<story><title>After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge</title><url>http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/395829446/after-snowden-the-nsa-faces-recruitment-challenge</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>schoen</author><text>I think people often underestimate it, but one of the biggest influences you can have -- I mean you, the HN reader! -- may be &lt;i&gt;cultural&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;People who work on building surveillance, people who have done it, people who may do it in the future, are your classmates in your CS program, your colleagues in your startup, your neighbors, your fellow conference attendees, &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Folks who work at NSA (and all the other places that don&amp;#x27;t get so much press) read xkcd religiously, they go to DEF CON, they have Linux and math t-shirts, they read HN, they are reading this thread right now, and all the other threads.&lt;p&gt;If people like you in the cultures that you&amp;#x27;re part of decide that surveillance is cool and exciting, that&amp;#x27;s more talent to take the billions of dollars and vast intellectual challenges of figuring out how to eliminate the vestiges of privacy. If they decide it&amp;#x27;s uncool and sketchy, that&amp;#x27;s more talent that goes elsewhere and does something else.&lt;p&gt;There are many overlapping subcultures in technology and they don&amp;#x27;t all understand or talk to each other that much, and plenty of technology employers are recruiting out of many different subcultures, so you can&amp;#x27;t assume that the culture you create in your circles will &lt;i&gt;control&lt;/i&gt; the path of technology. But the cultural attitudes of people in the tech world can have a powerful effect on what people decide is worth working on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>discardorama</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;I think people often underestimate it, but one of the biggest influences you can have -- I mean you, the HN reader! -- may be cultural.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; People who work on building surveillance, people who have done it, people who may do it in the future, are your classmates in your CS program, your colleagues in your startup, your neighbors, your fellow conference attendees, you.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exactly. I wish more people here would realise this. The powers-that-be &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; realize this, and are concerned about it. I remember when the &amp;quot;Fifth Estate&amp;quot; movie came out (which was critical of Assange), everyone in our company (a large tech company that I won&amp;#x27;t name) was given free tickets (and the afternoon off) to go see it. First time ever we were given such free tickets; I wonder why?</text></comment>
<story><title>After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge</title><url>http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/395829446/after-snowden-the-nsa-faces-recruitment-challenge</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>schoen</author><text>I think people often underestimate it, but one of the biggest influences you can have -- I mean you, the HN reader! -- may be &lt;i&gt;cultural&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;People who work on building surveillance, people who have done it, people who may do it in the future, are your classmates in your CS program, your colleagues in your startup, your neighbors, your fellow conference attendees, &lt;i&gt;you&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Folks who work at NSA (and all the other places that don&amp;#x27;t get so much press) read xkcd religiously, they go to DEF CON, they have Linux and math t-shirts, they read HN, they are reading this thread right now, and all the other threads.&lt;p&gt;If people like you in the cultures that you&amp;#x27;re part of decide that surveillance is cool and exciting, that&amp;#x27;s more talent to take the billions of dollars and vast intellectual challenges of figuring out how to eliminate the vestiges of privacy. If they decide it&amp;#x27;s uncool and sketchy, that&amp;#x27;s more talent that goes elsewhere and does something else.&lt;p&gt;There are many overlapping subcultures in technology and they don&amp;#x27;t all understand or talk to each other that much, and plenty of technology employers are recruiting out of many different subcultures, so you can&amp;#x27;t assume that the culture you create in your circles will &lt;i&gt;control&lt;/i&gt; the path of technology. But the cultural attitudes of people in the tech world can have a powerful effect on what people decide is worth working on.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Taek</author><text>I have a few friends who either work for the NSA or have worked for the NSA, and there&amp;#x27;s a stigma that follows them around. They get shamed for it (under the guise of humor), and people are clearly uneasy talking about things like drug use around said friends.&lt;p&gt;At least in my community, there&amp;#x27;s a strong negative pressure and stigma associated with working for certain parts of the government. And I guarantee that this impacts the NSA&amp;#x27;s ability to recruit from our talented pool of developers.</text></comment>