How do they convince all of them to stay and deal with the bureaucracy vs going to somewhere like google and having tons of benefits and likely double or triple the salary? Or starting their own company doing whatever they find interesting?
Most get recruited right out of college, many people take the job on strong recommendation from an advisor or professor. The perks aren't on Google scale, but the pay is better than you'd expect and the feeling of purpose and patriotism is something no valley company can really match.
Once you are on the inside, you have daily interactions with technology that is 10 years ahead of anything on the outside, which is really hard to walk away from. Not to mention you probably married someone else with a clearance along the way.
If you do want to leave... all your accomplishments, achievements, and awards are locked up in an ISR (internal staffing resume), and you end up sending potential employers a half page CV listing something stupid like "Senior Computer Operator, Defense Department, Ft. Meade" that no recruiter is smart enough to parse.
It appears most people, assuming its fresh out of college, would start out at GS-7 which at step 10 in the DC area would only be $54K. Assuming they were graduating with a Phd, they could be at GS-11 step 10 which would still only be 81K.
I understand the feeling of purpose but starting at half the salary and having a cap of 155K (assuming you move into senior management (GS-15 step 10)) vs somewhere like Google where you start at ~100K and the limit for technical people seems like its the 400K+ range seems like a tough sell. Also maybe its just stereotypes, but it seems like antisocial behavior which seems somewhat prevalent in excellent technical types wouldn't really mesh with the command structure there.
Oh yeah I know that but he implied that the salary gap wasn't that big. As far as I can tell it is. Sure defense contractors pay far more but that's not really working for the government anymore, you are in private industry and could just as easily go to someone that has use for people with clearances like Palantir or similar.
On a side note do the top tier/brilliant software engineers at Lockheed/et al make Google level salaries? Actual technical people, not those who have moved into management that is.
The cost of living is something you need to adjust for. In the Bay Area everyone gets tech company salaries. In the places you might live, everyone gets government salaries.
A lot of people like myself just don't want to work for Google, regardless of price.
The people I know at defense contractors in the Bay Area all make more than what you would at Google.
No it isn't. An iPhone and BMW cost the same thing in fly-over states that they cost in nice places. Maybe in a fly-over you're keeping 20% of your salary rather than 10% in the valley but the difference in salary probably means you still end up with more money in the valley.
I doubt he can say anything; it is all classified. However, it is almost certainly the case that the NSA's software is more advanced than anything publicly used:
1. They can read all the publicly available journals, so they are not going to be any worse
2. They hire top researchers in CS and math, and have internal, classified journals on their cutting edge work
"Being easily manipulated by bullshit is usually for the simple."
Not when you spend your first 20 years of life in school, being trained to follow instructions and being punished for questioning authority. Even very intelligent people can be turned into obedient workers.
I'm not sure I buy that. My entire education was the US public school system and I was never very patriotic. I'll admit I did feel a little bad about it though.
