The Top of the Pyramid

Despite inadequate compensation, life at the top of the nation's decision-making pyramid is a worthy career for young up-and-comers, four former Cabinet officials told participants in the symposium "Public-Private Career: Perspectives from Distinguished Public Servants" yesterday.

Though President John F. Kennedy '40 asked C. Douglas Dilon '31 to serve as secretary of the treasury for four years, Dillon ended up holding the job through both Kennedy's and Lyndon B. Johnson's terms. Now the average presidential appointee "will come in full of idealism, but when it comes to the point of sacrificing their child's college education on a government salary, they'll leave after two years," said Dillon, a former president of Harvard's Board of Overseers.

When Elliot L. Richardson '41 left a top job at New England's largest law firm for a career in public service, he got a 25 percent raise. If he made the same move nowadays, his salary would have been cut in half, he said.

But a government official is far better compensated in terms of job satisfaction, said Richardson, who held the positions of attorney general of Massachusetts, attorney general of the United States, and three Cabinet positions in the Nixon Administration.

"Paul Volker [chairman of the Federal Reserve Board] is sitting in the front row," said Richardson. "There is no responsibility in the world compared to the responsiblity he carries each day."

While high salaries are drawing the nation's best and brightest to the private sector, "talented people should work in the government for at least part of their careers," said John C. Whitehead who last year left his post as co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs and Co. for his current job as deputy secretary of state.