The Competence Trap: Why Being Good at Your Job Can Hurt Your Career

I was on my way to my lunch break walk when I ran into an old colleague. We were both stationed at the same field office years ago and are now both at headquarters, so to speak. He is a civil servant in an IT department of a German agency.

We got to chat a little, and I asked him how it was going. He said he is working on getting a transfer to his old field office because the work he is doing at the moment is quite boring and, at the same time, exhausting due to the fact that they are understaffed and nobody else wants to do that job.

When I asked him if he was switching departments, he said unfortunately not. His head of department is not allowing him to switch and vetoes any HR decision with the argument that he is too valuable for a transfer. I asked him if this was due to a minimum five year holding period1 that every employee in IT has to serve before being eligible to switch. He said that wasn’t the reason and that the reason was basically the fact that he is doing a tremendous job and that he is too valuable to let him switch.

The tragedy here is that all higher ranking civil servants, starting from rank A15 and upwards, create new, often unnecessary positions and bullshit, unproductive roles that nobody needs and that add no value, just so that they can promote themselves and climb the career ladder, while regular workers who actually do the work are not allowed to switch horizontally, even though they have been sitting in the same role and doing the same mundane tasks for decades.

I guess the lesson here is to not give a fuck and make sure you come across as useless as possible, all without getting fired, which is easier in the public sector, so that your boss allows you to do something else after ten years.

In other words, slack off, don’t pick up work, do the bare minimum, sleep, work on a personal project, or read a book, as long as you avoid being a productive contributor to your team. Otherwise, you risk being stuck there forever because your boss wants to use you as a pawn to advance his or her career.