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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

#521

Post by someguydave »

mozumder wrote: post #475
southphillyman wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eval…

Why are people conflating "government work" with "NSA work"? It's like saying "corporate work" instead of "Google work". State level agencies are obviously going to be low-level dreck. The NSA is completely different, and has some of the smartest people on the planet. It's intellectually lazy (read: dumb) to apply an anecdote to everything, like saying "black guy committed a crime, therefore ALL black guys are crimin…

>It's intellectually lazy (read: dumb) to apply an anecdote to everything

>State level agencies are obviously going to be low-level dreck.

LOL

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

#522

Post by sanderjd »

pc86 wrote: post #516
sanderjd wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be hard pressed to convince me that someone who fought for their country in the military should not be preferred as a civil servant. It seems like a very strong qualification for these jobs.

I didn't mean to imply they shouldn't, only used it as one of a list of examples in which civil service hiring is formulaic and not really open to personal opinion. That there are equations and rules for everything, and at the end of the process the "hiring body" is basically told who they have to hire for a given post, unless they can find a reason to disqualify that person.

Fair enough. I definitely agree with your broad point. My wife manages grants (many of which are federal) for a research institute and even though they aren't governmental themselves, just being federally funded creates many of the same circumstances you're talking about here. Being able to fire people more easily would not solve any problems: they need to be able to incentivize good work much more flexibly.

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

#523

Post by mywittyname »

1024core wrote: post #364
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…

> Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town. Not really. Don't get me wrong: I like the people in our post office. But they'd be killed in the private sector. At my local grocery store (Safeway), they'll add a new cashier if the line becomes long. The Post Office? Nope! During busy times, I've seen the line go beyond 15 or 20, and there's thi…

DMVs are privately-owned franchise in a lot of states.

It pays about the same as a retail job ($12/hr & 30hr/wk starting in my state) but you get to deal with infinitely worse clientele -- that never follow simple directions, thus need to come back three times, more pissed each time. There's rarely any downtime, as the lines are 30+ people long and every terminal is full.

Additionally, due to bad pay, they have high turnover. And because the state is cheap, no sane person would open an new franchise because they don't make money unless the line is packed out the door.

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

#524

Post by vidarh »

pferde wrote: post #287
vidarh wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worked well in every company I've worked in. The one person I fired is the only one of hundreds of developers I've worked with whose performance was actually negative once we'd tried to shift people around, and while some were probably "wasteful" for a while until we found work they could do that justified their salary, most were not. A lot of the time people are just not in the position that's right for them.

> A lot of the time people are just not in the position that's right for them. And a lot of the time the right position for such a person is in a different company.

With that attitude, yes - if you don't try, of course you won't find alternatives. Most people that do try rarely need to fire staff.

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

#525

Post by dilyevsky »

nimbius wrote: post #393

Speaking from experience, I applied to the NSA a few years ago and its surreal how unrealistic the expectations were. a major problem with NSA employment is the mandatory 5 year contractor like status period with half-pay. the NSA expects seasoned professionals from the private sector to join its ranks with a 33k salary? get real. The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology…

> the NSA expects seasoned professionals from the private sector to join its ranks with a 33k salary?

they don't. like any other military/police agency in the world they want them young and dumb.

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

#526

Post by dilyevsky »

jessriedel wrote: post #424
nimbius wrote: post #393

Speaking from experience, I applied to the NSA a few years ago and its surreal how unrealistic the expectations were. a major problem with NSA employment is the mandatory 5 year contractor like status period with half-pay. the NSA expects seasoned professionals from the private sector to join its ranks with a 33k salary? get real. The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology…

> The agency also prides itself on an almost obscene reliance on Polygraphs, a technology no more accurate or scientifically sound than a babushka shuffling chicken bones and reading tea leaves. I can't find out why I see smart people repeating this all the time. It's not true. Polygraphs are very flawed, and they are especially vulnerable to preparatory countermeasures, but they have non-trivial predictive power. Wh…

"can't find", huh? well did you even try? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity has plenty of actual studies referenced.

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

#527

Post by Torgo »

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…

Worked as a contractor for a federal agency, can confirm true, with a few variations: written score was weighted, and a cutscore eliminates candidates before oral portion. The written cutscore is adjusted downward until enough women and marginalized groups pass, and then candidates are weeded out in the oral phase, special consideration given to veterans and a few other categories.

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

#528

Post by hiram112 »

metaphor wrote: post #184
fern12 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Keep in mind that it takes 18 years to progress from Step 1 to Step 10. This is true in some cases, but not all. I was hired at the GS-11/2 level without any prior government/military experience. A coworker of mine worked as a contractor for a few years, and was hired as a GS-15 last year. This is all in Silicon Valley (although he has a tech background, while I do not).

To be sure, the time it takes to progress from Step 1 to 10 has no bearing on the grade and step in which an employee is hired at. If your colleague was hired into GS-15 Step 1, then it would still take this person the same 18 years to progress up the ladder to Step 10, assuming no irregular increases in pay. If coming from private industry, entry step is often negotiable; prior industry salary serves as basis, so it…

Not all GS-15 are management positions.

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

#529

Post by wybiral »

acdha wrote: post #331
wybiral wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. There are a mixture of feelings about the agency. The same can be said of the CIA and FBI. And this is nothing new.

Not new but accentuated: I think a lot of people used to know there was some gray area but thought we were generally on the right side (not unlike the U.S. attitude about torture until the Bush-era reversal), before the pattern of relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public. A lot more people are comfortable with, say, targeted foreign attacks than broad domestic dragnets or attacking A…

> relentless disregard for the law and American interests really went public

Are you talking about metadata collection?

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

#530

Post by pinewurst »

rdtsc wrote: post #205
mozumder wrote: post #176

Earlier 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…

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…

How many people work at Google and Facebook hacking scripts for ad sales? There's an equally large potential gulf between their reputations for Giant Alien Head genius and prosaic, if not social damaging, reality.
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