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
#2Not surprising. They’ve gone from having the perception of being the most elite organization for hackers to more of what is described in Good Will Hunting [1].
Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it.
Edit: although I bet a lot of it is the 4x-5x salary jump you can get in cyber security jobs by having the NSA on your resume. :-)
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#3It 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 also dealing with classified information and safeguarding all the data collection (e.g. if the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn't you like that to be as secure as possible?).
This is another reason why we're going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of:
1. perception of gov't incompetence
2. normal people ask 'why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?'
3. gov't pay scales fall further behind private industry
4. rise in relative mediocrity
5. repeat
I think voters largely don't realize how much competence actually costs in the market now and will vent about their justified perceptions of inequality by preventing equalization of pay between the gov't and private sectors, but that will paradoxically just make things worse in the long run as the private sector snaps up all the talent and we end up with a barely-functioning federal bureaucracy.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#4This 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.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#5It 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…
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Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#6It 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 weird thing is that they have lowered their standard to hire. I don't see any PhD positions advertised as much as now they want to just higher Undergraduates. Maybe they figured out that they don't need any more math and its all exploit engineering and data collection?
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#7It 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.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#8It 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…
> 2. normal people ask 'why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?'
The problem is that a normal tax payer doesn't interact with the R&D scientific side of the government. To them, their local BMV office (state govt) is representative of the entire (state+federal) government bureaucracy. When reports of government pay leading/lagging private industry come out, their first thought is that BMV worker, not the PhD engineer building mine sweeping robots.
The federal government doesn't make this any better by keeping NASA on GS tables. If NASA made the jump off the GS system (the Air Force and other DoD agencies have with lab-demo [1]), I think it would go a long way in separating scientist/engineer salaries from bureaucrat salaries. Once the separation is in place, you'd think it would be easier for the R&D pay tables to get higher bumps than the normal GS tables. OPM does have special pay tables for engineers at the lower end of the GS spectrum [2] so there is some precedent for giving scientists/engineers pay priority.
The talks of a federal pay freeze in 2019 have not helped morale at all for the younger S&Es I know. It's miserable to get a 1.85% COLA increase when your peers get a 7-10% raise. Patriotism only carries you so far and it seems like the NSA is figuring this out the hard way.
[1] http://www.wpafb.af.mil/Welcome/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/...
[2] https://apps.opm.gov/SpecialRates/2018/Table041401012018.asp...
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#9Not surprising. They’ve gone from having the perception of being the most elite organization for hackers to more of what is described in Good Will Hunting [1]. Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it. Edit: although I bet a lot of it is the 4x-5x salary jump you can get in cyber security jobs by having the…
> Perception is everything. I say this as someone who dreamt of working at the NSA for most of my high school years, but would now never even consider it.
One of the first three technical books I read was Bruce Schneier's "Applied Cryptography". I loved crypto and wanted to work in it.
Fast forward to my 4-year degree when looked around and assessed my potential career paths. NSA salaries weren't competitive to what I could make as a generic software engineer and the NSA was starting to get a bad reputation, and that was well before Snowden.
Fast forward to today and it's hard to see myself working as an FTE for the NSA under almost any circumstances, both practical and ideological.
Re: NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
#10The State of California recently initiated a reclassification project for IT positions, which includes evaluating salaries. They last reclassified positions in 1976...back when Elvis was alive (note: salaries have risen modestly since that time, thankfully).