[quote=UCGal]Talk about a broad generalization. You assume all government IT folks are incompetant? My brother switched to IT after working in another professional sector (architecture). He went back to school and had his previous job experience of maintaining his employers servers, workstations, and tool-chains. After learning his new field he spent 10 years in private sector then switched to working for the government (a state that isn’t CA). He switched because the challenges of maintaining server farms, writing enterprise wide apps, etc, for various state agencies, was more challenging than what he was getting as an IT schlub at HP.

I’m not saying all government IT folks are good. But I wouldn’t say all private sector IT folks are good. Lets not generalize.[/quote]

No, I never said all…just a vast majority of them. Talent is in a high demand and it does not gravitate to the public sector. If one truly has a passion for the work in the changing tech field, they usually do not look for satisfaction within the public sector. Good for your brother leaving HP, I mean it, but the challenges he is seeking exists to a greater degree in the private sector, but we don’t have a guaranteed pension, so he’ll have to weigh that.