NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg • Hacker News Board

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

#481

Post by throwitfarfar » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 12:44 AM UTC

NSA is in the middle of a bozo explosion. It's hard to keep good people when they have to deal with so many bozos.

To give you an example, there was a reorg a few years ago to outsource NSA's IT. (Makes a lot of sense that an agency that pretty much only does IT would outsource IT, right?)

In the reorg, 500+ people were identified as having no discernible skill that was relevant to the mission. They were segregated into their own org and given busy work. When the outsourcing occurred, the contractor was incentivized to employ and retain them for 2 years, including the 500+. To entice them, they paid them above their government salary.

The contractor could not figure out what to do with them either. It treated them as "casual employees". They were given a salary, but did not have to report to work and had no responsibilities. For 2 years.

Once the incentive ran out, these folks went back to NSA and got rehired as government employees. According to the hiring rules, they went right to the top of the stack.

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

#482

Post by JamesBarney » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 1:40 AM UTC

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…

I worked for a large government organization and fortune 100 organizations that didn't specialize in writing software. And they were comparable, if not the government job was probably a little better done.

I think in general large organizations that don't specialize in writing software are often pretty bad at it.

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

#483

Post by yters » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #437

yters wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Should we have no intelligence agencies? Why not? It would get rid of a big excuse for governments to conceal things from their citizens, who supposedly oversee them. If someone in the government needs to find something out, they could always just pay someone to do it on a contract basis.

How do we keep secrets from enemies while telling all secrets to our citizens? Such an idea does not seem to live in the real world.

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

#484

Post by yters » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:21 AM UTC

659087 wrote: post #439

yters wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've always seen those companies as the commercial wing of the NSA/CIA. I view them as one and the same.

Well yes, both have In-Q-Tel ties, and a former member of the CIA was on Facebook's original advisory board. Even more reason to not give these huge tech companies a pass.

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

#485

Post by ENOTTY » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:23 AM UTC

yters wrote: post #418

ENOTTY wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Treasury handles tracking of financial flows involving sanctioned entities, terrorist groups, nations hostile to the US, etc. DoE handles nukes.

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

#486

Post by ENOTTY » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:24 AM UTC

sofaofthedamned wrote: post #285

ENOTTY wrote: post #109

By way of comparison, GCHQ personnel seem to be leaving for 4-5x salary from big tech companies[1]. So do the math and figure out what the GCHQ folks are being paid. Also, GCHQ has hired 494 contractors for 71m GBP[2]. [1]: https://sites.google.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/2016... , page 40 [2]: Ibid, page 70

I live in Cheltenham and pre-Snowden may have entertained the idea for working there. I tracked a job they were advertising for nearly a year - they were offering ~32k for a Linux expert with years of experience. Good luck on that one. I think they eventually converted it to a contract role, but even then I wouldn't entertain it. Another friend worked at the big James Bond building in London, was regularly taken arou…

Just to be clear, your amounts are in GBP right?

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

#487

Post by Trundle » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:32 AM UTC

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…

That a service is essential isn't really all that much of a talent draw though, is it?

There are plenty of services that are needed that high value employees aren't rushing to get in to.

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

#488

Post by GlenTheMachine » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #461

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they're a way to compensate highly skilled government workers for the fact that their salaries aren't competitive.

It’s true that highly skilled government workers are underpaid. But non-highly-skilled government workers are overpaid. Both groups get pensions, and there are a lot more of the second group.

Which is worse: a government with overcompensated secretaries, or undercompensated scientists?

I'm a government scientist. Maybe I'm biased. But it seems to me that if your government cannot compete for the best and brightest in your country, you are doomed.

Ideally, of course, we'd compensate both secretaries and scientists appropriately. But we don't seem to be able to manage that.

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

#489

Post by bowlich » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:46 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #366

thinkr42 wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 never heard it phrased like this specifically but there is absolutely a mindset during interviews that the applicant gets the job unless you can find a specific reason not to give it to them. To @dragonwriter's point the rules surrounding Civil Service are even more extreme. Here is a real world example of CS hiring procedures: 0. CS Commission sets a minimum written score for oral interviews. Score is arbitrary…

Close. #7 is actually not true (although a lot of hiring managers seem to think that it is). You are not required to hire the veteran per OPM regulations. They only get the point based boost.

In practice, the veterans benefit becomes meaningless once you advance in specialist grades (GS-09+). But it will get you the glorious position of elevator operator in Carlesbad.

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

#490

Post by nebusoft » Thu, Jan 04, 2018, 2:49 AM UTC

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…

> The floor I'm on has 25-35 developers, DBAs, and BAs, and I can count on one hand the number of people who could get hired into a junior technical position at my employer. There are people who are unironically counting the days they have left until they can retire and draw their pension when they have more than 5 years left.

This pretty much sounds like the majority of fortune 500s I've worked for. Software Engineers started by being interviewed by non-technical managers, worked there for 20 years becoming 'Senior' or even 'Enterprise Architects', when at most they'd be very junior or intern level developers / engineers at my current employer.