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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

#351

Post by wdn »

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 not the pay, it is the pay grade. If you are a GS 11, you will get a GS11 pay regardless of your responsibility. And since this is union, you performance has nothing to do with what you will be paid.

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

#352

Post by rhexs »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #27
cryoshon wrote: post #21

with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile during applications at most tech companies. if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

> with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile You're getting down voted, but I've seen this first hand. I don't completely agree with it. But the employer's justification was that he would never be able to trust that the candidate wasn't a mole. (I pointed out that the NSA is probably capable of better hiding its moles.)

Anyone who works in intelligence is evil and should leave and find a career in the private sector, but I won't hire them because they're evil and previously worked in intelligence!

Thankfully resume sorting is effectively already an entirely random process, so I hope this comment doesn't bother anyone too much.

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

#353

Post by rhexs »

pdkl95 wrote: post #154
cryoshon wrote: post #21

with luck, mentioning NSA on your resume results in an immediate trip to the discard pile during applications at most tech companies. if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences.

This is why people that finally realize they can no longer work for the NSA for moral reasons should be given support in exiting and finding a new job. Bruce Schneier and Tho9mas drake both endorse[1] Intelexit[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=panT9P_VdyE [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelexit

This service appears to do nothing else aside from automatically generating a resignation letter. Did I miss a value-add here? This just seems like a media campaign instead of anything useful.

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

#354

Post by thinkr42 »

pc86 wrote: post #305
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…

> 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…

Do you think that some of the hiring practices are out of whack as well? I've heard it claimed that sometimes the government treats hiring as welfare employment programs - which adds a whole new spin on this.

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

#355

Post by southphillyman »

pc86 wrote: post #305
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…

> 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…

This is more in line with my experience. A friend of mine purposely sought out a job in government for the job security. He seemed to have had a rough time in the private sector as he was always getting laid off/fired and generally seemed to never like his bosses etc. He explicitly expressed that he wanted a job where he could be comfortable working at his own pace without having to worry about performance based evaluations and such. He's now in government and seems to be doing very well financially.

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

#356

Post by DannyB2 »

> The people who have left were responsible for collecting

> and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the

> president’s daily briefing.

I seem to recall that the president's daily briefing is now a single page with pictures. How many people does it take to produce that?

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

#357

Post by throwawaymanbot »

Privatizing lots of their jobs, and seeing their jobs given to people who are on privatized salaries with private companies, bleeding the tax payer more.. of course they are going to jump ship for a higher salray. Stop the private contracting of some of our most sensitive missions, and you'll stop this.

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

#358

Post by dragonwriter »

thinkr42 wrote: post #354
pc86 wrote: post #305

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. 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…

Do you think that some of the hiring practices are out of whack as well? I've heard it claimed that sometimes the government treats hiring as welfare employment programs - which adds a whole new spin on this.

> I've heard it claimed that sometimes the government treats hiring as welfare employment programs

There's two ways this is true in state and/or federal government:

(1) hiring into specific programs which are essentially designed as welfare hiring programs (these aren't big today, but there are a few of them still.)

(2) special, broadly-applicable civil service hiring preferences (mainly for certain disabilities and military veterans.)

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

#359

Post by 659087 »

propogandist wrote: post #71
659087 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're going to invade privacy on a massive scale, you better be ready for the consequences. Like a job at Google/Facebook, where you'll continue invading privacy on a massive scale?

"Alexa, what's a tele-screen?"

"At Amazon, a telescreen is known as an 'Echo Show'. Would you like 'free' 2-day shipping with that?"

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

#360

Post by heedlessly2 »

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…

i'm pretty sure you're being humble about your skills as a developer.

$450k is a lot and rare, even for the bay area

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