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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

#221

Post by kowdermeister »

mozumder wrote: post #176
qmalzp wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> want me to list them?

Yes, please

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

#222

Post by kodablah »

vidarh wrote: post #214
kodablah wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too agree with GGP's characterization of the majority of government employees and I too have no evidence beyond anecdotal experience. But I think a reasonable model for evidence would be accountability information. I'll settle for numbers on government employee termination for dissatisfactory work by department (I'm sure it's somewhere, link anyone?). If, as I suspect, termination rates are very minimal in areas re…

Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality. In 23 years in the private sector, I've only once had reason to fire someone because they didn't do their job properly, and I've seen exactly one more developer fired in the companies I've worked in for similar causes. The thing is, in most cases you can move people "sideways and effectively down" - there are always grunt work that needs to be d…

> Or termination in the private sector is rarely and indicator of quality.

I never said it was. My comparison would be on termination for dissatisfactory work.

Regardless, the attitude that poor performing people can just be reassigned and/or languish seems to be one held exclusively by those working for companies that can absorb waste (or governments). I worked at IBM, I saw it plenty. Peer quality and management's tolerating of low quality work are among the many reasons I left.

But you're telling me and other SMBs that now in my small business of 6 people I can just move people? Or otherwise that I now have an unhealthy corporate culture? Many companies can't afford waste, and as strange as it sounds, can't often afford low-salary, low-skilled labor. Humans are our biggest expenditure, we can't just keep adding indiscriminately even with modest growth lest we hurt our customers with increased prices. Though your intentions and sympathy are admirable, the approach has led to corporate bloat and an inflated supply of employees in the field (at least in software).

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

#223

Post by sgt »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #28
ggg9990 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Edward Snowden's $200k salary from Booz Allen Hamilton.

Which didn't exist. BAH said his salary was actually 122k. I know of a few BAH salaries, likely more advanced than his, and they are much closer to that number.

Maybe Snowden was factoring in bonuses and and other incentives?

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

#224

Post by forapurpose »

eadmund wrote: post #88
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…

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 not just a 'perception of gov't incompetence': it's a widespread phenomenon. Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics ...

Is there any basis for this claim and the others? It's repeated by many, but that doesn't make it so. It doesn't describe the people I know that work in government.

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

#225

Post by danielovichdk »

I wonder if there is also some people morale in this. I mean, if I was a hacker and knew what the NSA had been up to in regards of mass-surveilance, my integrity and morale would be like "heck no, thies org' fucked up and I want nothing to do with them, at all!".

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

#226

Post by scottishfiction »

millstone wrote: post #134
dimva wrote: post #82

This is a problem across all of government. As a mediocre senior software engineer with no reports, I was paid more last year than the goddamn President of the United States (and no, it's not because I got lucky with stock). This is completely stupid and unacceptable. Of course our choices are going to be Hillary vs Trump if we pay the top leader in the country less than a mediocre software engineer. Of course Hillar…

Presidential pay is not outrageous because those seeking the Presidency should be motivated by public service, not remuneration. Of course, the President doesn't really have bills. He or she doesn't exactly pay to rent the White House.

> should be motivated by public service, not remuneration. It's strange that this should be such a widely held belief given that it relates to the top job in the most capitalistic country on earth.

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

#227

Post by forapurpose »

smallnamespace wrote: post #137
snowwrestler wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I have no data to offer, but I do have a simple, heuristic model that might hint at GP's thinking process: 1. tolerance to short-term career uncertainty varies greatly between individuals (e.g. changing jobs, moving, having money in the bank to cushion the cashflow turbulence) 2. the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability 3. if level of tolerance to short-term disruption is strongly po…

> heuristic

These aren't heuristics, they are all speculative. We can speculate many other reasons too:

For example, people value career stability when they have children and other long-term, serious obligations.

Many people work in government because they face discrimination in hiring and promotion in the private sector, such as women and minorities. Even Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg says that's why she ended up in government.

Finally, it may be hard for HN readers to imagine, but most people don't seek the life of an SV entrepreneur. It's not that they would do it if they could and settled for something else; they want something else.

I could add more speculation, but without some data I don't think I'm adding much.

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

#230

Post by kodablah »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #174
kodablah wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need a powerful spy organization to compete on the world stage I disagree or at least don't agree to the extent I might have in a more embattled time (i.e. any time in the past). I do agree intelligence serves the military well, I just don't agree with military intelligence scope growth at a time when military use is shrinking. I'm not sure history repeats itself here as much as perpetuates the justifications be…

If you're interested in the subject, https://www.amazon.com/100-Decisive-Battles-Ancient-Present/... is pretty fantastic. "Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler would referee. Violence, naked force, has se…

I could understand this perspective if intelligence was a binary thing you have or you don't. But we shouldn't pretend abuses while gaining some forms of intelligence are justified by the need for other forms. You are arguing that intelligence is needed for military purposes. I'm arguing the apparatus doesn't need to grow in a time of military usage reduction. We might be talking past each other. The types of intelligence we're talking about barely overlap in a Venn diagram (i.e. domestic vs foreign, massive vs targeted, etc).
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