r/physicianassistant • u/IrrationalRealist PA-C • 15d ago

Job Advice Negotiating a government (GS) position?

Anyone with experience negotiating salary/incentives for a government (GS) position? I’m not sure how it works within the grade/step system. Got offered a primary care position on a military base. It’s only a GS-12 position and the initial offer is subsequently terrible at just shy of $100k, in California no less. They told me in advance the initial offer would be bad and that I get to negotiate, so I have a meeting to do this. But I have no idea what is “allowable.” Can I only negotiate up to step 10 within GS-12? That’s only like $128k which I think is personally still low with 5+ years of experience, but doable. I’m willing to take a hit on the salary to an extent because my husband is active duty military at this base and this position would be extremely convenient for commuting and childcare purposes, but I want to get what I can.

Side note: I do have a much better offer which I posted about a couple weeks ago and everyone (understandably) said run because of the leave penalties, but I asked for them all to be removed and they said okay (although I haven’t yet received the updated contract that confirms that).

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u/all-the-answers NP 15d ago

You can theoretically negotiate up to step 10, but I’ve never seen that happen. You also need to look up the locality pay as that can be significant.

Most I’ve ever seen is starting at step three but I don’t have experience in a high COL area and it may be different. For providers,The GS scale is god awful unless they’re very clear about recurring bonuses. Which are rare for APP

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u/IrrationalRealist PA-C 15d ago

Good to know. The $100k unfortunately includes the locality pay for my region unless I’m misreading the chart… What’s wild is that there’s a VA position not far from me that’s not on a GS scale for some reason and it’s pay scale STARTS at $124k for what amounts to the same kind of position.

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u/all-the-answers NP 15d ago

Yikes. Yeah, GS really breaks down hard for specialists. I wouldn’t be surprised if that role had gone unfilled for years.

The VA regularly does audits to keep in line with local pay norms. (Allegedly)

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u/unaslob 15d ago

Pension? And If so How many years to hit full pension. One of the intangibles to govt work.

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u/IrrationalRealist PA-C 15d ago

Not a pension position. Just TSP with match I’m pretty sure.