Whole bunch of truth here. I left the private sector back in 2018 to work for a state government in energy. Also work next to a federal control room & operate some shared facilities with them. We have a handful of state employees that would do great in the private sector but the vast majority, likely in the 75-85% range, would be fired within their probation period.
The lack of understanding of their (our) own equipment, as well as any understanding of proper prioritizing or mission critical equipment is astounding. I've quite literally witnessed field division chiefs not understand the importance of substation DC systems. When I asked them "what powers breaker operations or comms systems?" they gave me a blank stare. When I informed them it was the DC system they still didn't grasp that without those systems, should a fault happen, the yard breakers wouldn't open to isolate the fault current. Blank stare. I informed these two idiots that a 230kV fault is a pretty big deal and extremely dangerous to the entire system as they consume magnitudes of current over nominal. These fuckers still didn't understand. The meeting ended with me getting pulled aside about my attitude after asking them how in the hell they were in charge of an entire field division without understanding the basic regulations and industry standards.
Bring in the purge, it's needed severely.
