Tenure!

Welp, I crossed another Foreign Service Milestone. I'm officially tenured. Tenure is a funny thing in the FS. Practically (but not) everyone gets it. You have 3 chances: at 2 years, 3 years, and 3.5 years for specialists. They say 99% of people get it by the third try. They say around 50% get it on the first try, so it's something of a (very) small bragging right. However, every IMS in my specialist class (go 132nd!) got tenure on their first try, which does dampen the feeling of exclusivity, but that's ok! So with the very flattering words below, I officially become a full-time, non-probationary, federal employee.

"The SPTB has completed its review of the files of candidates eligible for consideration for tenure by the 2016 Summer Session.  Below is the list of candidates recommended for tenure. The effective date of tenure is September 12, 2016."

Yeah, I got chills too. They do have a way with words. 

The picture may not be completely accurate, since the Foreign Service has an age-limit... but as a federal employee, we're generally fairly hard to fire anyway. More interestingly, as a 'career officer,' we do have the ability to be rehired to the Foreign Service if we quit, with relatively fewer hoops to jump through. I've met an officer who did this. He quit for several years to live near his children after getting divorce and then applied for reappointment when they were older. 

PS: Side bonus, you can also get a tenure certificate signed by the President...

Promotion!

I got promoted! Whoo hoo, par-tay, celebraaaaaaate! Oh wait, it was an administrative promotion*; I earned it merely by not getting fired over the last 18 months. Well, whatever, it still counts! If I keep up this rate of promotion, I think I'll be running the entire Department of State in like... 10 years. NOTE: That is not how it works.

On a more serious note, my cohort received our 18 month administrative promotions from FS 5 to FS 4 beginning this pay period. It's the first milestone in our IMS careers, next up: Tenure**. Unforunately, getting tenure is a merit-based-competitive thing, so we may not all get it at the same time (on our first try). Then again, my cohort was pretty awesome, so you never know.

* An "administrative promotion" is a pay grade increase that is guaranteed as part of your hiring. It is non-competitive and kind of represents the end of your 'training period.' Getting them depends on your position and the grade at which you enter the service. Since all IMS have the same job and grade coming in, we all get an upgrade after 18 months.

** Tenure is a formalization of your job with the State Department. It represents the end of your 2 to 6 year probational employment. Effectively, there's not much difference (for Specialists), except that once tenured you're eligible for competitive-promotion. Also, if you don't receive tenure on your 3rd attempt, you're effectively terminated from the foreign service.

Two Years in India, Weeks 9 and 10: Long Weekend

Weeks 9 and 10 sandwiched a four day weekend, so I might as well write about both at the same time. If that logic doesn't work for you... let's just say I was out of town last weekend and didn't get a chance to write a post.

Ten percent of the way through my first tour and things at work are starting to feel "normal." I'm still regularly asked if I'm "settling in" - it will be interesting to see how long that lasts. My bet is until the next arrival/departure season. I don't have a lot to report except my building excitement to visit Delhi in the near-ish future to meet my counter parts on the "mother ship." (As a consulate, all funding for Chennai goes through the Embassy in New Delhi.) We also had to let our driver go last week, when we learned he was on the RSO's DO NOT HIRE list. It was kind of a bummer, since we liked him, but he was very nice about the whole thing. I'll go into more details in another post; I'm due to write one about the pros and cons of employing household staff.

I did have another small victory at work this week. The State Department uses a system called iPost to continuously monitor the health of the computer networks of overseas posts. To make it more competitive (because, why not?), they tell you what rank you are out of all of the posts in the world and those in your region. When I arrived at post, our world-wide ranking for one of our networks was around 125th, and as of this week we're number 1! Although this doesn't win me any awards, further bilateral diplomatic relations with India, or anything like that... It was still a good feeling and it can't hurt my chances of getting tenured. It almost felt like cheating, since it wasn't that difficult and Chennai isn't a very busy post, so I had the time. I've been talking to the other IMSers from my orientation class and they sound way more busy. I guess that's one of the benefits to going to a consulate!

Side note: The day our HHE was supposed to arrive in Chennai (according to the shipping department) has come and gone and I haven't been contacted. Guess I'll fall back to expecting it when the company that shipped it from DC estimated it would arrive (October 10th).

Taking Care of Business (and Working Overtime)

It's always interesting to learn differences between being a Foreign Service Generalist and a Specialist. This week I learned that Generalists are only eligible for paid overtime (or comp time) until they get tenured. Specialists, on the other hand, maintain their eligibility throughout their career. The lack of volunteers to escort diplomatic pouches at the airport with me suddenly makes way more sense. I wouldn't want to do it either, if it was unpaid!

I should specify, I end up working extra most days, but it's generally 10 or 15 minutes here or there. I'm not staring at the clock for the moment I can bolt... but for things like this week's pouch run (5 hours in the middle of the night) or the poor folks who are assigned to be Duty Officer on a three day weekend and spend all Saturday at work... without credit or overtime. Bummer!