>>If you don't mind my asking (and feel free not to answer) why do you work for the government? I figure that they are a good employer for small towns, but not in a big, expensive job market like Dallas. Everyone here knows that you are qualified for the best jobs in our field. Of course, once you stay long enough, you can smell the pension.... Or are you another EPA contractor who will move on?
>
>No problem. I have been with the Federal Gov't [EPA for all of it] for 14 years now, and no one can match the salary and benefits I have. In the Federal Gov't, after 3 years you earn 4 weeks of annual leave and 13 days sick leave year. The first 3 years, you earn 13 days of A/L per year. After 15 years, the A/L accrual bumps to 26 days year. I also work no over-time or weekends and am NOT on call.
>
>I would be hard pressed to find any thing that has better working conditions than what I have here. My supervisor leaves me alone to just do it, and I have flexible work hours available - we can work four 10-hour dayss with a day off every week or eight 9-hour days plus an 8-hour day with 1 day off every 2 weeks. I do the latter. I also do work-at-home up to 2-days a week.
>
>My wife and I do have our own computer business on the side. She works at our business and raises the 2 kids full time, and I work the business part-time [evenings and week-ends].

I was a temporary GS-6 technician in the early '90s. That wasn't so good. It also wasn't programming. Wages may have improved since then. I don't know whether the high-paying jobs you hear about are all that common in Dallas. Certainly those jobs would be much more high-pressure. It's hard for me to imagine staying in one place long enough to get that 8 hours annual leave per pay period.

Government offices are often prevented from keeping up with current technologies by limited budgets or perhaps by hidebound division chiefs. Their employees are then denied the chance to learn marketable skills. I left NOAA in 1992 knowing only FORTRAN. You are being allowed to maintain big systems using VFP, so it isn't a problem for you, I suppose.

Budget squeezes also make them accustomed to half-assed solutions. We had a satellite image-processing program that looked great, but had no printer driver because there was no mandate to spend the time to make one, if they knew how (this was before Windows). So our data reports had a lousy photocopy of a polaroid created using a film recorder that cost more than the probable labor cost of making a printer driver. Some other office came up with a replacement system that did print, but they weren't mandated to take the time to actually finish the job.

I live in "Federal government land" but it hasn't even occurred to me to look for a federal job. When it's time to move on, I expect to stay in the private sector, which is an especially hot market here. Even government contractors like NNS are less than ideal, because they tend to be "government-like", being full of former government workers (or navy men in our case) working exclusively on government contracts. My dim memories of the federal recruitment process are not that pleasant either.

I suppose that if I want to bellyache anymore I should take it private.