This sounds like the tale of many Brazilian civil servants. Civil servants in Brazil are either indicated by someone ("comissionados"), which means your job is tied to the current administration, or you've passed in a selection and have your job stability for life ("concursado"). These selections usually have tens or hundreds of thousands of people competing for a handful of vacancies, so people spend years studying and doing many of these (they're called "concurseiros"). Once you're in, you're set for life.

Adding to this, the public sector pays much more than the private sector (often 50% ~ 100% more). Have job stability, generous vacations and other benefits. Depending on where you are (federal, state or municipal government levels), you also have a special retirement plan that gives you 100% of your salary when you retire (the private policies are capped at around 4.5 minimum wages, for comparison a good dev in the bigger cities can get about 10~15 minimum wages).

And so we have many "lifers" in the public sector, and this kind of job is the dream for many people (which is terrible IMHO).