Yup. I am an engineer and have worked government and private sector. Private sector pays way more and is more exciting because of the hugely reduced bureaucracy. If you have a fun career you love government can really kill the passion.
But if your goal is stable employment with good work/life balance and guaranteed raises? Government is fantastic.
I haven’t found a WFH government position, so even the work-life balance is terrible.
When I was in government my work life balance coming into the office two days a week was better than now when I am working full time WFH in private industry, so I guess that’s very subjective.
At NASA they regularly told us, “the rocket won’t crash if you clock out at 40 hours. Go home to your families.” A lot of government positions you could literally just check out and sleep all day for weeks at a time and nobody will even notice.
