If you are unemployed like me, I don’t have to tell you that being unemployed sucks. Each day unemployed is a day dealing with a wide variety of emotions. Feelings of good will are usually dashed after a few phone sessions with recruiters. Depressed feelings usually turn into fear, anxiety and hopelessness. Being unemployed is a sure sign, that smacks you in the face, that life isn’t fair. Not having a job to wake up to in the morning is a deep dark hole that is suffocating, if you allow it.

I will be the first to admit that I probably need therapy. I could use several bitching and whining sessions on a comfy couch to a stranger who claims that he/she can unlock the mysteries of my mind. However, since I am unemployed, with no health insurance, paying for therapy isn’t an option at the moment. I am not sure how our new digital leader health care reform bill helps the unemployed. It appears that although his intentions are noble, the government will find a way to screw us or screw it up if the bill is signed into law.

As you can imagine, bad management is a pet peeve of mind because it has unfortunately impacted my life negatively. I have seen enough bad management in my professional lifetime, that I could write a book on how to manage. All I would need to do is take what I have seen and put into words the opposite. I have encountered managers who were either bi-polar, insecure, untrustworthy, or just down right bad. I was fortunate to avoid most of the land mines in the toxic environment created by these individuals by being sociable, working hard and covering my assets. However, despite all of my dedication to being a good employee in the face of ineptitude, I found myself on the wrong side of management decisions. If it sounds like I have an axe to grind about some of my work experiences, you are correct. I was the type of employee that showed up for work everyday, rarely complained, kept my head down and tried to do my best under the most adverse situations. I was a company man, drone, worker bee who was to scared to rock the boat.

The key word is “was” because I am no longer afraid to rock the boat. All political correctness went out the door the day I was laid off from my last job. In retrospect, I now realize that having worked for several bad managers probably has done irreversible damage to my career. I am a by-product of career suicide, even though I had little or no control over the events that led to me being in this jobless situation. The decision of a faceless individual has caused my life to come to a stand-still, it sucks and I truly hope that person doesn’t sleep well at night. Despite my somewhat cynical and negative connotations, I do have a positive outlook on moving forward.

For the first time in my life I have a sense of freedom of not being one of the worker bees anymore. I am jobless, however I am no longer stressed out worrying that my boss has a bad perception about me because they can’t relate to my quirky ways. I no longer have to bite my tongue out of fear of losing my job because I disagree or have several questions about a project that is doomed to fail no matter how many hours I put in. Also, I am not the biggest loser in the office anymore and I am no longer a pawn in the popularity contest to sit on the right hand of my boss. Since it appears that God has chosen to look after bad managers, it’s only fair that I take control of my jobless situation and do what is necessary moving forward to create my own path.

Unless you are an individual who enjoys having their life turned upside down every two to four years, working as a federal contractor sucks.  The concept behind the need for contractors to work side by side federal employees has been flawed for many years.  Needing a contractor to fill a position tells me that the process to become a federal employee is too bureaucratic heavy or why else would an agency be having a hard time finding  someone.  You can also consider that the hiring process to work for a federal contractor is flawed as well. Companies that win bids to do federal contracts are often bound to unrealistic parameters for hiring.

For the purpose of this article I would like to focus mainly on the IT federal contracting as that is where all of my experience on the subject comes from.  I live near the Washington D.C. metro area, and I have been working in IT for over ten years.  For many of those years I was grunt “contractor” working at some of your well known federal agencies.  Why would I continue to work as a contractor when I clearly loathe the concept, you ask? Quite honestly, I didn’t know any better.  I was Neo before he took the red pill, happy and clueless, being used as a grunt as long as the paychecks were coming in.  As you can imagine, there are a lot of staffing companies in the area that bid on numerous IT contract positions for the federal agencies.

The general concept behind being a contractor at a federal agency is that you work with federal employees, do all of the same type or tasks a federal employee would do, except you do not have the job security of a federal employee.  Most companies that hire you to contract, will hire you as an at-will employee.  As an at-will employee you could be dismissed from your job without warning.  You have very little chance of recourse if this happens.  I would love to tell you that the only contractors I have seen dismissed were due to poor work performance, however I would be lying.  I have seen way too many contractors let go due to some unwarranted perception or a bias coming from a mis-informed federal manager.

As a contractor, you will never be officially a part of the cool kids, “federal employees.”  Like most popularity contests, you face all of the problems of not being a part of the click.  You have to abide by a different set of rules even though you share the same office space.  For example, I used to work for this agency that had this huge fancy enclosed computer room that we called the fish bowl.  We called it the fish bowl because two sides of the room were mostly glass.  Whenever the agency needed to give a tour, the visitors would be taken to the fish bowl to see all of the fancy machines and hard workers behind the glass.  The federal boss made a decision that no one could eat or drink while at your cubicle. If you had the need for a snack, you could leave it outside the room and go outside the room to eat.  I didn’t have a problem with the rule at first, until I realized that it didn’t apply to the federal employees.  I watched them eat their lunch, and some times their dinner, right in front of me.  I later found out that one of the federal employees complained to the union, and the union overturned the manager’s request for us not to eat in the room.

Accrued leave was another sore spot for me for several reasons.  As you may already know, the federal government is closed on Columbus Day and Veterans Day. I would also like to throw in Black Friday, an “unofficial government holiday.”  Most contracting companies will not pay you for those days. Either you use your leave or you have to come into the contractor’s home office that day to be compensated.  My other issue with accrued leave is that for example, I work for Company A for three years and have 120 hrs of leave built up.  If Company A loses out to Company B when the contract is up for rebid and I am fortunate enough to be retained by Company B, I have to start all over from zero leave.  You end up doing a job for 4 yrs but then all of a sudden you have the same amount of accrued leave as someone who just started yesterday.  I have seen only one instance of a company winning the bid and then to grandfather the employees so they retained their accrued leave.

The most nerve-racking time for a federal contractor is when the contract you are on is placed up for re-bid.  It is a non issue if the company you are working for wins.  However, if another company wins, all bets are off for several reasons.  More often than not, the winning company severely under bids the contract to win.  Therefore, you can expect that when the changeover happens, some people will not be retained, and it’s possible the lucky ones that do hold onto their jobs will be asked to take a reduction in salary. Workplace morale is usually at its lowest point during this time.  I can remember my initial reaction when I was asked to take a $7,000 pay cut.  I can tell you that it wasn’t a positive one.  I dropped a few f-bombs, however I reluctantly agreed because having a paycheck was better than none at all.

I am sure there are some individuals out there who find being a federal contractor to be a wonderful experience.  If that is the case, I must admit I am jealous because I didn’t have those experiences.  I am no longer a federal contractor nor do I have the desire to ever do it ever again in my life.