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10/10/2007
Balancing greed and passion
I left the civil service because I was paid pittance. How could a bread winner stay on a job that could not provide sufficiently for his family? That should be the basis for consideration in the compensation of a job, especially a higher level job or the equivalent of the Admin Service.
At that time, I was told, the head of PSC believed that people should serve in the civil service with passion, a duty to the country. Pay should not be the main draw. Within two years after I left the civil service the pay was revised, and revised and revised.
Today, the civil servants are getting a pay no less attractive than the private sector. And many good men were retained to serve in the capacity of public servants. And probably many of these good men will be saying to themselves, am I being over paid? Should there be a question of passion to serve?
It is tricky to balance between passion and pay. How much pay is too much? How low pay will dismiss the passion in a man/woman to serve when he is not able to provide his dependants with a decent and comfortable life?
This is a million dollar question best left to those who are paid in millions to decide.
I left teaching because I constantly had sore throat problem. When I left my pay was about $2700 in 1994. Was due to jump bar at $3100. Today, as a real estate agent I earn many times my teacher's salary. As an agent, it still gives me the opportunity to train and teach younger agents....am as passionate as ever in my current work of helping people to make the right investments.
ReplyDeleteOf course today's teachers are much more well paid that the ones during my time.
I doubt that there is much passion in the civil service. You assert that there is, bit you are confusing "passion" with small-brain power -tripping.
ReplyDeleteTo pay the civil service like the private sector is unsustainable in the long run. Taxes will have to be raised in order to meet the civil service wage bill.
"Passion" at one's job is inexorably tied to the amount of money one earns for the job, plus the "psychic profit" one gets—immeasurable in money terms.
As far as I am aware, civil servants aren't worth the brass they are paid. Most of the positions and departments would be better run outsourced to the private sector, where there is rigourous competition between suppliers.
Most civil servants do sweet fuck all, and deserve the contempt hurled at them by people like myself. Suffice to say, everyone who leaves the civil service to join the private sector works many times harder when exposed to labour market forces.
But not everyone has passion for their job, regardless of whether they're in public or the private sector. Passion—that "juice" that keeps one going, no matter WHAT—is a choice, and it begins with enthusiasm, integrity and a pro-active attitude; and in general those attributes are RARE, which is why there are only a few who truly succeed in their careers, and in their lives.