We spend too much time at work to be unhappy in our jobs. Yet so many of us stay in the public service because that's all we know. Working in the public service is a very comfortable life, and that's hard to let go of. Here are the most common reasons I see for people choosing not to explore working for themselves.
Financial security
"Leaving a $130,000 job to do something I'd never done before? Of course I was scared," Scott Monson, coach and former public servant, says.
The pay is what holds many of us in the public service for so long. It's the security of knowing we'll get paid next week and the week after. It's also the lifestyle that a public service job affords. We're not talking Rolexes and mink coats but, for my wife and me, with no children and decent salaries, it meant being able to easily save for a holiday, eat nice dinners and renovate our bathroom. I look back on my financially comfortable public-servant self and wish he'd hidden some $50 notes in my jacket pockets.
On top of regular pay and generous superannuation, working in the public service brings a long list of benefits. There's a treasure trove of leave, from annual leave and maternity leave to my personal favourite, miscellaneous discretionary leave.
I counted up the types of leave I get now I'm self-employed, and came up with one: the kind where I don't get paid.
Emotional security
There's comfort in a routine, even if that routine makes you miserable. I've met so many public servants who hold their jobs in quiet contempt, but can't fathom leaving.
It's a very secure version of life: getting up every morning, knowing what the day will look like. You have your regular coffee spot for the 9.30am hit before your 10am meeting. The handful of lunch places with the overpriced pasta. You get different bits of work, but the flavour stays the same. And all of the small politics, the manoeuvring and gossiping. The shuffling of executives.
When you're buried in bureaucracy, it's easy to nurture the conviction that you could do amazing things if someone would just give you the chance. You're always hampered by the narrow-sightedness of others. Somehow, your job never gives you that chance, so there's never a time where you put yourself to the test and risk being proven wrong. Suspecting that you're the smartest person in the room is toxic for the soul. There is no opportunity for growth there, only arrogance. You need to get out of that room.
When you hold a steady job, any job, it's easy to keep living by default. You fall into the public service, and stay there. Years pass as you slowly ascend the ladder till you hit the ceiling. It's a life that's all laid out for you, but which you never actually chose. You've always got a boss, a set of procedures, and a workplace culture to tell you: "What should I do next?"
"Running a business is a daily existential effort," networking expert Phillip Jones says. From the simplest task list to setting your whole business strategy, it all needs to come from you. You need to sit down every morning and write your life onto a blank sheet of paper.
If you're even slightly prone to self-doubt, questions like "Am I making a huge mistake?" will be regular visitors. That's normal. It comes with not living to a template; not having an easy point of reference to check yourself against.
When you hold a steady job, any job, it's easy to keep living by default. You fall into the public service, and stay there.
There's comfort in knowing that you're not solely responsible for the results of your decisions. The public service absorbs the effects of mistakes and shields you from their consequences. There's enormous comfort in this, especially when your work affects other people. Let's say you're a junior programs officer, and your budget calculations are wrong. Yes, you should've caught the error, but there were three people up the line who checked your work, and the accounts team who audited the numbers. Responsibility spreads up and out, away from you.
When you work for yourself, it's all down to you, and that responsibility can be crushing.
Mental health
When you hear everything that starting a business will demand from you, you may wonder: "Can I handle it?" That's not a cowardly question. It's an honest question.
That was my question.
I've grappled with anxiety and depression for most of my adult life. Sometimes, my working situation has made it worse. In my early 20s, I had a research contract with the University of Newcastle. I may as well have been self-employed for all of the autonomy I had. I worked in my bedroom in my dressing gown, with no one to talk to all week, limited feedback and no support. That didn't go so well. I remember one night, sitting against a tree, feeling like a gaping black hole was yawning open beneath me.
When I thought about starting a business, I was scared I'd go back there.
Here's how I did it. I realised that I couldn't guarantee that nothing bad would ever happen. Maybe I'd get seriously depressed again. Once I gave up on any expectations of absolute control, the game shifted from protection to risk mitigation. And if there's one thing that the public service taught me, it's how to manage risk.
I set a six-month review date, with three criteria to decide if I stayed with the business or went back to my government job:
- Am I making money?
- Do I enjoy it?
- Am I healthy?
I set early indicators to flag if a problem was emerging, and an escalating series of steps to take if it did. Having that plan gave me enough confidence to set out.
The view from outside
I've had many successes since I went full-time with my business. But whenever I really wonder if I made the right move, I remember one day, a few months after I quit the public service.
I'm sitting on a sunny park bench in Leura, NSW. It's late spring. I have my laptop out, and I'm writing content for a website. This job calls on everything I've learned, and everything I love doing: giving people information that makes their life easier.
The work I'm doing is similar to what I did in government, but the conditions are a world apart. There's a deadline, but I can start and finish work when I like. A cup of coffee sits beside me but, apart from that, it's just me working as I choose. Doing what I'm good at, with nothing in my way.
Matt Fenwick is a former public servant who now runs a business (True North Writing). This article is an edited extract from his book Life without Lanyards, available at lifewithoutlanyards.com.