"fully-owned and operated by the government" - This is the most important reason. For better or worse, gov't jobs are basically not allowed to meaningfully reward exceptional performance. There's just no mechanism for it.

Not to say things like this don't happen in private industry too - it certainly does. But at least you've got a chance. In most companies there is room to meaningfully bonus or promote or otherwise reward exceptional performance. You may or may not get something, but at least you can ask or push for it, and if they want to do it they can.

>For better or worse, gov't jobs are basically not allowed to meaningfully reward exceptional performance.

Neither do private companies. The measurement becomes the goal. And that measurement often has nothing to do with legitimate performance.

This doesn't happen at FAANG either, absolutely nothing to do with gov't

Going rate for breakthrough performance is $10K, ask the GitHub Copilot guy, and read my bio

must’ve been Tommy’s first rodeo lol

And how would an experienced cowboy handle this situation?

1. Do the thing they pay you to do, keep your head down and watch the company light money on fire. Bonus points if after the project is inevitably late, you step in to "help" and save the day.

2. Start a consultancy company and overcharge clients to do this work.

3. Realize that many companies will not reward you for your efforts as you expect and go back to 1

While you are consultant, #3 is different. You start charging more for more bullshit mini projects which could be part of the main project. Especially for IT, it is just a whatever-you-can-stick game. I know companies doing stuff like creating 10 page proposals just for replacing a switch. Managers feel smarter when they get charged a lot for some reason.

The manager is also playing the game. Every manager has a manager, too. The n-level manager just deals with n-1 type of metrics and information.

If you're just looking at numbers, something that costs $$$ is "harder to do" than something that costs $$. Any consultant that costs $$$ provides better work (Why would I have paid $$$ if the work wasn't better? Why would anyone charge $ to give the some quality?)

Drag the work out for years and fuck around while collecting a paycheck commensurate with the work completed. Let the company hire the outside contractor.

Then leave, become an outside contractor and you can be the benefactor.

Save exceptional work for small companies that will reward it or your own startup.

If it’s a small company your energy is better spent ingratiating yourself to the inner circle, which doesn’t necessarily entail being effective.

Do the work you’re assigned to do and don’t go looking for new work.

Or ask for more work and don’t be surprised when you do or don’t get rewarded for it.