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Comment by paul7986 | Hacker News Reader

If you work in government there's way less of all that. Of course you can't top out a massive salaries like at FAANG but whatever most important ... tons of money & stress or a very good living and not much stress or drama (ppl in government mostly are not clawing at themselves to climb a ladder rather its a nice paying gig with mostly nice ppl doing their job).

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I think this depends very much on which government agency and at what level (federal, state, local). I know people who have had the sort of good experience you describe in government. I also know people who have worked in government jobs where the workplace was highly dysfunctional and most of the workers had no interest in actually doing their jobs.

Maybe those who described it dysfunctional were dysfunctional and or under 40.

I say under 40 cause after 40 you start to care less about what others think annd are much more comfortable in your skin ..that goes with others too in the same demographics.

Thus if you are working with more ppl who are insecure (younger person thing) worrying too much /trying to out do each other due to insecurities then that's a dysfunctional environment and describes the demographic at most FANNG company's compared to government.

> Maybe those who described it dysfunctional were dysfunctional and or under 40.

In the cases I was referring to, particular events were described to me which, if true, would be extremely dysfunctional in a workplace by any reasonable criterion. In some of the cases, I personally observed such events on visits to the workplaces in question.

It varies, in my experience. I've worked in government agencies with very little politics, and agencies with shitloads of workplace politics. The latter perform far worse than the former. The political agencies tend to have ill-defined goals, which causes misalignment which in turn generates politics.

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