Difference between working in private vrs. public sector in LA

I’ve worked in both.  When things get slow in a public sector office, you read magazines and professional publications and hope that nobody who controls the budget of your department notices.  When things get slow in a private sector office, they lay you off.  In a public sector office, you stretch projects out to justify your salary.  In a private sector office, you try to make projects take as little time as posible to justify your salary. Publicly owned projects, which you may design in a private or public office, often tend to suffer from poor maintenance, or maintenance budgets that get cut down the road. Private projects typically are better maintained and look better over the long term, but they are also more likely to be altered or built over in the future.  So much for that “legacy” project.  Private offices tend to have higher anxiety levels and more drama.  Public offices tend to have some entrenched bureaucrats who just want to put in their time and then retire and have given up on producing good work when they realized it went unrewarded…or they just werent’ that into it to begin with.

From what I’ve been exposed to when I have interviewed for pubic sector positions is that there are real limits on how much design work you actually do. Larger and prominent projects are almost universally farmed out to private offices and your job is to be a liason or simply to manage the project budget, review drawings, and monitor the installation.

There are circumstances and positions where you will design something, but not large projects known as ‘capital projects’, and it seems that the design work is few and far between. Expects lots of input and back stabbing, everybody has an opinion in public work, and there are constant struggles for control of funds and project direction.

The NPS does almost zero design in house (planning is a different story, though).

You’d be fired for doing that around here. With public site plan review, you are just to review and make notes as far as compliance issues…pass or fail, that is all. If you tried to “assist” the developer or even offer design suggestions, let alone drawing on trace for them, that is crossing the boundary into providing a professional service, which is a conflict of interest and puts liability on the municipality. The developer hires an engineer or LA to ensure their project goes through the various boards and reviews. It is up to them to change the plan. And if they can’t, the developer should get a better design team.

Thats some serious S*it. I would have reported him. Although probably not intentional, they just can’t use an “Official” document. We would lose our license or be severely fined for something like that. It happned to my former employer that someone was ‘using’ his stamp…that guy went to jail.

In the larger counties here, you don’t know what reviewer you will get, and the resubmission will often go to a different review not party to the original submission. I’ve seen resubmissions comback with comments contradictory to the original comments. I always find it entertaining when planning/zoning departments fight with each other, but it costs my clients money and time.

Interesting trend. There sure is plenty of myths from so-called “private” sector employees about people who currently work in the public. During the leans times of 2009 & 2010, I don’t know of any public workers who were reading magazines to make use of their time. In fact, it was the opposite since the cad technicians and assistants were the first and only ones to be temporarily laid-off. The staff remaining had extra work in addition to their own to fill the void. Which is why my hours actually increased, not cut back. Of course, this all depends on your local city, county or state government offices.

And contrary to another popular myth, public employees actually do some DESIGN in the office. Granted not as much as in private practice, but definitely not zero design work. Again, during the lean times of 2009, the county decided to distribute work to staff members and keep it in-house rather than contract it out to private firms. Some of you may wonder what happened to those public projects? Now you know why.

The main difference between public vs private sector employment personally for me: I’ve had to do way way more writing than design!! I’d say to the tune of 70-30 writing/design in public, while 10/90 in private practice. I was never a principal in a private firm, so I didn’t write as much as I do now. I now also attend those evening community design meetings and reviews on a regular basis, while private firm employees are home watching tv or playstation.

Don’t get me started on the NPS. You want an easy, non-stress design life? Work for them. Not all of us in the public sector are quite as fortunate.