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This article summarizes the results of research on career blockages among experienced managers in the French Ministry of Ecology. It aims to present the challenges of an unfinished transition between a historical administrative model and a “market” model supposedly more attentive to skills, particularly managerial skills. We show on the one hand how some agents have been disadvantaged by the new rules of the game and on the other hand how a minority has taken advantage of these new opportunities to progress on the margins of conventional circuits. Finally, we show how the studied situation questions a possible polarization of public employment.