41–50 of 547 posts
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.
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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.
For the simple reason not everyone will get job at top 5-10 tech companies. There are jobs at consulting /contracting companies but apart from money they are in different league of crappiness. So once you eliminate those 2 categories govt job becomes pretty decent option if one can get it.
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> 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 wit…
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> 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 wit…
Ads are incredibly useful and have prevented trillions of dollars of waste.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 wit…
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…
It still might be challenging to get a decent raise short of leaving for competition though. Pay is very easy to address in the grand scheme, the work environment, the politics at many levels, the organization, the idea that you could and will go to prison if you were to violate a policy or blow a whistle, inability to talk with your spouse, peers, or even coworkers about work, etc.. those things are hard and they probably suck there.
When you have talent and options why stay with a creaky ship that's sailing straight into a hurricane with a mad captain at the helm?
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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…
Which means that your managers are still getting paid civil servant wages, no matter how well paid the contractors working under them are. Consider how well run a tech firm would be if it paid less and less competitive salaries the higher up in management you go.
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.
> with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile You're getting down voted, but I've seen this first hand. I don't completely agree with it. But the employer's justification was that he would never be able to trust that the candidate wasn't a mole. (I pointed out that the NSA is probably capable of better hiding its moles.)