It is an insanity to not have some form of internal promotion architecture.

It is also an insanity to take someone who your government's own rules say should be hired because they've done a job for at least 6 months (a rule put in place to prevent departments not hiring full time when that was what the employee was defacto) and change some cosmetic text in their contract every six months just to keep them as a contract worker and to try to ignore their own rules about not doing that.

The number of things that go wrong with schools, public service departments, universities, and hospitals when they manage them as they manage for-profit businesses is large. When you only see costs, liabilities, and economies, you get decisions that are a mess in the long run.

One example: Our provincial ministry of health used to have IT staff that could be quick at response. If a manager had an new staffer arrive suddenly, within 2-3 hours, they'd have credentials, have a machine built, been assigned passwords and accounts, have a run of the appropriate network to their workstation, any customizations of the work station, they'd be in the payroll system, access cards, etc. Then they went to IBM. It now takes a minimum of 48 hours, most often 72+, to get these people to that state. This means multiple wasted days to save some bucks.... from the IT budget. The wasted time of the new employee comes out of the budgets of the department employing the new staffer. So IT bosses get to look efficient and service suffers and someone else in the government spends more money or at least gets nothing for some of the money being spent. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Tom

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 2:27 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
Yeah, downsizing does occur periodically but then there's always periods of upsizing.
Went thru that several times myself. Always managed to dodge the silver bullet w/ just enough seniority.
Finally would up as the only one left & then, as they used to say on the BBC classic "Are You Being Served", I was 'made redundant' but, by then, I had enough service to get a full retirement.
(BTW, do they really say, "made redundant" in Merry Olde Englande or is that just a throw-away line?)
I never really expected to find a promo path other than the usual seniority-based ones (ie: IT Tech I, II, III, etc).
You want a promo you need to go to night school or something similar on your own time.

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On Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 09:37:38 AM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


Yes, government careers lean that way as do ones that are expensive/brutal to get into. OTOH our provincial and federal gov't have moved a number of former gov't roles to private contractors and I see sick or injured gov't workers facing constructed dismissals fairly often. Many roles have no promotion path (you have to compete but have no time off to train up or study unlike many new people from the outside who have that time.

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020, 11:36 Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list), <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
A big exception still exists in civil service type careers.
(that's what I did)

It's still quite possible (in fact, even desirable considering retirement benes) to get into that right away & stay in for the duration of your working life.

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On Wednesday, October 14, 2020, 12:04:22 AM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


It's hard in a classic/basic generation system to make a coherent 'other'. It ends up coming off as a weird pot-pourri because it is 'everything'.

People who've kicked around in multiple careers are not necessarily that scattered, they just may have two focuses in different parts of their life.

I do take the point again about modelling the 18th century or even the 19th and early 20th where people stayed with employers for a lifetime. That ended at TL-8. And TL-9 makes the notion of a career even seem questionable (real world - gig economy).

I guess I'm not a Vilani. I grew up on Terra. I see the rates of change that are taking away long term static career choices and my own life has driven me to go through multiple notions of what my income should come from (I am going through one now) and that makes me feel like by the time I'm out, I'd have a spent terms in different schools, terms in software development, reserve time with the military (almost a 5 year commitment but I elected not to), and now possibly private business or re-education to another field.

So though I can see the 18th-early 20th century view of careers here (and that continued in the Vilani culture) but most on Terra now are living in job markets that the Vargr would get (fast shifting, dynamic). 

Again, I wouldn't say a change to multiple career support needed to be there for all settings/campaigns, but I think it is a good feature for some.

TomB

On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 2:30 AM Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


On 14Oct2020 1922, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 4:27 PM <xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk
> <mailto:xxxxxx@quibell.org.uk>> wrote:
>
>     On Tue, Oct 13, 2020 at 1:54 PM Rupert Boleyn
>     <xxxxxx@gmail.com <mailto:xxxxxx@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>         On 14Oct2020 0633, xxxxxx@gmail.com
>         <mailto:xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>         > One of my axes to grind (beyond the possible abuses of BPs)
>         is that  > I've yet to meet a basic MT generator that will let
>         me start an
>         spend > a term or two in a second career before play.
>         That's in houserule territory, so I'm not surprised. Taking a
>         second
>         career before play begins is a perk of being a Vargr.
>
>
> Likely, but it makes sense if you do a term in the military and then
> go into another career for 2 or 3 terms. It also would be sort of like
> going to schools or academies then a career. Most people go through at
> least 4 jobs in their life (of different sorts) apparently (last I
> heard).
>
> As a feature you could use if you wanted to, I'd rank it highly.
>
> When did this Perk come in for Vargr? MgT? Or back to CT Alien modules?

They've always had it. MgT let's everyone swap careers (so did TNE).

I've always assumed that CT/MT saw Imperial society as being like most
pre-20th century ones, where the vast majority of people followed one
career for their working life. Even soldiers used to sign up for 10-20
year stretches, and a great many kept on soldiering until they weren't
physically up to it any more.

PCs and other some Travellers were unusual because they changed their
career *once* (to traveller/general scum). This is not the 20th/21st
century west in space.

A guy who knocked around a lot, did this and that - he didn't have a
multitude of careers, but rather he took 'Other'. Later he probably took
Rogue. I wish Other had been a stronger career in the Book 1.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>

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