City Jobs

[King]

I have a lead on a job working with the city - and was wondering if anyone else in here had one. And the pros and cons of it. Obviously those vary from job to job, but I'm curious about the health insurance, civil service retirement, etc. Are there pretty good benefits in it?

It would be a job in communications, if that helps anything.

[Jekka]

I worked for the city for about a year with the library, so I can tell you about the benefits, but it really seems to be that the experience is really different depending on the dept.

Health insurance through the city is awesome, especially since they've switched to United from some crap ass company in the 2007 fiscal year. The retirement plan is also really good, and you can't beat the job security. It's a great place to work if you have plans to move on to something else eventually, or work your way up the ladder quickly. It sucks ass being a peon there.

As for new employee orientation, prepare for the longest 8 hour day of your life. And if you're going to come into any contact with money, that's another 8 hour day you lose to "cash handling" boredom and various reiterations of "Ummmm don't steal money." Then, there's also the 8 hour training of "customer excellence" that everyone has to do. The good news is that you get paid for all these hours of . The bad news is that all of those hours are so bad that most people would rather fore-go the pay than go to another day of training ...

Moral of story: Working for the city isn't the worst you could do, and there is even a chance that you could have a really good experience there. There's no harm in trying to get it - especially in this economy. Seriously, city job security can't be beat.

[King]

Thanks, Jekka. Insurance was one of the main things I was interested in. Where I work now, it'd cost about 220 bi-weekly to insure myself and a family. But, just looking at the city benefits page - which may or may not be what I'd get - it'd be about 30 bi-weekly.

And I've heard lots of good things about the retirement plan.

[Jekka]

Yeah, with only having to have coverage for myself, I got on the basic PPO program and paid like $5 biweekly. It was ridiculously cheap.

[AlamoSpursFan]

So are you gonna be one of the guys standing around leaning on a shovel, or one of the guys taking a nap under the tree?

[King]

Whichever one has the lower premium

[Evan]

When you work any government job for city, county, state or fed…you will quickly become appalled at how much waste there is.

[CubanMustGo]

That said ... you have decent benefits compared to most of the private sector and a much better chance of being laid off. Pay's usually not all that but hey, you can't have everything (unless you are a CEO of a bank these days).

[Jekka]

When you work any government job for city, county, state or fed…you will quickly become appalled at how much waste there is.

That's because there is practically no rewards system in place for doing a good job. A "great job!" from your boss is about all you can expect (no pat on the back, after all, that was covered in the harassment portion of employee orientation) What ends up happening is that people don't work because they're going to get the same pay regardless of what they do, and that pay isn't much unless you've managed to get into upper management.

[Bigzax]

"That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired."

[desflood]

Buddy, have you seen what's happening lately? If you can find a job, take it.

[King]

Ha...I have a job. One that I enjoy. It'd be a matter of switching jobs, and just wondering about the benefits of working for the city.