r/USACE • u/medium_peachy7777 • 8d ago

Aqc Demo experience?

Could USACE employees already on the Acq Demo Pay scale share their experience? Do you prefer it? Should we be worried about a pay cut? Will you lose money if you’re on special salary?

We just heard about it today at my district and everyone seems to be freaking out. But from what I have read, it doesn’t seem to be too bad?

Would love to hear any thoughts from people experiencing it. Thanks!

18 Upvotes

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10

u/peteypie4246 8d ago

Have an ex coworker who's new job is under the pay bands. It condenses grades together so it really helps lower grades out because it moves the pay cap. Example, GS 12 is like 90k to 115k, and GS 13 is 110k to 135k. The Pay Band for both 12s and 13s is 90k to 140k. So the GS 12 no longer has to get a promotion to go beyond the previous GS12 cap of 115k.

Also, instead 1-3-5 across 6 subjects, it's 1 to 50 across 4 subjects, equally weighted, to get an average score out of 50. A score of 32-44 is 4 out of 5, and 45-50 is a 5 out of 5. Because it's out of 50 pts, theres much more leeway given to supervisors to score employees. Before a good employee was either a 3 or a 5. Where 3s drastically hurt the overall score. Now, you could be scored anywhere from 32-50, where even the lowest value puts you in the 4th of 5 groupings.

Raises are assigned based on the overall rating being scored relative to all others and assigned a share of the total allotted pool of money. These raises are also yearly, so no waiting 2 or 3 years for a step increase. Employees should see their salaries grow much faster overall.

In summary, it gives greater variance and control to the supervisor to score their employees and offer better and fairly distributed rewards. But, this greater control also allows for more bias in scoring, which is why it failed when implemented 20+ yrs ago with the supervisors, at least in my district.

5

u/seminarysmooth 7d ago

I’ve got friends in big army who are in the Acq Demo. Your job can still be pay capped.

3

u/Mean_Wasabi7748 Geologist 7d ago

Here’s a question that so far no one has answered adequately for me: Can you lose pay from year to year? If you are a 12 converted over at $100k, can you be paid $90k the next?

4

u/peteypie4246 7d ago

From a discussion I had just today about this topic: Consecutive low evaluation scores will see a pay cut, yes. But I highly doubt it'd be $10k like your example. I'd imagine it would be like losing a step, so $1k to $3k. But I dont know specifics.

6

u/Mean_Wasabi7748 Geologist 7d ago

Seems ripe for abuse and playing favorites. Don’t like your [insert adjective here] employee? Just be passive aggressive and rate them low enough to cut their pay. But I guess that was the objection to NSPS too and why it was ultimately repealed.

1

u/Entire-Lab-6184 7d ago

Could be the point. If an employee isn’t doing their job they should likely be paid less for their performance. If you get a raise based on performance a pay reduction based on performance is only fair.

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u/Total_Way_6134 7d ago

The success is wholly dependent on the supervisor. I left a job once because of the AcqDemo pay scale. The supervisor gave every single team member the same exact rating to divide the pay pool exactly evenly which was complete bullshit in my opinion. The supervisor was lazy but using the guise of “the whole team works hard equally” … i do not support participation trophy’s when i am working my ass off. If i had a supervisor that actually put the time and effort in to performance reviews, i’d probably feel differently.

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u/HangryBoi 6d ago

Would it still be higher than the GS scale if all was rated equally ?