Why I never accept Public Sector work

It may have cost me a fair amount of cash over the years, but honestly, public sector contracts just aren't worth the hassle. Here's why:-

1. To succeed in the private sector, you try to be different from what's already out there. To succeed in the Public Sector, you keep your head down and copy what everyone else has done. No-one ever got fired in the Public Sector for copying*.
2. The best private companies have the smallest, tightest decision making processes. Often one person gets to say yes or no - however much advice he or she has taken from others - and that leads to the sort of informed risk-taking that gets results. The Public Sector is entirely committee-based and devoid of visionaries. Your best ideas will invariably terrify them, and will never be accepted
3. In the private sector we pick an objective and focus single-mindedly on achieving it. In the Public Sector there are a thousand other objectives (diversity agendas and the like) that cloud and confuse.
4. Crap, lazy people are drawn to the Public Sector like moths to a flame, because they know that there are dark corners of obfuscation in which they can hide. That the chill - but ultimately purifying - wind of 'having to satisfy your customers' simply doesn't apply. Because the poor bloody taxpayer is forced, on pain of imprisonment, always to pick up the bill.

C.A.M.

* Come to think of it, no-one ever does get fired in the Public Sector