- Joined
- Mar 26, 2005
- Messages
- 1,888
- Reaction score
- 757
The Department of Veterans Affairs reportedly paid out more than $142 million in performance bonuses
Careful FOX, your bias is showing;
If I may, and in perspective (as a government employee), I'd like to offer you this;
What most people don't understand is that bonuses have ***absolutely nothing** to do with the performance of, or scandals involving, the Federal Agency / Organization itself...
From what I can find, the VA employs 341,000 people as of 2014, probably more now. As an ongoing, never-ceasing onslaught of metrics and process, all government employees are subject to a quarterly review, and a yearly evaluation which determines if that person has performed work at such a level as to deserve consideration of a bonus.
To get ANY sort of yearly bonus, you must be graded above average on your yearly evaluation (4 on a scale of 5), which also takes into cumulative account all of your quarterly progress.
If it's still 341,000 employees (which is doubtful considering their recent expansions), then that means 45.7% of their employees scored "above average" on their yearly review. I have no problem with that, as that means that 54.3% of them were either average or below.
Knowing first-hand how hard you have to work to get a 5 on the review, and understanding 5 (outstanding employees) get bigger bonuses, that means that about 15% of their employees got a bigger bonus, 30% got an average bonus, but 54.3% of their employees got no bonus at all.
Since I suck at math, let's just assume that those 45.7% of VA Employees all got the same bonus (they didn't, but I digress).
That means that $142,000,000 divided by 156,000 people is $910, which you also have to understand is a sliding scale. A GS-7 is going to get less of a bonus than a GS-15 or SES employee, even if that GS-7 employee totally sacrificed his personal life and "killed it" doing his job for the year..
Also, before you think to say that "government workers are overpaid", they're not. In fact, USG employees have had (I think) no more than two, possibly three 1.x% raises over the last decade.
In my area (D.C.), as is true in other parts of the country for the most part, contractors to the Government make (on average) about 20% to 30% more than an actual Government employee for the same task.
Add in another 30 to 50% on top of that which is paid to the contacting company above the wages of the person and you might begin to understand why big government is a monumental problem..
FOX News said:
Careful FOX, your bias is showing;
If I may, and in perspective (as a government employee), I'd like to offer you this;
What most people don't understand is that bonuses have ***absolutely nothing** to do with the performance of, or scandals involving, the Federal Agency / Organization itself...
From what I can find, the VA employs 341,000 people as of 2014, probably more now. As an ongoing, never-ceasing onslaught of metrics and process, all government employees are subject to a quarterly review, and a yearly evaluation which determines if that person has performed work at such a level as to deserve consideration of a bonus.
To get ANY sort of yearly bonus, you must be graded above average on your yearly evaluation (4 on a scale of 5), which also takes into cumulative account all of your quarterly progress.
If it's still 341,000 employees (which is doubtful considering their recent expansions), then that means 45.7% of their employees scored "above average" on their yearly review. I have no problem with that, as that means that 54.3% of them were either average or below.
Knowing first-hand how hard you have to work to get a 5 on the review, and understanding 5 (outstanding employees) get bigger bonuses, that means that about 15% of their employees got a bigger bonus, 30% got an average bonus, but 54.3% of their employees got no bonus at all.
Since I suck at math, let's just assume that those 45.7% of VA Employees all got the same bonus (they didn't, but I digress).
That means that $142,000,000 divided by 156,000 people is $910, which you also have to understand is a sliding scale. A GS-7 is going to get less of a bonus than a GS-15 or SES employee, even if that GS-7 employee totally sacrificed his personal life and "killed it" doing his job for the year..
Also, before you think to say that "government workers are overpaid", they're not. In fact, USG employees have had (I think) no more than two, possibly three 1.x% raises over the last decade.
In my area (D.C.), as is true in other parts of the country for the most part, contractors to the Government make (on average) about 20% to 30% more than an actual Government employee for the same task.
Add in another 30 to 50% on top of that which is paid to the contacting company above the wages of the person and you might begin to understand why big government is a monumental problem..