Recently, the trend is to earn money quickly and aim for FIRE (Finance Independence, Retire Early) in order to get away from poor labor conditions.
However, there are various types of work, and even the same company and job have both advantages and disadvantages. I would like to look back on the experience of working for thirty years in a series of articles on this blog.
The first one is about civil servants. I worked for the U.S. government, but the world of civil servants has something in common across nationalities.
Benefits of civil servants
1) You can understand firsthand how the world works
By directly being involved in current affairs and meeting with politicians and government officials, you can learn the facts and background that do not appear in the media or books. It is a wonderful education to understand the movers and shakers and decision making processes.
2) The purpose is to contribute to society
Even private companies have recently emphasized CSR and SDGs, but their purpose is to make money. Meanwhile, the national and local governments aim to contribute to society, and you serve under this noble notion.
3) You can work with many highly educated people
Many colleagues graduated from top schools and have high academic ability. Since they have passed the examinations on a wide range of subjects and essay tests, they have a high level of general knowledge in both humanities and science as well as great writing skills.
They are able to understand complex and esoteric documents accurately and explain them in an easy-to-understand manner. People with experience studying abroad in graduate school are also there and they have advanced English proficiency and are familiar with overseas affairs.
Their clothes and appearance also indicate intelligence. I have never seen a staff member who has tattoos. Overall, civil servants are serious people, and the number of employees looking strange is close to zero.
4) You can make professional connections easily
Many civil servants have long service years, and can create a wide network inside and outside the workplace. People generally trust public servants, so you can meet various new people easily.
5) Overall good publicity facilitates life events
Probably civil servants are regarded as the safest people by the public. The process of renting an apartment, making a credit card, or any process with a form that requires you to write down your occupation is very easy.
Disadvantages of civil servants
1) You are pushed around by the administration
Whoever becomes president, prime minister, governor or mayor, that person is always correct. Trump, Biden, Yoshihide Suga, Naoto Kan...However severely they might be criticized in the media or on the Internet, your capability as an official is assessed by how faithfully you carry out what the boss says.
In that sense, it is not a creative job at the fundamental level. Rather, the skill as an actor who plays the cast accurately is required.
A person who has a high level of logical thinking skills and a strong sense of justice can feel that it is a difficult job mentally, and must have considerable patience. In fact, civil servants who commit suicide are not too rare.
2) There is a huge number of detailed rules
The main job of civil servants is to enforce the law, and they are bound by an unimaginably large amount of detailed rules. And the rules only increase, not decrease. Frustrated by this, President Trump created a new rule: if one regulation is created, then two must be eliminated.
There are not only written laws and regulations, but also unwritten rules. For example, the Department of State (corresponding to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan) attaches great importance to protocols such as seating order. Whenever I went out with my boss in an official vehicle, my boss would sit in the upper seat. However, there were differences depending on the agency. The Department of Commerce did not care protocols that much.
3) Tendency to fall into precedentism
In the above environment, it is difficult to generate novel ideas. Instead, civil servants take precedents seriously. Even if the precedent is strange, it is the basis for execution only because it is a precedent.
4) The evaluation criteria are ambiguous
Private companies are pursuing profits, so it is easy to quantify the evaluation. For example, Nomura Securities' sales positions are completely valued by sales, so there is no room for discrimination based on gender or age.
In contrast, the results of civil service are difficult to quantify, and in the end, your evaluation tends to be up to the subjective thoughts of your boss.
I've heard a story about a former employee at a securities firm. Having been tired of the notion to pursue profits only, he transferred to an NGO, hoping the job would be more rewarding. Turns out he only found it was a more complicated and unreasonable world. The same might apply to civil servants, too.
5) It takes time to do anything
From the principle of valuing precedents and ambiguous evaluation criteria, the number of years of service, which is proportional to the amount of knowledge about precedents, is emphasized. In the world of civil servants, people often ask, "How many years have you worked for?" The longer it is, the better you would be respected.
There is a custom similar to extracurricular activities of sports at Japanese high school in which juniors are allowed to collect balls only and they must wait until they become seniors to play. In the world of civil servants, it takes a considerable number of years to have a voice.
In a movie that depicted the former East Germany with the theme of socialism, there is an episode that it took thirteen years from ordering a car to delivery. I experienced a situation similar to this at work, and I was quite surprised that this happened even in a capitalist country.
