Classic civil service issues - Hardware Engineer HMGCC Employee Review

As a grad engineer it was a great place to work. Quickly became a full beginner and eventually a senior engineer.

The work place was very toxic. If you was in with the management all was ok. If you want then it was awful. Professional development just seemed to stop once I was at engineer level.

The work life balance, nice colleagues, caring supporting environment. The pension is unrivalled in the current age. Onsite childcare is incredible in both price and staff.

Coming from a comercial software development background the adjustment into the civil service is a massive shock. Money and resource are wasted on a daily basis whilst they cry wolf over a lack of capacity for new work. Resources are heavily under utilised and it is wholly possible to drift along doing nothing without any clear management. Employees are not utilised against their existing skills, rather used for whatever work needs doing regardless of how applicable it is. Career progression is a tick box excercise against a list of criteria that have no effect on real world workings. Knowledge of said tick boxes is seen as evidence of skills rather than the practicing of actions. Software development technologies, practices and processes are a decade out of date. These are continuously shackled by bureaucracy and red tape managed by a team with no software experience whom come from a mechanical/manufacturing background. Any attempt to suggest another way of doing things is greeted with "we know best" attitude. Management want feedback and advice on how to improve, but dismiss all criticism as irrelevant and niche.