The 100% Federal Employee Has a 0% Tech Transition Strategy

If you are on the SES track and genuinely want it, this probably is not for you.

You are already committed to the unwritten rules: managing up skillfully, waiting out the promotion schedule and staying close to the people who decide who gets the next title.

There is nothing mysterious about that route’s incentives, status and script.

But this Substack doesn’t serve followers of a well-worn federal path.

It is for those who have started to suspect that being excellent at the federal game may be limiting their long-term potential.

You know who you are. You too learned the rules. But you could never quite follow them in the approved way.

You wanted to move faster. You tested the premise. That kind of ambition can look impressive at first. Then it becomes inconvenient as it gets in the way of the required, gradual career advancement. Your colleagues start referring to you as someone who just doesn’t get it.

The federal system has a special way of rejecting the unorthodox. Sooner or later, it treats you like an infection and deploys the antibodies.

You get labeled as someone who, despite a lot of promise, will only go so far.

Eventually, you start to doubt yourself. You start to believe you deserve to get throttled.

But what limited your growth in government may be the exact thing that expands your potential outside it.

I remember what it was like. Over my two decades in government, I consistently attempted to outmaneuver the system. Where I served, being at HQS became more important than serving in the field. I thought I could buck that trend. My repeated attempts at unconventionality failed. So, I had a decision to make.

The system does worse than slow the ambitious down. It trains us to regulate our drive for fulfillment. You learned to self-censor ideas before sharing publicly. You try to read the bureaucratic tealeaves before pushing anything. A decade of that and inaction becomes habit. You stop noticing you do it.

Guard the flame of your rebellion. Tech has far more room for speed than government does. Nobody serious punishes you for testing limits when your work creates value.

If this hit a nerve, then look beyond just leaving government. You need to turn the parts of you that the system suppressed into a marketable story. Start with a Former Fed coaching call.