93henfan wrote:Not really.Grizalltheway wrote:
I've invested in a career in my niche field. I've educated myself to the point of a masters degree and hundreds of hours of continuing education to stay current. I'm in very high demand when politicians aren't holding me hostage over a border wall. Chizzang couldn't do my job, unless he had spent the requisite years learning the trade, roughly 10-15 years for my job and I have 23 years of federal service; it would be complete Greek to anyone walking in off the street. It's a highly specialized and difficult job, reading the Federal Register daily and staying current with the proposed and final rules, various acts of Congress, and the entire legal framework for overseeing the federal contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements process. Unfortunately, it's so specialized that it doesn't translate well to a job at the same level of pay in the private sector, because private contractors operate at a lower, for lack of a better word, cognitive level. Because of inherently governmental functions, we can only let them do certain things. Private contractors do things like basic purchasing and some slightly higher levels of contract specialist work like drafting contract documents and doing limited negotiation. They don't do obligations (the job of a federal contracting officer) or provide oversight of contracting officers and create acquisition policy (my job as a senior Procurement and Policy Analyst).
So I'm stuck waiting. I don't have any other viable option.
prior planning.....
