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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

#331

Post by acdha »

wybiral wrote: post #18
acdha wrote: post #4

This combines a long running problem in government – not being allowed to offer competitive salaries for high-demand skills — with the new presidential administration’s chaos, and the specific feeling that the agency is not a force for good. I feel bad for everyone trying to do their jobs but struggling under the weight of so much baggage.

> 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 American companies or standards.

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

#332

Post by vonmoltke »

mturmon wrote: post #112
irishcoffee wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have glossed over and simplified how contracts and billing rates work, your synopsis is not accurate.

You have been down voted, but your observation is correct, and the parent comment is misleading as to rates. Source: I’m a government contractor and line manager.

I worked for government contractors for almost 15 years (until October 2016) and participated in proposal efforts ranging from $750k SBIRs to a $1B+ multi-year prime contract for a radar system. Every one had established billing rates for labor, based on the type of employee rendering the labor. How is this misleading?

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

#333

Post by RogueIMP »

This isn't just NSA, but tech positions GOV wide. Lots of locations are requiring Contractors be put on an equivalent pay scale as the GOV employees, causing them both to look elsewhere... Why take a position with less stability and benefits, for the same, and in some cases less, pay.

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

#335

Post by LordKano »

a-saleh wrote: post #257
eadmund wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this.

>I think that any large bureaucracy, including ones in big corps, attract people like this.

This is certainly true of my last employer. Let's just say it's a famous Fortune 500 company, in heavy industry.

I have seen a great many people promoted to their level of incompetence.

I had the combination of having good technical skills but terrible organizational political skills.

This company currently has a director of Cyber Security who doesn't know what ICMP is or why it's not feasible to block all ICMP traffic on internal firewalls & switches.

Having no technical abilities but outstanding political skills have served her well.

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

#336

Post by SiempreViernes »

bonesss wrote: post #281
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…

> Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it's easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules. There's also a fundamental difference between you being cavalier with your money, and me being cavalier with our money. Being tax payer funded changes accountability, investment horizons, and access to capital. The CEO of Twitter gets to put whoever he wants in where…

Uh, it's about as much your money in both cases, that is to say it's not. In both cases its their money in both a the practical and legal sense.

The difference is that when a company takes your dollars and put it towards their new SAP system to hopefully upgrade their shitty web services, wasting $100 million, you don't fell you have any agency over what happens at all.

On the other hand, when the government invests money in a huge SAP project that then fail, you do feel entitled to rage about it, since there are actual ways you could have acted to prevent this waste (convoluted that the process may be).

But the money the government owns isn't yours in any real sense, since most of it is unaffected by any formal action you can take. In fact, you might in practice be more in control, by the avenue of complaints and media campaigns, of money you've given to private enterprises. At least on the extremes, it is certainly easier to get your favourite pub to buy new lamps than getting the Army to get some new artillery.

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

#337

Post by vonmoltke »

ben_w wrote: post #54
vonmoltke wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those employers contract with our government for totally uncapped contract sums. No, they don't. Billing rates are fixed based on the experience and education levels of the people working on the contract. If the government says they won't pay more than, say, $250/hour for a security expert that is all the contractor is going to get, and that in turn limits the amount the contractor can make. Pay at government contr…

Assuming $250/hr is a real example, that’s $470k/year. Is that really a problem? (Assuming 40h per week, 47 weeks per year because systematic staff shortage and EU-duration holidays because that’s what I’m used to).

I pulled $250/hour out of my ass.

As for the rest, I am not talking about consulting-style contracts where a company is billing out people individually. I'm talking about contracts for development of bespoke systems, provide specific services, and so on.

When Raytheon gets a contract, they get it to build X. They need to account for the work, and the amount they get paid for labor is the number of recorded hours times the agreed-upon rate for that specific type of labor. There is frequently also a soft cap on the number of hours that can be billed in specific periods. The billed rate covers not only the employee salary but also benefits, overhead, and profit.

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

#338

Post by mcculley »

qmalzp wrote: post #7
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…

That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie. I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

> culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie

I was amused by this as I have worked in a lot of DoD environments where a tie is "overdressed" and makes others uncomfortable. Likewise for a lot of environments where the uniform is a hoodie.

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

#339

Post by vonmoltke »

fergie wrote: post #286
vonmoltke wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those employers contract with our government for totally uncapped contract sums. No, they don't. Billing rates are fixed based on the experience and education levels of the people working on the contract. If the government says they won't pay more than, say, $250/hour for a security expert that is all the contractor is going to get, and that in turn limits the amount the contractor can make. Pay at government contr…

I recently got roped into one of Palantir's recruitment events (because I am a pathetic sucker for free beer), and they were making a really big deal of how they billed by _outcome_ rather than _time_. At the time I just thought that they were trying to differentiate themselves from Accenture/KPMG/Deloitte/etc. but I see now that billing by outcome is also a nice way to get around billing caps on hourly rates.

I can't speak to Palantir's contracts but the government generally does not allow billing bespoke development efforts by outcome. Companies don't get to just decide how they are going to bill the government, at least not if they want the government to actually buy.
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