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NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

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Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#31

Post by mrep »

qmalzp wrote: post #7
smallnamespace wrote: post #3

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…

That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

And about matches FANG companies for bachelor degree graduates (I know Amazon's is now 145k total comp starting and I think the others are even higher).

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#32

Post by schoen »

qmalzp wrote: post #7
smallnamespace wrote: post #3

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…

That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

A few possibilities:

Believing in what the organization does (which could include several different narratives about why its work is good and/or legitimate and/or necessary)

Recruitment via channels that civilian firms aren't using and offering people an educational and career path they didn't expect to have

Recruitment via family, friend, and teacher channels

Wanting to get to know lots of secrets

Wanting to work with smart people

Wanting to work with fancy hardware (for some subspecialties)

Wanting to have one's unusual abilities appreciated and put to use

Wanting to be paid to work on cryptography at all before the 1980s

Wanting to be in a spy movie/novel

Wanting to get to perform real attacks against real people and organizations and not go to prison for it

I know I've met people in all of the first three categories, and I imagine I've met people in the other categories and not known it.

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#33

Post by mabbo »

When I was just about to graduate from University, I had an offer from Amazon on the way (yay internships) but not really in-hand yet, so I kept interviewing. One of the options was CSEC, Canada's NSA.

The stark reality was that at Amazon, in 2 or 3 years I would be making double what CSEC was offering. Early career pay in one was end-career pay in the other. They seemed nice, and I suppose what they were doing felt important, but the money was simply too good to turn down. (No regrets either- I worry if I'd gone with them, I might have wound up living in Russia with a roommate named Ed.)

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#35

Post by 659087 »

cryoshon wrote: post #21

with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile during applications at most tech companies. if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

> if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

Like a job at Google/Facebook, where you'll continue invading privacy on a massive scale?

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#36

Post by [deleted] »

qmalzp wrote: post #7
smallnamespace wrote: post #3

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…

That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

[deleted]

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#37

Post by GlenTheMachine »

bsilvereagle wrote: post #8
smallnamespace wrote: post #3

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…

> 2. normal people ask 'why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?' The problem is that a normal tax payer doesn't interact with the R&D scientific side of the government. To them, their local BMV office (state govt) is representative of the entire (state+federal) government bureaucracy. When reports of government pay leading/lagging private industry come out, their first thought is that BMV worker, not th…

Unfortunately, even if a lab goes off the GS scale, the top pay rate allowed by law is still the same as a GS-15 step 10. In the DC area in 2017 that was $166k and change, including locality pay. The only thing using a demo pay scale helps with is easier promotions, which is great until you get salary capped.

$166k/year isn't bad, by any means. But it isn't competitive for a PhD scientist or engineer with equivalent experience.

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#38

Post by auntienomen »

atonse wrote: post #2

Not surprising. They’ve gone from having the perception of being the most elite organization for hackers to more of what is described in Good Will Hunting [1]. Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. Edit: although I bet a lot of it is the 4x-5x salary jump you can get in cyber security jobs by having the…

I think it's become pretty clear recently -- looking at what Snowden leaked and at the trouble the Iranians had with their centrifuges or at the way Comey knew that Sessions was going to recuse himself -- that the NSA _is_ the most elite organization for hackers/crackers. It's hard to be certain from the outside, of course, but when I look at what Henninger et al have written about what they're doing... well, it's a breath-taking technical achievement

As for perception: These technologies exist, and it's up to us to make sure that they're used wisely. Right now, the institutions of the US and allied governments are the caretakers and safeguards. They're not perfect, but I'll take them over the competition every day of the week.

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#39

Post by qaq »

vonmoltke wrote: post #16
speby wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one cares about government pay scales. You don't have to work FOR the government to work for the government. Many top NSA specialists work for contractor firms and do earn tremendous compensation from their employers. Those employers contract with our government for totally uncapped contract sums. Obviously the contracts have to be reviewed for budget and capex limitations but otherwise no such thing as a salary c…

> Those employers contract with our government for totally uncapped contract sums. No, they don't. Billing rates are fixed based on the experience and education levels of the people working on the contract. If the government says they won't pay more than, say, $250/hour for a security expert that is all the contractor is going to get, and that in turn limits the amount the contractor can make. Pay at government contr…

Knowing the billing rates of some of the companies they subcontract too for IR there is close to 0 chance they would take less than 500/hour as they have to turn away clients even offering higher rates due to serious shortage IR talent.

Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

#40

Post by username223 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #25
smallnamespace wrote: post #3

It seems like it's pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it's the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression. Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are a…

> if the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible? I have a friend who worked for the NSA. We had a heart to heart over drinks about a year ago. She asked what I thought about her working there. I responded, honestly, that if I didn't know her personally I'd be starting to wonder if she was, for whatever reason, unable to pass muster at Google et cetera . Not the best decision to…

> if I didn't know her personally I'd be starting to wonder if she was, for whatever reason, unable to pass muster at Google et cetera. Not the best decision to drop that after a day of drinking together. But I'm glad I did--it was apparently the nudge she needed to quit.

So she stopped being an indirect servant of popular will, and started selling ads. Great.

> She now works in the private sector and is thrilled with how much closer to her intelligence her new colleagues are.

Not only richer, but less moral and more likely to pat herself on the back. Even better.

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