I guess I'll throw in my two cents and stick up for the feds. I'm a civil servant w/the DoD. I'm in an R&D role and work a physicist. I work with contractors and civilians on a daily basis, mainly engineers and computer scientists and every once in a while another scientist like me. The group I'm in does physics based modeling of weapon systems.
First, I think there are a couple of misconceptions that need to be dispelled.
1) That civil servants are a dominating presence in my (DoD) industry driving up the federal budget. The reality is that in my branch, we have about 17 civil servants and 85 contractors who work with us. I'm the last permanent civil servant (e.g. government employee) hire in my branch. That was in 2011. We have hired a few people as government employees since then as "term" employees (e.g. a 3-year position after which the position is in essence terminated). My perception (as a generally libertarian/conservative politically leaning person) is that the war that Repubs have waged on "overpaid civil servants" is a smokescreen. We have not been allowed to make government hires for the past 6 years. But we have no problems having our support contractors bringing on new folks (who the government pays for). And bringing on additional contractors most definitely costs more to the government than hiring a new government employee. However, it is definitely easier to surge and reduce the contract workforce than the government workforce.
As an aside, in a lot of ways, this dependence on contractors to do a large portion of our technical work puts the government in a precarious position. If for example, we re-competed the current contract we have w/a the company who provides most of our technical support and they lost the contract to a new company, there is a real risk of losing significant institutional knowledge. In many ways, long-term costs to the government could be lowered by accumulating more institutional knowledge "in-house" with government employees.
2) Civil servants are "generally" or "all" (or pick your adjective) overpaid. I've worked for state agencies (a university as a researcher after grad school), for private companies, and now for the federal government. I also interface with contractors (e.g. private companies) on a daily basis. I can say that right now, the starting salaries for fresh grads is higher for the private company who supports us than it would be if a grad came and worked as a government employee. Two caveats to this, though. First, if you come in as a government employee, I do believe that initial advancement is faster than with a private company. Second, government employee pay scales are "squashed" on the top end. E.g. our contractor technical lead makes more than our government technical lead. Around here, this would be the evolution of salaries (assuming you're good at your job)....
Fresh Grad------>5 years------>10 years------>15 years
Gov't $55k $75k $90k $100-110k
Private $60-70k $75-80k $83-90k $120-175k
The numbers for the private sector are based on a combo of my own experience in the private sector and conversations with private sector companies in our industry and what they're currently offering.
Look...the reality is that there are crappy employees in every organization, government and private. There are also stellar employees in every organization. Within the government there are stellar organizations and crappy ones. To try to stereotype "government workers" is trying to stereotype employees and people that cross so many different skill sets, career types, etc, that it's ludicrous. Are we (civil servants) overcompensated? I think that depends on what you value. I obviously left the private sector to become a civil servant. I valued the work that I'd be able to do and some of the benefits (work life balance, a generally stable retirement system, etc). But, I gave up benefits that the private sector would have provided (back end career earnings, partial ownership in a employee owned company that paid out ~10% of my annual salary in company stock every year). Could there be fields w/in federal civil service that are grossly overpaid relative to private sector counterparts? I'm sure there are. I suspect there are also segments that are underpaid. Are there government organizations that are bloated? Sure. Are the private organizations that are bloated? You bet.
Ultimately, I think many of the complaints against federal employees are rooted in a desire to blame politicians for the terrible positions they've put as in as a country financially. However, I don't think the answer to making things better is to reduce the attractiveness of federal employment. As someone who has recruited for the government at multiple career fairs, I can tell you that it is generally difficult for us to "win" the best candidates (for a multitude of reasons). Cutting benefits will make it more difficult to attract top talent...which will end up leading to more people complaining to about how lazy and spoiled we are:-)