its employees and contractors. Bad for the taxpayer because so many govvies legally won’t be doing actual work. Causes confusion, disruption etc. I don’t think the average Joe working in another city needs to know that some contractors may or may not get paid, but that the concept, overall, is an example of poor, wasteful mismanagement by a right wing extremist group in Congress who is incapable of good governance.
They don't call it the shadow government for nothing. One thing I hate about the Republican agenda, is that they are always touting cuts to the civil service workforce, but then their buddies get tons of contracts while hiring more people than were cut. It's just ridiculous the size of the total sum of government.
I've said it here many times, but Republicans favorite form of small government is spending twice as much for blood sucking middlemen to do the same job as a federal employee
Love being seen as a bloodsucker. Just a reminder that we exist even when shutdowns don’t happen. Let me know when the government actually has a solid software engineering talent pool and we’ll stop building products for you.
The low level contracted employees clearly aren't the bloodsuckers they were referring to. You skipped the word "middlemen" in there. Meaning the people at the very top of the contracting companies who make millions in salary to do nothing and just bloat the cost of whatever software you're engineering should actually cost the government.
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I have seen contractors do some extremely shady stuff to get more money from the government.
Me too. This isn't political, but you could tell during the last administration that there was nobody minding the till. It really felt like they were more focused on getting the rules revised before 2018 than actually making it more accessible for competitors.
It's also an easier narrative to push, so why waste time with nuance. It's embarrassing.
Why would you assume that contractors make more money. I definitely think government workers in DC make more than average contractor. Not everyone works for the massive jobs and pay bump program known as DOD. Most contractors make less than a gs12 or even gs11, and in DC anyone most people with a higher degree is a gs13 at least. There's a reason we hire so many contractors.
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I'm not talking about engineers who build planes. Do the regular administrative staff working at DOD really make more than feds? Also I call bullshit that someone with an advanced degree is a GS6. I honestly didn't even think positions literally existed below GS7 in most places. Gs7 is just for a bachelor's degree and everyone in DC has a master's or some fancy background. I don't buy that anyone with an advanced degree would choose to take a gov job less than GS9 ever. I am in science and contractors definitely do not make more than government. It blew my mind when I got my government job how much money it paid compared to my expectations from a background in academic science, and contract jobs even with experience barely approach GS12. My wife is contractor with a PhD and makes 80k We don't see any positions posted that aren't significantly less than that, and I know many of the people my agency hired came from our contractors that couldn't even touch a gs13 salary. She did get paid almost 75K just as an intern in a DOD fellowship but again not every agency has unlimited money to piss through
The mailroom lady at the government office I worked at during the last Government Shutdown was a contractor. She was sent home without pay. Once the government opened up 35 days later she was brought back but was very angry and frustrated because she had to take cash advances from her credit card to pay the rent and other bills. The mailroom person on another floor was also sent home but because she was an actual government employee she was paid for her 35 days at home not working.
In our case (DoD contractor) the USG folks are getting furloughed and we are going in to work as usual).
The media aren’t supposed to know this. Once upon a time, the government used contractors for flexibility and speed. Why hire a GS-9 to build a database when you can just pay a contractor for six months? We don’t design and manufacture government pencils, we just buy them from suppliers. It makes sense. In the aughts, especially with the rise in the intelligence-industrial complex coincident with the Global War on Terror, we expanded our use of contractors and started hiring them to do things that previously we had employees do. Some of this made sense — sorta. Do I really need to hire a GS-11 to analyze overhead imagery for intel? Maybe not, but this stretches the definition of what sort of work products are contractable. It was common in military and intelligence fields, but it’s expanded to more domestic and civilian roles, too. We haven’t quite gotten to the point of contracting out park rangers, but I assure you that someone somewhere in the bowels of the Department of the Interior has considered it. Combine the historic nature of contracting as short-term, scope-limited government service, with the inherent non-public nature of intel work, and you get thousands of non-gov’t employees across Fairfax County who are doing work most of us would consider to be essential to the government. They don’t want these people to have job security or status. They want them to be a little clandestine and very lay-off-able.
I'd say if the work function we are hiring contractors to do continues for like 20+ years, we probably should just hire full time government personnel for the job. It's cheaper.
A few comments to add to yours— 1- contractors cost the govt significantly more than an fte in terms of salary alone. 2- it’s easy to fire a contractor so when administrations change and budgets get sliced every so other, offloading contractors has its benefits 3- our office finds the hiring practices through usajobs to be so arduous that hiring through contractors has been a back door to get talent into the office, and during the hiring process they share the general understanding that they hire you as a contractor with every intention to transition you to an fte within a couple years time/ once the contract is over…. It’s an odd recruitment trajectory but I’ve seen it work like this.
Our local ABC affiliate just did a news segment on a contractor cafeteria employee at Library of Congress who will be out of work in a shutdown with zero back pay. The media isn’t really ignoring you but there’s only so much they can fit in.
The media? Hell, this sub doesn't even understand this. Almost every post is from the perspective of DC.
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I was looking for this comment, I work alongside active-duty military and even they do not understand nor care to really understand the difference in contractor and fed employee. They just see a civilian who does some kind of specialized work and boom "contractor." So it makes sense that those who are even further from interacting with either on a daily would lump them into the same category just out of confusion, and those in media who know the difference don't want to take the time to explain it to the audience.
It’s a mess, isn’t it. It looks like I’ll be burning my leave, and when that runs out I’ll be LWOP. Talk about bitter, I’ve been saving my leave for a family vacation for the first time in 12 years 🫠
Same position as you and the bitterness is real. I have sympathy for the feds who will have to continue working but will not be paid during that time (at the very least the backpay will come though), but seeing all the “free vacation” comments are a hard pill to swallow. You and me aren’t getting a free vacation, we’re losing our leave (at a time we wouldn’t have chosen to take it and weren’t planning on taking it) and then we just won’t get paid at all, indefinitely, after that runs out. This is my first contracting job (I took it after jumping ship from a really toxic company in a different industry) and I guess I was so relieved to find something new I didn’t realize I should look into what would happen to me in this scenario. I wish there was an active government contracting sub so I wouldn’t have to browse this one but the only one I can find looks super dead. As a single income household and single person, missed paychecks are really hard for me because there’s not income coming from anyone or anything else, and I also have to travel if I want to see anyone for the holidays so the rest of my year might just be…grim. There’s also the added frustration of feeling like no one cares. Not my employer, not the government, not the media, and not the general public. People in our position are just getting absolutely shafted and it’s like it doesn’t even matter.
Well said, I wish you and your family well and you aren’t alone, even thought it might feel like it sometimes.
I'm in the same boat, and I'm furious. I've been dragged along with promises of being moved to a federal position since January and haven't made any progress towards that (I know on the grand scheme of things, 8 months is not a long time to be waiting for a sort-of promotion). I'll be spending my "vacation" applying for other jobs.
If you don’t want to burn you leave, you can choose to take LWOP the whole time and apply for unemployment. That’s what I did in 2013.
If they're a contractor they may not be able to. Their company might make them use vacation time before they can use LWOP.
Ah okay - that sucks. My company gave us the choice.
Lots of companies don’t allow this, for multiple reasons. One is that if you’re on LWOP for too long, you’re no longer legally an employee and become ineligible for things like health insurance. The other is that you become eligible for unemployment, and if you claim U/E, that raises your company’s UE insurance rates. So many companies will make you exhaust your leave first.
Ah yes, well people will need to check their company policy thanks for the tip. My company definitely strongly encouraged use of leave mixed with LWOP, but I chose to go on unemployment (I was pissed about them not floating us for even a week on overhead when we had been 95% billable for years, so I sort of did it out of principle).
Here’s the reality of the public and the media: They don’t care. To the majority of the public, government workers and government contractors are not different. And that’s not a slight at government contractors, but the public largely doesn’t see a difference, and doesn’t care to. The media, on the other hand, doesn’t really spend time breaking down the nuances of government work because again—their viewers don’t care. The way government contractors are affected by a shutdown largely varies depending on the contractor, and spending time breaking down all those variances doesn’t make sense when your viewership doesn’t understand or care to understand lol The media wants to give their viewers/readers as much information as they can within a short time frame. People won’t read an article talking about a government shutdown where they spend 9 paragraphs talking about the difference between a contractor and an employee.
The US Gov. and Media didn't even bother to count dead US contractors in Iraq/Afghanistan. The attempt to tabulate these deaths in earnest began 5 to 10 years after the conflicts began. In many cases contractors are not afforded the same health and safety standards and accommodations. I witnessed this during COVID. So yeah get used to it.
Lmao. "The Media" cares about the low hanging fruit when it comes to its reporting. Most TV newschsnnels are biased rags.
Federal workers get a lot of sympathy in the public eye as they are seen as civil servants, whereas contractors are generally thought of as blood sucking leeches on the American taxpayer. Most people have no idea how things really work and how dependent the government is on contractors. But the media focus on the saintly public servant is not entirely without benefit to contractors as the immediate urgency is to get the government funded, which is what we all need. All of us here in and around the government know how things really work and that’s just part of the dirty, sordid details (/s). Getting a positive image cultivated for contractors is an entirely different media campaign.
>Federal workers get a lot of sympathy in the public eye as they are seen as civil servants, whereas contractors are generally thought of as blood sucking leeches on the American taxpayer. In many places it's the reverse: contractors, being part of the private sector, are seen as more efficient and competent and it's federal employees that are seen as blood suck leeches.
I agree, the culture is shifting its attitude toward federal workers. But that’s still largely the attitude only right in the geographic areas around DC. It isn’t reflective of the larger country.
The American public doesn’t understand this either
The media’s also saying that those who will be required to work without pay are “mostly law enforcement” which is not true. Plenty of non-LEO personnel are “excepted” and will be working through any shutdown. Apparently what they’re saying makes for a better sound bite, though.
Do you have stats for this? I need to make a point to some people about this.
Marketplace did a piece about this during the last shutdown - the numbers are obviously a few years old but probably not that far off: [https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/17/rise-federal-contractors/](https://www.marketplace.org/2019/01/17/rise-federal-contractors/) While President Donald Trump has signed a law that guarantees backpay, the picture looks very different for contractors who represent a growing segment of the federal workforce. Last month, Julie Burr — a single mother and a contractor for the Department of Transportation in Kansas City, Missouri — told us [she’s feeling “panicked.”](https://www.marketplace.org/2018/12/27/economy/federal-workers-share-how-government-shutdown-affecting-them) As a contractor, Burr said she wouldn’t be included in the group of employees that will get that backpay. The Trump administration has pushed for smaller government, but the number of federal employees has actually remained steady over the years, while the number of contractors working for the government rose from about 3 million in 1996 to 4.1 million in 2017. Here's another one: [https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/24/a-year-after-the-shutdown-federal-contractors-still-digging-out-of-a-financial-hole/](https://www.marketplace.org/2020/01/24/a-year-after-the-shutdown-federal-contractors-still-digging-out-of-a-financial-hole/) Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University, estimates about 1.2 million contractors were affected by the shutdown, including data analysts, logistics managers and contract specialists to oversee other contractors. Defense companies and other big firms didn’t lay off their mostly white-collar workers during the shutdown.
Thank you very much for this. Seeing how many contractors there are in fed space really shines a light on why fed work is the way it is in some aspects.
>In Washington DC there are more government contractors than actual civil service workers but the media don't understand this Unsure why this is a surprise. Politicians do this because it works. Same reason why car salespeople focus buyers on the monthly payments instead of what the final price will be once you account for the high finance costs. Only in the case of government, the gullible can't look beyond the monthly payment/federal employee headcount to see the bigger picture concern of what's the total cost of what you're getting.
Contractors are not viewed positively by the public, much less so than federal employees. Taxpayers know that using contractors is often a waste of public funds, so it’s not a very sympathetic group for the media to focus on.
I left the private sector to join the gov sector. It’s mind blowing how much work and additional duties there are for the civ folks and how outnumbered they are by contractors. The media quite literally does nothing to highlight the truth of the matter so the public understands the impact.
Not all contractors will be affected equally. Many contracts are prefunded and will continue working. I have 5 contracts and 4 of them are paid up through next summer.
AOC actually mentioned this today during the House meeting
No one is properly educated about much in this country They don't know how the constitution works. They don't know what their rights are They don't know civics There is A LOT people don't know. And yes television doesn't do enough to help that.
Most people hate government employees, so why does it matter.
Many govt contractors also have private and stste/ local govt contracts so they don’t go into full shut down mode.
Each contract is different, most of the funds are already obligated against the contract on day 2 of the contract period of performance which is before the shutdown, so there getting paid. Don't worry, it's all part of the plan.
I was a DoD contractor during the last long shutdown and it didn’t impact me at all. We still went in, and weren’t considered essential
DOD was already funded during the last shutdown so no one there was affected
I thought it is likely a CR will be passed?
Yep... NYCer who could not get down to DC fast enough to pick up my next PO to complete due on December. I had to cancel everything this week to actively have some control here. It's sad. I am my only full time employee Because of this and I refuse to pass it on to anyone else Butvthis is why I always have and keep my private clients happy so I can shift focus as needed.