## Notes from 04 March 2026 [[2026-03-03|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-03-05|Next note →]] ## How hiring works in NYC government Read [[Jennifer Pahlka]]'s **"[Robert Moses's unfinished business should be Mamdani's priority](https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/robert-mosess-unfinished-business)"** (Nov 2025), which walks through the mechanics of New York City's civil service hiring system in devastating detail. The central authority is the [Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS)](https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/index.page), which administers all civil service examinations for NYC government — over 180 exams per year, more than 110,000 candidates. The system derives from New York State Civil Service Law, dating back to 1883. |Step|What happens|What goes wrong| |---|---|---| |**1. Job classifications**|NYC has ~3,000 standardized titles. Every hire must fit one.|Titles are generic, oddly specific, or outdated. Not a single one describes a recognizable tech job — no "software engineer," no "web designer".| |**2. Centralized exams**|DCAS periodically offers exams for some titles. You pay a fee and take the exam when offered.|You can't apply to an agency or domain — only a generic title that may or may not match a future vacancy. Miss the window, wait years.| |**3. Eligible lists**|Exam results produce ranked lists, valid 1–4 years.|The list is the _only_ candidate pool. Domain expertise, motivation, and fit are irrelevant.| |**4. Rule of Three**|Hiring manager must select from the top three scores on the list.|If the top three aren't interested in the job — too bad. No room for judgment about fit.| |**5. The workaround**|Managers hunt for a title with no active exam list that their agency can hire under. Then they run their own process.|"Title hunting" is the main skill HR professionals in NYC are valued for. Almost all HR capacity is consumed gaming the system.| She also comments about a reformer (Robert Moses) who tried to change this a century ago, failed, and instead built his empire through "flexible" authorities and city-owned enterprises _[[Escape from Public Law|exempt]]_ from civil service rules. The workaround became the architecture of power. The system itself was left untouched for everyone else. ### The Brazilian way: same DNA, different pathology I immediately thought about a comparison with Brazil's _concurso público_, which also uses centralized competitive exams as the gateway to statutory employment (tenured positons). Both systems share the same 19th-century logic: impersonal, exam-based selection as the defense against patronage. But they break in different ways. |Dimension|NYC|Brazil| |---|---|---| |**What you apply for**|A generic title, not an agency or domain|A specific position at a specific agency| |**What the exam tests**|Generic competencies or self-assessment|Domain-specific knowledge, often encyclopedic| |**Candidate-position matching**|Essentially random|Intentional but rigid — you know where you're going, but the exam may test memorization over competence| |**The workaround economy**|Managers hunt titles without active lists|_Função gratificada_: discretionary appointments reserved for career servants, bypassing _concurso_ rigidity| |**Core pathology**|**Matching failure** — the right people can't find the right jobs|**Assessment failure** + **classification rigidity** that makes real work legally precarious| ### The transversal career muddle Brazil has attempted to address some of this rigidity not only through workarounds (as in NYC) but through _carreiras transversais_ — cross-cutting careers meant to serve multiple agencies rather than being tied to a single institution. The idea is sensible: create pools of professionals with horizontal skills who can be deployed flexibly across government. One version of this is the _[[Especialista em Políticas Públicas e Gestão Governamental (EPPGG)]], which is defined by _craft_ — policy analysis and management — rather than by thematic domain. An EPPGG can work on health, education, defense, or fiscal policy; the career identity is the skill set, not the subject matter. In principle, this is close to the logic behind the UK's [[Civil Service Functions]]: you organize people by what they _do_ (policy, delivery, digital, finance, commercial) and let thematic specialization happen through deployment, not through career classification. The problem is that Brazil has also been creating transversal careers organized by _theme_ rather than by craft. The _Analista Técnico de Políticas Sociais_ (ATPS) does policy work in the social sector. There are equivalent careers emerging for health, education, and now defense. My worry is that this confuses two things that should be kept separate: the **craft** (what you know how to do — analysis, management, delivery) and the **domain** (what sector you apply it to — health, education, defense). If you bake the domain into the career classification, you lose the flexibility that transversal careers were supposed to provide in the first place. You end up with multiple careers doing essentially the same _work_ but siloed by subject matter, each with its own regulations, pay scales, and institutional identity. This is also why I have a nagging issue with the EPPGG itself: it bundles policy analysis and management/delivery (_gestão_) into a single career, but these are quite different crafts. [[Policy and delivery]] require different skills, different temperaments, and arguably different career tracks. The UK separates them explicitly — the Policy Profession and the Operational Delivery Profession are distinct functions. Lumping them together under one label may have been politically convenient when the career was created, but it obscures a real distinction that matters for how government actually works. So Brazil's transversal reform has a design problem: it got the EPPGG _almost_ right (craft-based, not domain-based) but then muddled it by merging two different crafts, and has since been proliferating thematic transversal careers that repeat the classification trap in a new form. Different symptoms, same underlying disease: classification systems that can't keep up with what governments actually need people to do. ### A sidebar on _desvio de função_ Brazil's classification rigidity generates its own peculiar dysfunction. Because the _concurso_ edital (the exam notice) defines job attributions in precise legal language, and because the approved candidate's rights and obligations are tied to that description, any task that falls outside it is potentially _desvio de função_ — legally, a misuse of the public servant's role. In practice, this means agencies constantly stretch descriptions to cover what they actually need people to do. But it also means that the edital becomes a weapon — not just for managers who want flexibility, but for servants who want to draw boundaries. Yesterday I came across a striking example: [a Brazilian teacher at a public hearing](https://www.youtube.com/live/u0Y7QqODfWo?si=8fGnOLlqC1M-iF7C&t=2170), explaining his approach. He tells his colleagues to read the concurso edital carefully, because "this is a powerful weapon". His position: if it's not in the edital, he won't do it. The school expects him to help organize a _festa junina_ — a traditional June festival that Brazilian schools typically put on, involving decorations, food stalls, games? "I didn't spend four years in college to be picking up balls at the clown's mouth game. That's not my job". What strikes me is that this isn't really about one difficult teacher. It's about what happens when job classifications carry the weight of legal entitlement. The edital becomes simultaneously a selection instrument, a job description, a contract of employment, and a shield against managerial discretion. In NYC, the classification system is so disconnected from reality that everyone works around it. In Brazil, it's so legally binding that it becomes a fortress... protecting the servant but also trapping the organization. Both systems started with the same impulse (merit, fairness, protection against patronage) and both have arrived at a place where the classification itself is the primary obstacle to getting work done.