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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

#241

Post by [deleted] »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #150
natch wrote: post #122

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…

[deleted]

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

#242

Post by crdoconnor »

kodablah wrote: post #173
metaphor wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...I think we can either assume... If I may posit a third for consideration: for-cause termination is such an insurmountable bureaucratic hurdle that supervisors pragmatically opt to pursue inter/intradepartmental transfer, effectively making the employee "someone else's problem".

I'm including that in the lack of accountability. If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain. Accountability is lowered when unenforceable.

>If termination is difficult, surely many inept remain.

And, if the top of the organization is dysfunctional, making termination much easier (especially where 'easier' means 'no obligation to cite justification') just gives the psychos and empire builders more unchecked power.

If termination were easier but 80% based upon a majority of coworkers signing a document stating "this person is not doing their job properly" you could raise accountability and euthanize the empire builders at the same time, but somehow I don't think when they say "it's too hard to fire people" that's what they're aiming for.

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

#243

Post by pjc50 »

Another view: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-...

That was circulated with the comment "the risk is not so much people running to the Russians as people running to civil society - the NSA is not as popular as they think."

The NSA, like much of the US system, demands absolute unconditional loyalty. Internal dissent is not possible. Taking dissent public will get you sent to prison where you're not allowed to speak to journalists.

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

#244

Post by aristidb »

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…

A quick google says:

>

Where can a mediocre software developer get $450K+?!

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

#245

Post by peoplewindow »

snowwrestler wrote: post #179
smallnamespace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The movers and shakers of government in the U.S. are the elected officials and their political appointees. A lot of them actually do come from private industry or academia. The staff of government have to work within whatever decisions get handed down to them from the political process. The political process does not always prioritize staff flexibility and initiative. To the contrary, it's a favorite pastime of polit…

You make it sound like "political law making" is a problem and some other form of non-political law making would be a superior solution. The performance of the civil services in dictatorships indicates otherwise: they're invariably more corrupt, more prone to latching on to bad policies and refusing to give them up even in the face of disaster and so on.

Governments don't refuse to fire incompetent people because of "political law making". They refuse because firing people is hard, emotionally draining, legally risky and something that managers will only do when properly incentivised. Without competition or profit there is no incentive to rock the boat and pick a fight at work, so why bother? Some noble idea of higher quality public service? Fat chance.

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

#246

Post by peoplewindow »

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…

This is fine if the performance is low but positive and if, as sibling comment points out, your organisation can absorb large amounts of waste.

When an employee's performance is actually negative, i.e. they make things worse rather than better e.g. due to personality issues, then moving them around isn't going to work well.

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

#247

Post by BinaryIdiot »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #181
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I feel like this has to be the biggest issue. When I worked in the DoD space as a constractor the amount of c…

I think the 2 main reasons to stick around long term would be the pension and getting 6+ weeks off a year. Not many private employers do that, and I imagine it is a huge boon for retention.

Hmm yeah fair point. We had about the same time off (I worked at 3 different companies one that had less, One the same and one “unlimited” vacation) but I bet the pension is a big one.

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

#248

Post by peoplewindow »

gaius wrote: post #212
smallnamespace wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability I don’t think this is true anymore, at least in the UK you’re likely to be TUPE’d to Capita or Accenture at the drop of a hat, then laid off in 2-3 years anyway when your job is offshored. GCHQ has similar problems recruiting. And they also have to contend with the class system, exacerbating it.

The class system? In 2017, really? Or do you mean that GCHQ chooses to hire exclusively from the limited pool of Oxbridge graduates and can't change their internal culture such that they could hire school leavers at 16?

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

#249

Post by shortimer »

snowwrestler wrote: post #126
eadmund wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is only personal experience, but multiple/many data points in that personal experience. I'm familiar with government departments where 20%+ of the employees do essentially no work whatsoever. Their assigned work languishes indefinitely, until it eventually looks bad enough on some chart that it gets assigned to someone else.

That "someone else" is often a hardworking, loyal employee who does their best to earn their pay (thank you, to those people!!). But their attitude is ground down over time by watching those other people do literally nothing, and eventually get promoted "because seniority."

So I fundamentally disagree with your premise that you could transplant that population into a business. I'm certainly familiar with freeloads in business, but I'd struggle to come up with an example company where 1/5 or more of employees do no work at all over multiple decades and then retire with a pension.

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

#250

Post by gaius »

peoplewindow wrote: post #248
gaius wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the gov't largely underpays in dollars in return for high career stability I don’t think this is true anymore, at least in the UK you’re likely to be TUPE’d to Capita or Accenture at the drop of a hat, then laid off in 2-3 years anyway when your job is offshored. GCHQ has similar problems recruiting. And they also have to contend with the class system, exacerbating it.

The class system? In 2017, really? Or do you mean that GCHQ chooses to hire exclusively from the limited pool of Oxbridge graduates and can't change their internal culture such that they could hire school leavers at 16?

It’s still part of the civil service at the end of the day. The pool of people who can both cyberattack our enemies and conjugate Latin verbs is a very small one!
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