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NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
271–280 of 547 posts
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#272Earlier 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…
Yes I was a branch secretary for the M&P union in BT and in all my time I only came across 2 cases where making some one redundant on grounds of NCI was probably correct and one of those was probably due to health issues which leaves one real case.
what I did see on a major scale was manipulation of the performance system to force people into leaving.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, this might be a very unpopular opinion, but if generating wealth correlates to intelligence and ability, and these traits are transmissible to children (either genetically, or through practices that parents teach to their children, or through higher educational investment), then you would expect a positive correlation between ability and amount of parental wealth. This above argument could easily be wrong, but…
I know that's just anecdata and not representative, but: Donald Trump.
Dude got himself elected while being opposed by both political parties and the media...and he's a billionaire to boot.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#274Earlier 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…
"if level of tolerance to short-term disruption is strongly positively correlated to general 'ability'" That is seriously odd assumption. It sounds like confusing "personality trait that appeals to me on emotional level" with ability. Plenty of inable unstable people around as far as I can tell. Plenty of low ability risk takers too.
I agree. Most of the least competent developers I have worked with in the past have been contractors.
I assume the instability appeals to them because they can move on before anyone realises what a pig's ear they have made of everything.
Most of the highly competent developers I have worked with have spent 7 or more years in one organisation.
From my anecdotal experience, therefore, tolerance to short-term disruption is negatively correlated to ability. However, I would be reluctant to make any assertion that links potentially unrelated traits like these.
In my (again, anecdotal) experience, organisations with more stable positions have a greater proportion of people who value that stability for its own sake e.g. those with primary care responsibilities (e.g. for children or disabled dependents); those with voluntary commitments (e.g. scout leaders, special constables); and people who have cause to worry about discrimination (e.g. those from demographics that are poorly represented elsewhere in their profession).
That correlation would be one that I would be slightly more comfortable to assert.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
I work in the public sector, in Denmark, but I think a lot of the myths around public IT are just that, myths. We have some of the best talent in our country. We pay them less, but a lot of people prefer working in the public sector for a variety of reasons. Some are idealists who want to build a better society, others like the flexible hours and the paid sick leave for their children, others again like the relative…
We have some of the best talent in our country. I worked for a well known (in this area) science non-profit agency, and while we did attract good talent, after I moved to the private sector (and literally earning twice the salary) that I found much more brilliant people working at the high paid private sector jobs. So while I agree that public sector jobs can attract good people, I think that most of the best people…
I am not sure if it's just money but the public sector can't or are unable reach the same market as the private sector.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#276Another 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…
replace prison with getting fired and you have the same in the industry.
Those are two rather different things though?
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> If the problem is attracting better people, how would that get fixed just by making it easier to fire people? 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 reali…
Most places don't work like IT where workers have easily transferable skills across a large market -- getting rid of somebody who you can't easily replace is not rational, suboptimal is better than none. It's not the people it's the organization and incentives around it that matter -- things get really complicated in larger orgs and systems of orgs. In your post it's like there is an easy and clear cut solution to this. You do understand that in an organization you take orders top down or you have a lack of information at the lower levels to make a decision right? You get what you measure and no rank and file employee controls that process + career progression depends on adherence to whatever incentive structure is set up before you started. Also hard as it is to believe, governments don't deal in stupid little apps that are based around some gimmicks. Quality is hard to measure, either you set up an arbitrary hoop for people to jump through or do it based on past performance which is almost completely tied to the environment -- which coincidentally dictates what problems are available to work on which also coincidentally dictates the skills you develop; it's not like implementing a ranking system is a perfect art either. I'm not a fan either of how things are, I know more about the pharmaceutical procurement process and pharma regulations than I ever wanted to.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#278Earlier 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?
I think they meant the principal civil service in general from what I see the intelligence arms are are a bit more open to hiring non standard recruits.
BTW the NSA equivalent does hire school leavers and even advertises on the busses locally as I live in spook county (befordshire)
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#279It 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…
Ahhhh ... it doesn't suffice to simply do your work without slacking, we need no less than the best and brightest for mostly boring office jobs in the government!
Maybe some groups within the NSA need the best and brightest, but the government in general doesn't. A lot of government work concerns accounting and administrative tasks that are neither intellectually challenging nor do they have a clearcut equivalent in business. Most government agencies cannot be run like businesses, because there either is no market to speak with or the markets for their 'products' are not free and open.
All you need is people who get their work done.
> but we must also make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence
That only works if you start at the very top. If you get what I mean.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
but it is open to political risk and you have to forgo any equity participation