Are You A Civil Servant

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Are You a Civil Servant

Yeong Hwan Choi

For the readers of the book

Is the resignation of MZ civil servants in South Korea a social trend? Or is it a problem that will be gradually resolved as the environment changes, such as improving organizational culture, increasing salaries, and the way society views civil servants? Based on the story of two years at a large company and seven years in a civil service organization, I analyzed why the resignation rate of young civil servants is so high according to human instinct and brain science. I believe that there is not much difference between not only ordinary civil servants, but also public companies and teachers and police officers who are guaranteed tenure, and I decided to write a book to inform the students who are preparing for the civil service examination just because they want to enjoy a stable life without having time to get to know themselves, and to inform those who are preparing to change jobs in the civil service after leaving a large company to make a judgment without experiencing it.

The change in organizational culture is a phenomenon that naturally changes when the younger generation joins, and even if a lot of improvement ideas are introduced, it is not a problem in terms of the supply and demand of civil service jobs. Therefore, the government will not be interested in the future. It is said that there are people in the world who know without experiencing it, people who have experienced it and know it, and people who have experienced it but do not know. As someone who has experienced and enlightened me, I can only hope that the examinees will not follow the same path as me.

Are you a civil servant?

In 2015, my lazy brain challenged me to take the civil service exam, which I thought would be advantageous for marriage and a stable life with a small salary, as my lazy brain was guaranteed to work, and I moved to a civil service job in a large company in the eyes of others. Even before I joined a large company, I had chosen a job that others thought was good in a subject that was my major in college. I don't know what I like, what I'm good at, or what I don't like. Of course, I haven't experienced it, so even if I didn't know, I think I didn't ask specific questions about myself.

And it wasn't until I was thirty-five after I left the company that I was filling in my own self one by one on a blank sheet of white paper. Valued existence in your own way, not from other people's perspectives and perspectives. If we go back in time, after leaving a large company, I was satisfied with my life as a civil servant. My work-life balance is much better than it used to be. There was little competition for performance, and I was satisfied that I could only take care of my own personal affairs and that it was easier for me to live a life of self-improvement or evening. But my lazy brain didn't want to progress. I could have worked as a civil servant if I had a different perspective on success, but I intuitively knew I had to get out of here. But this phenomenon has started to become a social issue, and are they people who have the same values as me? Or why did they make the same choice as me?

Chapter 1: If You Dislike the Temple, Leave the Monks

The world is in the age of the weak and strong.

Humans are also animals, and their intelligence is relatively high, but their instincts are similar. Just as powerful nations have historically and even now wielded world politics at will, so too is the small society in which we live. Individuals who are weaker than the organization are forced to conform or leave. Now, it is common to hear that it is a one-person business and that the concept of a lifelong job has disappeared. We are living in a very good era where you can show your personality and color with a platform released with just a computer or mobile phone, and you can start a business with a single computer.

However, as a child, I lost my own color even more without forming an identity that should have been formed due to numerous worries and experiences. The motivation for my resignation can be seen as the need for self-actualization, which is at a higher level of human needs.

When I started questioning my self-existence by starting with philosophical doubts such as 'Who am I?' and 'What am I working for here?', I gradually felt that something was wrong in my fifth year as a civil servant. The growing pains are gone. Before going to bed and even when I woke up, I wished I had been hit by a car and killed when it was time to go to work, and I just waited for the time at work to get off work. I didn't feel alive in this dark place. I wanted to break free from the cycle of evil. 

Live zombies.

Not only civil servants, but also large corporations, public corporations, and foreign companies favored by job seekers, if they do not change their mindset and perspective on success, most of them will live their lives as passive workers as they accumulate years of service. And these wage slaves become living zombies over time. As a helpless being who has no choice but to live within the framework set by society....

Homeless people on the streets are no exception. Money and food are important to them, but the feeling of being alone and abandoned in the world is what bothers them the most. If you help them feel their presence in the world with an altruistic heart rather than financial help, Steve Jobs and Elon Musk can come out of it. Everyone has potential in the realm of the unconscious, and whether or not they realize their potential depends on how they live their lives away from work. It's only after 10 years of salary slavery that I've started reading, writing, and starting the business I want to do, that I'm slowly realizing it. People should take the time to get to know themselves with a high sense of purpose in life. And through the time you have learned, you can only become less faint by choosing a job that resembles your own color, which is a tendency that has been established according to your innate temperament and environment (family, friends, education, etc.).

So I decided to leave in my eighth year to find color.

1.1 Their Exclusive League

At the age of 28, my first assignment was to the Construction Management Headquarters in the city hall, which is dominated by civil engineers. This department is responsible for ordering projects and executing budgets for the purpose of opening and expanding roads, which are convenient facilities for citizens. There are many miscellaneous things such as continuous design changes and actual accidents, but to explain it simply, he was in charge of supervising the construction company and managing the budget so that it could be used efficiently. Rather than dealing with the actual civil engineering technology, my work was mainly focused on writing reports, including a technical review in which the contractor analyzed how the budget would change. My two-year experience at a construction company was very helpful when I went to the site to supervise, but my classmates, who were new civil servants, felt a little disconnect between what they had learned at university and what they had learned. As I will say later, civil service jobs are not highly professional. Aside from technical jobs, my classmates were of course administrative officials, and I worked in the office a lot from the beginning. 

When we became civil servants, there was a severe civil service boom in society. My younger siblings, who were born after the mid-90s, preferred large corporations and public companies, but we had a lot of people who were less prepared to become civil servants because of the social atmosphere that favored state institutions more. Although I didn't study at Noryangjin after leaving a large company, Noryangjin cupbap and gongdangi were common words in news and articles. It was so popular, and because of that, it was a bizarre era when even among the ninth class, SKY accounted for 5% of those who passed. There were a lot of people in the 9th grade administrative positions who had more than an academic background in Chongqing, so how hard it was for liberal arts students to get a job, so why would they look at the 9th grade? I thought about that a lot at the time. 

Of course, people with good education would quickly quit and go to take the professional exams, but the reason why I want to tell you that people with good education studied the ninth grade was that it was quite popular at the time, and  no one wanted to become a civil servant without any specific reason for why they wanted to become a civil servant, so I think the goodbye everyone resignation boom over the years ended up as well. After becoming a civil servant, the difference between them and private companies is that they are more and more in a league of their own. Of course, there are only two main ways that office workers can be compensated. Promotion and remuneration. 

However, civil servants are increasingly unable to find their value in anything other than promotion. From the outside, whether he is in the ninth grade, the seventh grade, or the fifth level, he is just a civil servant. Unfortunately, they apply their highest priority to the reward system of promotion.

Here's why they're looking for a promotion:

1. A salary the size of a rat's tail goes up by a rat's tail.

2. You can do things with words rather than with your own actions.

3. Even though you're your boss, you don't take on responsibilities as much as you think. 

In addition to this, civil servants did little self-development. There were quite a few people who didn't see their careers differently from their previous colleagues who had built their careers through various challenges and experiences, but they were still in their jobs and getting paid overtime. The practice of subsistence overtime has disappeared a lot since when I joined the company, but it is difficult to change the culture all at once, and it is understandable if you are a father with children. However, some of the young civil servants who were aware of the damage were forced to work overtime, and it was a waste of time to work in the evening. Unlike those who were trying to find their colors after work, they even looked pathetic.

Of course, there are many cases where government employees work on an emergency basis because they have tasks that require weather conditions (rain, snow) or emergencies (forest fires). And each serial has a different degree of difficulty and intensity of work. The work of technical and administrative officials, except for civil engineering and architectural officials, is often simple and repetitive administration and civil complaint handling, so it can be considered that the degree of difficulty is low unless it is a planning department. After passing, the brain capacity used is not half the brain used for the college major assignments you studied, the brain needed to pass the exam, or the brain you worked for a company. Even though they know that each other is a group that lacks expertise, no one is engaged in self-improvement. The reason for this is that there are many things that you naturally know over time, so if you ask them to get to know you through working overtime, the difficulty of the work is so low that you think it is only a way to make a living, or to look good to your bosses. 

If you are a civil engineer, if you go to a department related to urban development or urban planning, you will have to deal with the legal interpretation given by the Ministry of Legislation, which can sometimes be a headache. In situations where the law, enforcement ordinance, enforcement regulations, and city ordinances are unclear or in conflict with each other, they should consult a lawyer, or if the situation is not a relatively large budget or is far from the commitment of the head of the agency, the matter should be handled as a matter of practice. 

This is also a legal interpretation for administrative processing, so it is also something that AI through case law analysis can do in the future without being done by humans. The clock is ticking against the government and local governments, which are at the forefront of changing with the times. In a rapidly changing era, it is impossible to reform by focusing only on the opinions of the younger generation who are accustomed to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but the main reason for MZ Jooul's resignation can be summarized as a reward and gratitude system that goes against human instinct. Still, it's a great place for our lazy brains to live in an environment where there is no risk of survival. Therefore, there is still a way to prove one's worth through loyalty and integrity to the organization. Now, no large company puts this value first and is not in line with the current times. 

Sincerity is an evaluation received from others. If someone is rumored to be sincere, the value of that person does not at least not decrease. However, unless a system is introduced in which people with good problem-solving skills other than sincerity are valued more, it will be difficult to accept expertise and diversity through self-development, and it is easy for unproductive and repetitive work to become the main thing in a rapidly changing era. The fact that civil servants have adopted the NCS and PSAT long after 2025, rather than focusing on memorization subjects, which was a test that lasted until 2024, can be seen as a sign that problem-solving skills are now more important than conscientiousness, and it also proves that civil servants are the slowest changing organizations.

Of course, just because you're a private company doesn't mean it's easy to do a job evaluation. However, even if there is an error in the evaluation method, it differs from the civil servant in that there is a quick and appropriate compensation. This is because slaves who benefit the company by giving them salary incentives are designed by human instinct to live more as wage slaves. If large corporations were guaranteed the same compensation and retirement age as civil