201–210 of 547 posts
Wouldn't worry too much. If they're heading to SV, their talents may still benefit the NSA.
I’m really curious if they’ll have the power to get more people killed at google or at the NSA.
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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.
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 wi…
A bit tongue in cheek, but that's the people NSA should least want. They should be looking for those who want to know only the minimum amount of secrets to get their job done.
> Wanting to have one's unusual abilities appreciated and put to use
That's a hard too I'd imagine. I wonder if many end up going in thinking they'd be writing kernel exploits all day and end up twiddling excel spreadsheets or porting a bunch of scripts from python 2.4 to 2.6 once they pass the clearance process. It's not something they could check in advance and not something they could advertise much if they want to tell others when they look for employment elsewhere.
> Wanting to be in a spy movie/novel
Wonder how much the recruitment appeals to those tendencies. Just like with wanting to know secrets bit. They probably really don't want people who think themselves as James Bond. Though when recruiting college kids, I could see them pulling a bait-and-switch.
> Wanting to get to perform real attacks against real people and organizations and not go to prison for it
That's a tough one as well. If there is a desire and tendency to attack real people and organizations, there are probably red flags to look for in there as well. Did they already attack? Did they break the law? Did it bother them that they broke the law? Will they continue to break rules and possibly leak classified info...
> 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.
Yeah I was offered something like that from a teacher in college. But I was an international student so it didn't possible.
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Wouldn't all of these (legal) rules, red tape, stories from your two personal friends, etc support the original argument that they employ patriots or the less qualified? Otherwise, why would a highly qualified person without any preference towards civic duty subject themselves to all of this when they have their pick of jobs? Especially in IT.
If the problem is attracting better people, how would that get fixed just by making it easier to fire people? I wouldn't claim that the government has the best of the best across the board. In some areas they do, like fighter pilots or criminal investigators. In others, they generally don't, like web application developers. What I disagree with is the idea that the government is full of incompetent people, who just n…
Because most high quality employees don't want to work somewhere where low quality is rewarded.
Nobody said it's full of incompetent people that need to get fired. But they are there as they are everywhere. I disagree with the idea that getting rid of lower quality employees won't help. It ignores the reality of quality disparity and implicitly encourages low quality due to no accountability.
It should be noted this same problem exists at many entrenched, older, large companies as well.
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You'd think the genuinely patriotic would avoid working for the NSA, since it apparently results in exile to Russia.
Generally breaking the law and seeking to escape the consequences has always resulted in effective exile, throughout history. In fact, how could it not? Would you like the law to be suspended in this case, but not in the case of people leaking secrets to China? Where's the difference? Is it just that what you like should be an exception? You could argue it was patriotic to break the law, but working for the NSA hardl…
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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.
I designed & architected supercomputers at the NSA as a teenager, starting as a co-op, using manufacturing tech that still isn't public decades later. LOL @ the idea of anyone in private industry giving me the opportunity to do that. These are some of the smartest, yet most normal people in the world. They don't go apeshit about free food or Silicon Valley startups. You'll never get fired, and you can raise a family…
> After about $70k in salary, people are happy anyways.
Unfortunately living in DC/VA/MD on that you are competing with private companies which pay more and thus housing and well just about everything is a bit hard to manage on that salary.
> I honestly don't understand why anyone would do obvious & routine things at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc
What's stopping them from pulling a bait-and-switch. Telling kids they'll be doing exciting stuff that Google and Facebook haven't dreamed of yet, then being a stuck converting perl scripts to python, twiddling excel spreadsheets or writing TPS reports. I think most people would expect more routine working in a govt agency than say at Google.
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…
"Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]." If you make over $80k a year -- you are doing well in NSA [i]. The 150k number is pretty much fantasy land. With NSA on your resume I am sure a penetration testing firm would love to have you at 100k. https://www.indeed.com/cmp/NSA/salaries
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Response to your postscript: I know quite a few people who've worked for the NSA's mathematical research arms. They're not numpties. They're among the smartest people I've ever met (and I've been hanging around tier 1 research institutes, both public and private, my whole adult life).
Maybe that's because one of the biggest hiring firms for mathematicians is the NSA.
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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.
Because you can do things that would be illegal in private practice, like developing and deploying systems to hack into computers, phones, cars, telecomm equipment, etc. There is a type of work and a class of problems that can only be legally pursued in a federal agency like the NSA.
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The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence. Government work is for two types of people (and there's some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can't hack it in civilian life. It's not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to…
It's popular to say things like some government employees are "folks who can't hack it in civilian life," but there's basically no evidence this is true. First of all, let's make sure we look at the full scope of civilian life with a sober eye. Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town. And any medium to large company has plenty of internal p…
Well obviously. If the employee is competent, then of course they are more likely to leave. This exact method of adverse selection, where the good people leave, is the exact problem.
There's a lot of blaming of external factors being injected into this discussion. Namely, government pay scales, and the Trump factor. But let's not forget the NSA's own self-inflicted wounds as well. Let's see, here's what I remember: * mission creep * overreach * LOVEINT * massive collection of bulk intelligence with dubious justifications * withholding information about 0 days it wanted to stockpile for its own us…
Yes, you forgot one thing: * We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage. This is an unpopular truth that people in our circles tend to forget. Rome was an influence solely due to the success of their military. What do you think will happen when ours becomes ineffective? And the NSA is a key part of our military. Intelligence is everything. I think it's good the overreach was exposed, but I was…
I just wish they could be more careful. It's a dangerous power they have.