Oh Boo Hoo. Instead of complaining about their own pay and paltry $25K bonuses, SESs should lead by example for a change and fight the attacks from all directions upon the group that actually does the work: the run-of-the-mill GS employees. For far too long, SESers have thought only of themselves. Is it any wonder, they don't get the respect they think they deserve? Nobody forced these people to take the jobs and if they no longer want them there's a long line of often better qualified but less politically connected applicants to take their place.

It would help SES mobility if such positions were truely competitive rather than political within the agencies. That might also help the SES'ers get a better / moe realistic sense of their value too. But the Akaka idea that SES awards should be included in retirement calculations is both insulting to all other Federal employees and is so ripe for abuse, one has to ask where that idea came from.

some of the other posters work, but at my agency the SESers were former run-of-the-mill GS employees that through hard work moved up the ladder to get nominated for the SES series.

Methinks there is some degree of hypocrisy in SES survey respondents' claim that it is becoming difficult to attract top talent to SES positions due to restricted pay and benefits issues. SES external recruitment announcements routinely generate large nunbers of highly qualified candidates. Agency internal SES candidate development programs just as routinely are oversubscribed with eager, talented applicants. With pay in the $119-179 thousand range, there is no evidence that SESers who are eking out a straitened living on such meager crumbs are thereby driving up the price of dog food. On the benefits side, the enahnced benefits package available to SES members vs-a-vis that vouchsafed to run-of-the-mill GS cannon fodder types includes a 720 hour annual leave carryover provision vs. the 240 limit available to the downtrodden GS proletariat. Digesting the SES respondents' views should therefore be undertaken with a ton or so of sodium chloride, together with a soupcon of cynicism on the side.