I worked for an 8-month co-op stint with a branch of the federal government of Canada, specifically, in the branch commonly known as "Environment Canada." This is the branch that does not only predictive weather forecasting, but also pulls together historical climatology to do research on. It was the latter group I was working with.
What I saw was both enlightening and disillusioning for a student of only 20 who barely knew Fortran (the old language we were porting from) and C (the desired new language).
My key points were:
- My manager was keenly aware of and interested in those who worked for him. He was a huge bright spot in my employ there.
- Fiefdoms seemed be be acutely apparent. I worked for climatology doing IT stuff, and the IT department was obviously miffed that they were cheaply hiring outside help that undermined their authority over all things technical. So miffed that they refused to help me until we had a pow-wow and my manager pulled rank on them. He was quite diplomatic about it, but even I was aware that everyone knew who just pulled rank on whom.
- Our department seemed to be aware of those who we served: primarily businesses. So we actually started to produce output that ended up being sold to interested parties. That was brand new territory, and I was pretty happy that it was my code that produced the output that was being sold. (The data, of course, came from elsewhere, I just compiled it.) Happy as in proud of my work, and happy as in less of my taxes would be needed to pay for weather forecasting ;-)
It was, however, a kick-start into the rest of my career. I had a heck of a time getting a job that co-op term. However, after that, my next co-op term was easy to get a job (one of the first 50 to get a job offer), and then, when I graduated, I was in the first 10 to get a job. So it's not all bad from my perspective :-)
I met some really interesting people, including one of the senior IT folks with very very severe MS (the disease, not the company ;->) who was difficult to understand, but an absolute and utter delight to work with. I also met a number of people who couldn't be bothered to give anyone the time of day if it didn't further their career.
Getting into private industry (both my next co-op job and my post-grad job I'm in now), I find similar people. Just that in the private industry, there is often a performance bonus that is tied to the corporation's business results - we do well, you do well type of thing. It helps blunt the pure aggression that some people naturally tend towards. But they're still there - just better hidden.
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