Comments on: Pentagon’s New Performance Rating System

By: Tim

Tim — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 00:46:49 +0000

As a civil servant for almost 10 years, after serving 20 years in the military, I'm more than ready for a performance based pay-banding system. The GS system is broken. It no longer works. As a hard-worker with a reputation as a "go to" guy who sometimes has to rub bureaucrats the wrong way to get the mission done, I'd much rather be judged by my direct superiors than by promotion panels that spend too much time looking for people who've filled in all the "right blocks" on somebody's list and which might consist of some of those bureaucrats I occasionally had to push out of the way in the fulfillment of my duties.

By: DC Loser

DC Loser — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:50:38 +0000

James, I've been in the Civil Service going on a decade and frankly 99% of us aren't here for the money (at least the ones I'm familiar with here in the DC area). Most of us could make more money working for the beltway bandits but we truly enjoy working for the government and have an impact on policy and national security. That said, I've seen good workers rewarded pretty consistently. The good bosses know who they are and they will make sure their good workers are properly recognized so they won't jump ship to another organization for a promotion.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:42:51 +0000

Could well be. Indeed, that's the tradeoff. A civil service system makes cronyism less likely but makes it harder to reward the truly outstanding and punish all but the most flagrant slackers. A manager-centric system has the reverse issues.

By: DC Loser

DC Loser — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:35:38 +0000

And of course a quota system will lead to the boss playing favorites and rewarding the sycophants and apple polishers. Whoda thunk that?