u/Deep-Employer-6600

I’ve worked in three public service roles, all at a Federal level.

I won’t name the bodies I’ve worked for, but none of them are prestigious (which may be part of the problem?) However, they all do very important work.

Despite having worked for better pay in private and being a pretty high performer, I decided to go into the public service because I really wanted to contribute to something meaningful and that would benefit my community. I wanted to work with other people towards this goal, and some of the better entitlements aren’t bad either.

In every Division I’ve been in so far, bar none, the culture of the teams and particularly the leadership has been of pure self interest. In one role I witnessed wide spread corruption and had to PID, but even when that hasn’t been present (or I haven’t seen it myself), the areas I’ve been in have been all about an egomaniacal SES establishing a close band of Directors who are not very good at their jobs, can’t achieve outcomes, and then sit around blaming level staff for problems that 100% stem from bad leadership.

In my most recent role I’ve sat through 6 restructures in two years which have achieved absolutely nothing at all other than moving favoured directors into roles they’d prefer and haggling for level staff who they think will make them look good. We’ve been explicitly told we “aren’t allowed to be negative” which translates to any actual meaningful criticism of why we are so bad at the work we do (which we objectively are) is negative and needs to be stopped.

I’ve witnessed very talented 6’s and 1’s be siloed into nothing roles because some barely qualified (or even not at all qualified) Director was threatened and called Daddy (SES). I’ve seen teams broken up who were performing well for no reason other than a Director chucked a dummy spit because their team doesn’t perform and instead of…I don’t know…managing that as a manager, they wanted a star performer to saddle load with.

As someone who is extremely happy to critically examine why myself, my teams, and my areas are bad at what we do and how we can improve, I find this culture baffling and depressing. I find it even harder to stomach when we do work that directly impacts Australian people and these half wits are more concerned with positioning themselves for more power than they are with being remotely good at their role.

I know I’m not the only one in my current area feeling this way, and I certainly wasn’t at any of my previous roles. There are a lot of disgruntled 6’s and 1’s who have significantly more experience and more gumption wishing they could work together well and actually achieve something. But we are constantly harmstrung not even by bureaucracy, which would be expected, but by childishness and ego. I’m in an area where it’s apparently perfectly acceptable to take half a decade to write a 12 page internal document and the staff member who has had carriage isn’t disciplined or coached or asked why tf it’s taken (literally…I’m not kidding) 5 years to do something that takes 2 days, because they are well liked so the incompetence doesn’t matter.

I’ve had to call up my old therapist from yonks ago to have a bi-weekly cry because I hate my job so much and yet in this economy, can’t leave without another role. I’m definitely trying and I’m interviewing. I personally suspect the places I’ve worked in the APS are considered clown shows so other departments don’t want to hire from them, and I wish they’d take some pity on us.

I have also experienced this at 3 different bodies and I hope, I have to hope as a citizen lol, that this isn’t a problem everywhere and it’s just bad patches I keep landing in. I don’t know how to find better ones but at this point I’m just considering leaving the service all together.

I’ve been in a division for a little while and over time it’s revealed itself to have a bit of an insidious culture.
75+ percent of the division are all from one mid sized city. Almost all of the leadership team are from that city as well.

Those from outside of that area are subtly treated like second class citizens and don’t get a lot of opportunity to elevate.

Those from the city are very chummy and protect each other. They go to the golf club, the game etc together on the weekend with our immediate SES. Almost all of these people are men.

I’ve noticed over time that competent women are made to do too much work but are also actively pushed down. For example, one of the best workers in the division who just happens to be female won an EOI, only to have her opportunity disappear in a restructure and to be replaced by one of the City Boys.

A lot of people have been moved out of the division, and the division has also somewhat notoriously brought in people for not so great reasons (eg someone had an affair at work and had to be moved so ended up over here).

A lot of women in the Division are split across teams and are known to carry each team, while other staff are permitted to under perform and coast. Comments have been made about “women having it easier” than men in performance reviews to female staff. The area has NEVER had a substantive female SES and when one was acting for a short period, the SES under them went on extended leave. That SES was also booted from their last division after they couldn’t tolerate being under a woman in the hierarchy.

Teams have been invented out of thin air to elevate a favoured City dweller whilst people with more experience or 2+ years acting remain where they are.
This division also has constant restructures (four in 1.5 years) that don’t achieve anything and result in aps level staff randomly being assigned to new roles with no choice and having no real sense of role stability. Those who have questioned the culture tend to leave and the attrition in some teams is extremely high (people have started and left within 3 months before). When staff are forced to move they are told with basically no notice and bonds between teammates are constantly broken. Myself and a teammate were both recently ambushed and asked to move to roles we have zero interest in nor the background and that would be career killers.

Being extremely reactive is encouraged. No team has an established cadence for their BAU and sometimes teams don’t even know what their BAU is. Projects are started randomly and stopped a week later so the figurative shelves are full of unfinished useless work.
With the market as it is, there are so few jobs to transfer to or try and aim for. I am hoping to maybe internally transfer to somewhere less toxic, but the organisation is big and connections between areas are hard to make, and nothing much is advertised.
A lot of people are trying to leave this area and jump ship but we are all stuck