Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why?
The NSA records on their communcations show this. ;-)
Old math dept joke:
Q: How do you apply to work for the NSA
A: Call your mother and ask for an application form
NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
411–420 of 547 posts
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#412Earlier quoted context omitted.
Saw you were being down-voted, seems unfair, it's good to have a counter-example or an opposing view in a discussion. Maybe it seems to much like a recruiting advertisement... > After about $70k in salary, people are happy anyways. Unfortunately living in DC/VA/MD on that you are competing with private companies which pay more and thus housing and well just about everything is a bit hard to manage on that salary. > I…
NSA lets co-ops rotate through various departments to give them a sense of what career path works for them. And nothing wrong with converting old Perl scripts when you're starting. It's a good way to get ramped up in the basics.
There's everything wrong with converting old WORKING Perl scripts to something else that probably will not be working when they are old like the Perl scripts would... Talk about introducing maintenance overhead...
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#413This 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…
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
Payroll is the number 1 expense for government agencies. Easier firing would make a world of difference. I think the root cause is pensions. When people are tied to pensions for a retirement, firing people becomes a much bigger deal. Just pay a match into a retirement account and then when people can go, they go. Private sector pensions are for the most part long gone. Why should public sector keep them.
Pensions just don't make sense mathematically. If they're solvent based on the state's investments, then the employee is getting a raw deal compared to having just invested the money themselves. If they're not, then I as a taxpayer am getting a raw deal by helping to pay for someone's retirement because they worked for a state agency decades ago. My state starts doling out pensions at 5 years. A friend of mine worked…
Pensions make a lot of sense mathematically. If I personally fund my retirement I have to save enough for the "worst" case scenario of living many years longer than average. A pension on the other hand only has to invest enough for the average lifespan because the person who dies a week before retirement and collects nothing helps fund the person who lives to be 105.
State pensions are in trouble because govt pensions are allowed to assume overly optimistic rates of return.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#415Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
For highlights, after NSA I went to Intel and worked on early CMOS camera image sensors - you could put processor logic in the same die. Then went to a small company that designed Iridium Satellite communications chips - personal satellite communications from anywhere in the world! - as well as hyperspectral imaging spy satellites - instead of just Bayer RGB, you had 1000 wavelengths of sensor per pixel.. good for identification. Then went on as a consultant to help companies & startups make their first ASICs, as well as make GPUs at ATI, including XBox360's GPU - probably the longest produced game system.
After that I went directly into fashion where I got to make a fashion magazine that included contributors like Cindy Crawford and other top fashion industry people, based solely on our creative draw (I never pay contributors, but each issue kept getting higher-and-higher profile contributors), and now engage with thousands of top fashion brands, dealing with the art, tech, and business aspects, an industry still largely separate from Silicon Valley.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#416Earlier quoted context omitted.
NSA lets co-ops rotate through various departments to give them a sense of what career path works for them. And nothing wrong with converting old Perl scripts when you're starting. It's a good way to get ramped up in the basics.
There's everything wrong with converting old WORKING Perl scripts to something else that probably will not be working when they are old like the Perl scripts would... Talk about introducing maintenance overhead...
They're usually converted because the hacks don't work anymore with the new software system you bought...
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#417Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The NSA doesn't spy on US citizens That is a lie, but I understand why people would need to believe it in order to work for the NSA.
If you want to believe fake news, that's your right.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#418> the nation’s 17 spy agencies. 17. WTF.
From Wikipedia[1]: CIA, NSA/CSS, NRO, DIA, NGA, intelligence elements of the five armed forces (Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, and Coast Guard), and intelligence elements of the State Department, Department of Energy, DHS, Treasury, DEA, FBI, and finally overseeing them all, ODNI. Each specializes in collecting a different kind of intelligence or in a different focus for analysis. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
Why do the DoE and Treasury need intelligence elements?
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#419Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Should we have no intelligence agencies? A better approach is to populate our intelligence agencies with good people, instead of leaving it up to incompetent/bad people.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#420with 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.
> 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?
This always gets me, too. Everyone targets the NSA, while freely giving away all their private email and internet activity (and now meatspace activity) to private companies without any of the oversight that NSA is subjected to. We really have no idea what G/F do with it all, and have no way to find out. Whereas with the NSA there exist many avenues to make sure it is not abused.