NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
341–350 of 547 posts
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
We need food. It doesn't mean being morbidly obese is good for your health. Guess: what country spends on military several times more than any other country in the world?
The same one whose currency essentially powers the world economy via the petrodollar?
Petrodollar is pretty outdated, the current would be Eurodollar or dollar-denominated derivatives outside the U.S.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#343I'd suggest separating these anonymous complaints into those which at least have boolean choices and those which have unary choices.
Reorganization of dept. has created red tape. Ok, that seems like one of many opinions a source at the NSA could have.
Snowden hurt our agency and made our jobs more difficult. I'm not sure that an NSA source could have any other opinions on this matter, especially given that a) I've never read anyone who currently works at the NSA call Snowden anything but a traitor and b) the NSA certainly knows the identity of the sources for this story. I think we have to reject such complaints as facile.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#344It 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…
>Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers.
So you are saying that government employees are greater at serving the people who actually matter. Not the people who should matter, but the people who do.
Imagine a startup that focused on its customers' customers (maybe once or twice more removed) instead of the people paying it. Would anyone be surprised if it gets out competed by a different startup focusing directly on their customers, even if at the cost of their customers' customers?
This isn't unique to government. I've seen private organizations where employees will make choices that benefit their own department at the cost of the overall organization. I sometimes wonder if a natural selection-esque drive behind this is the reasons that inefficiency grows as organizations grow.
> We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality.
I think this would fix a lot of problems, but implementing it is going to be a nightmare because it isn't just the rank and file employees who you need to do this for. You almost have to start at the top, and from what little I've worked with governments, you are looking as a massive cycling of employees and a large loss of institutional knowledge. Also, given that much of how any government agency works is dictated by some of the same people who would be replaced under this, you are looking at having to pay people much more than even going market rate because of the extra costs of working the position.
For example, hiring good government IT is not just going to mean having to pay market wages, but also having to account for paying people to work in dead languages and eldritch abominations built by poorly managed contractors who often still have rights to the software that prevent the government employees from doing major changes (lots of contract security).
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
The legal floor of difficulty will always be greater with Federal employees as opposed to private employees as Federal employees have a property interest in their job. In other words, no Federal employee can be fired without some sort of paper trail. This is a constitutional Due Process issue and not something that Congress can easily address. That said, I think the difficulty--or at least the consequence of the diff…
Serious question, why is being fired from your government job a due process issue while being fired from your private sector job is not? If tomorrow, all government jobs were made At Will and the pay increased accordingly, what property of due process has been violated?
If I fire you from your government job because you said something I didn't agree with, being that I'm an acting agent of the government, am I violating your First Amendment? This would not apply to a private employee firing someone for the same reason because they are not an acting government agent.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#346Earlier 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…
> 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. Have you ever worked for government? I'm a civilian contractor in a software architecture role to a public safety agency in a state government. Half the "senior application developers" haven't written code in 15 years and don't know what a unit test is. There are…
You hit the nail on the head. I've found that people can't grasp that there are a decent amount of federal employees that go to work and actually do nothing. I think some individuals take it as an attack on "big government" instead of a reality. Sure, it does sound a bit absurd if you haven't worked in that environment before, but people aren't exaggerating.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#347It 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…
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…
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Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might be good to cite sources with direct evidence, if you’re claiming that somebody broke the law.
Nobody claimed anyone broke any laws. He claimed that the NSA spies on american citizens and that it is better to have an honest job. The fact that it is legal for them to do this is the problem, obviously.
That is absolutely not legal though, which is why I asked for a citation, as it would be pretty big news.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might be good to cite sources with direct evidence, if you’re claiming that somebody broke the law.
Snowden let that cat out of the bag years ago in voluminous detail. You absolutely do not need to cite sources re: illegal NSA surveillance anymore.
If you believe that his claim was proven by a leak, I am not sure why it would be difficult to produce a citation. My understanding is that it is not a true claim.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#350I read somewhere that 70% of US intelligence spending these days was on private contracting companies anyway. I guess if you’re good you'll end up at one of them?