For the same reason that anyone works in the civil service. It's a very restrained pace of life, you literally have to count your hours and take time off to ensure you don't work more than 37.5 hours a week, there's flexibility to work from home and your working hours, the pension and the benefits are fantastic. If you live to work then this job isn't for you, but it's quite a nice job if you're not that invested in it.
> If you live to work then this job isn't for you, but it's quite a nice job if you're not that invested in it.
Seems like that would attract bullshitters who deliver the minimum they can get away with, and given it's the government and there will be no (skilled) oversight, they will get away with it and the mediocrity feedback loop continues.
Actually it tends to be the opposite, it ends up filled with highly qualified experts in their fields who are happier with a good work-life balance. Because it's government everything moves very slowly and there is very limited scope for advancement (the government doesn't grow like a company, and there's no outside competition so you can't jump to new jobs as much) so it's not a good place for bullshitters to thrive because you're going to be there a long time and if you get found out as a bullshitter no one will tkae you seriously. You can't just bullshit through a few years and then move to a different department or get a promotion, everything moves so slowly that if you start screwin things up people will actually notice (they won't fire you though).
I'm not sure this would apply to the near-poverty-level salary talked about here? It's one thing to give up the top-level salary for a smaller-but-still-comfortable one, but the one we're talking here is absolutely terrible (lookup taxes and the cost of living and housing especially in London)?
I'd expect only those who really have nowhere else to go to settle for this, which again implies lack of skill.
> if you get found out as a bullshitter no one will tkae you seriously
Unless everyone is a similar bullshitter, or you play the (office?) politics game properly to compensate for your lack of skill. If bullshitters were universally discredited everywhere like you say, politics as a job would disappear overnight.
If you're paid less, it generally means you're less useful to the society. They value you protecting the UK treasury less than they value you making silly landing pages. You can chill making landing pages just as well, just make them part-time.
It might represent your value in the free market in terms of economic utility, but that doesn't reflect your value to society. There are things in this world outside of pure economic measurement.
