What is it like working for Texas State Government?

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

I worked at the predecessor to the TCEQ, and although rare, several employees managed to get fired for a variety of reasons, including not meeting performance goals (which were NOT that hard at all to meet) or failure to comply with internal policy. It varies a lot from agency to agency, though. I have heard interesting things about TxDOT before, interesting to hear them again....

As for retirement, you are vested in retirement at 5 years (or used to be) and medical at 10 years. When I left, your pay was based on the highest average 24 months of your last 36 months? or maybe the highest 24 months of any 36 month period? I don't remember, they tweak them fairly regularly, so you don't really worry about them until you are near retirement.

The current retirement criteria is the 'rule of 80' - years of service + age has to equal 80 before you can draw benefits. I have a friend that started at 22 and is now 43, but also worked for the state in college, so he gets about two years more credit (essentially, he started at 20). Anyway, he has 23 years of service and is 43, which adds up to 66. In seven years (at age 50 with 30 years of service) he will be able to draw (2.2 x 30, or 66%) of his base pay. He makes good money for a state employee, I would assume in the 70-80k range, so he will draw somewhere around 50k per year and retire from the state at around 50 years old. Not too shabby.

Plus Social Security...if it's still paying anything.

[Trainwreck20]

Oh, he is not drawing SS anytime soon (if at all :P), but will go out and get a different job while drawing retirement...

[ScoPro]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Oh, he is not drawing SS anytime soon (if at all :P), but will go out and get a different job while drawing retirement...

Yes, I should've said SS "eventually".

[Mrs.JT]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

I worked at the predecessor to the TCEQ, and although rare, several employees managed to get fired for a variety of reasons, including not meeting performance goals (which were NOT that hard at all to meet) or failure to comply with internal policy. It varies a lot from agency to agency, though. I have heard interesting things about TxDOT before, interesting to hear them again....

As for retirement, you are vested in retirement at 5 years (or used to be) and medical at 10 years. When I left, your pay was based on the highest average 24 months of your last 36 months? or maybe the highest 24 months of any 36 month period? I don't remember, they tweak them fairly regularly, so you don't really worry about them until you are near retirement.

The current retirement criteria is the 'rule of 80' - years of service + age has to equal 80 before you can draw benefits. I have a friend that started at 22 and is now 43, but also worked for the state in college, so he gets about two years more credit (essentially, he started at 20). Anyway, he has 23 years of service and is 43, which adds up to 66. In seven years (at age 50 with 30 years of service) he will be able to draw (2.2 x 30, or 66%) of his base pay. He makes good money for a state employee, I would assume in the 70-80k range, so he will draw somewhere around 50k per year and retire from the state at around 50 years old. Not too shabby.

This is my situation. I started with the state after college @ 26. Initially, it was just a "starter" type job, but I guess like everyone else, I kind of got "stuck." I'm now vested, and I can retire in 15 years @ 53. I often find myself ruminating over the option to leave the state, but I'm just not sure if it would be wise...especially now.

I've had two colleagues a few years younger than I am who recently left to go private...and their salary increased by about 60%. LOL Quite enticing, but they weren't vested.

It's a trap, I tell you...a TRAP.

[statisticsnerd]

Originally Posted by Mrs.JT

My two pennies......the "it takes an act of Congress" to fire a state employee isn't always true. I work for an agency that constantly monitors employees. I've been with this agency for approximately 3 years, and within those three years, I've watched 14 people get fired. I was with another state agency for 7 years previously, and only 1 person was fired during my time there. We have security cameras all over the building, and everything we do is monitored. You'd think that I worked for the FBI....

So it varies from agency to agency...but I'm quite certain my job is somewhat of an exception to the norm.

I worked for Dept. of Insurance for a while and saw plenty of people get fired. Also, it was very stressful and there were strict time constraints. So the "government workers are all lazy" line isn't always true either.

[ToddATX]

Originally Posted by achtungpv

You will get fired immediately for surfing the internet or making a long distance phone call though. I received the internet logs for every employee every month to check for non-work related websites. We actually had an employee who's entire job was to check email attachments for personal content. I inherited one employee that was so completely incompetent I seriously don't know if he could spell his name. His entire job was to enter new railroad crossing equipment data into the database. He had an 80% error rate. He would enter alpha characters in numeric fields and vice versa. When I tried to fire him, I was forced to increase his error allowance to 40% and he finally met that and was able to keep his job. The other guy doing that job hadn't made one error in 8 years. I had another employee we thought was bringing a gun to work. He intimidated others so much that one guy had two escape routes planned depending on which direction he started shooting. I wasn't allowed to do anything until he shot somebody. That wouldn't get you fired though unless you surf the web while doing it. We had another employee in the division threaten an HR lady with murder if she didn't open up a spot in a class for him. His punish was he wasn't allowed to take an HR for 1 year. When I heard this, I asked HR to clarify that if an employee threatens to murder somebody we can't fire them but if they go to espn.com on their lunch break we will. They said yes.

Just to say that is not the situation with all departments. I work for DFPS, and we are allowed "light" personal usage of computers, including personal emails and internet usage that doesn't interfere with our work or keeping up our job performance. In fact I am typing this, like many of my posts, from my work computer at the moment.

[ppp38]

Working for the State gets you low pay and minimal raises.

[ToddATX]

Originally Posted by ppp38

Working for the State gets you low pay and minimal raises.

... and yet job security and a guaranteed retirement that corporate work doesn't offer most people, as well as generally lower and better insurance, more and easier access to vacation and time off, more paid hollidays. There are alot of underappreciated benefits to working for the state. Personally I left project management in the oil and gas industry for a job where my salary is just above 1/3 of what it was before. I made the change willingly, was not laid off, and couldn't be happier. Government work isn't for everybody, but I love my job.

[eirenecat]

I worked for the University for 7 years. Not the state, but very similar. We had no restrictions on our Internet usage except not doing stupid things like looking at porn at work, and overall I really enjoyed my coworkers and the intellectual caliber of people I worked with. I got to take a free class each semester which was great, and I had a friend who got her masters in information science this way while working in the business school. Most UT employees (at least in the IT sector) are not stupid or incompetent. They get TRS for retirement, which I wouldn't count on for stability. Vacation and sick time benefits were awesome, the insurance was the best I've ever had, and overall the work wasn't terribly stressful. Very few people were putting in more than 40 hours a week. I am still close friends with some of my coworkers and have a great professional network of smart people I met working there.

On the other hand, we weren't getting paid very well, either. That is the most significant tradeoff. When I left UT, I doubled my income. 7 years later, I have now quadrupled it. If you have other means of support or a spouse with a higher income, I think working for UT or the state could be very rewarding if you like a lower-stress situation with good benefits. I look at my 7 years there as the equivalent of graduate school--for my field, I got to learn skills and participate in projects that were cutting edge and which enabled me to later command jobs in the private sector that were much higher salary, responsibility, etc. I don't have giant student loan debt as many people who go to grad school do, but I barely made enough money to cover living expenses as a then-single woman. I just landed my 'dream job' at a Fortune 100 company and the skills I have which they wanted me for are directly attributable to things I first learned and did working in academia.

[pop251808]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Oh, he is not drawing SS anytime soon (if at all :P), but will go out and get a different job while drawing retirement...

Is he Rick Perry?