The job is more stable and there is less pressure to perform. You'll never be outsourced, and you'll never be passed over for promotion in favor of Raju or Yun. If the project doesn't move quickly enough, your dept will just get more money.
The government is a great place for mediocre people to work.
you summed up exceptionally well some of the reasons why I'm leaving. Having said that, gov't can allow you to work on some extremely interesting problems and data sets that you just won't find anywer else.
Still astounds me how you can have such an eclectic mix of brilliant and less than mediocre people working on the same projects. I guess that's everywhere though.
I think in the private sector the you find the 80/20 rule (20% of the people do 80% of the work) while in my experience, in government it's more like 95/5 (5% of the people do 95% of the actual work). It can be excruciatingly frustrating, but you are right, the types of problems and the datasets are not ones you'll find in your average fortune-500 corporate entity.
The government is a great place for mediocre people to work.