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Theoretical arguments highlight the importance of Public Service Motivation (PSM) in underpinning employment relationships in the public sector, mainly based on the presumption that many aspects of public service provision are non‐contractible. Consequently, hiring workers who are public service, or pro‐socially, motivated helps to overcome incentive problems and to increase organizational efficiency, thus reducing the need for high‐powered incentives. However, such an argument would be undermined should workers' pro‐social or intrinsic motivation dissipates rapidly with job tenure. Based on longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we explore patterns of overall and domain satisfaction measures for workers who made the transition from private to public sector employment. We are particularly interested in finding out whether any possible boost in satisfaction with the nature of …