<story><title>NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-nsas-top-talent-is-leaving-because-of-low-pay-and-battered-morale/2018/01/02/ff19f0c6-ec04-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html?utm_term=.0388eaf826c3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snowwrestler</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s popular to say things like some government employees are &amp;quot;folks who can&amp;#x27;t hack it in civilian life,&amp;quot; but there&amp;#x27;s basically no evidence this is true.&lt;p&gt;First of all, let&amp;#x27;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 politics. Don&amp;#x27;t make the mistake of comparing the worst case of government to some idealized notion of private enterprise.&lt;p&gt;Second, take a look at what happens to people who do leave the government. Very often, their salaries go up in the private sector. This is especially true for specialists like the folks who work at the NSA. Seems like they can hack it.&lt;p&gt;Folks who have not worked for the government, or very close to it, have a hard time comprehending the fundamental differences between government and private enterprise. For one thing, when you work for the government, many rules of your job carry the force of law. Being too flexible might not just get you fired, it might get you prosecuted.&lt;p&gt;And there are &lt;i&gt;so many rules&lt;/i&gt;. I&amp;#x27;ll give you one example scenario: a person leaves their job, and a subordinate steps up, takes on their workload, and does great.&lt;p&gt;In a private company, you&amp;#x27;d just promote the subordinate. You already know they can do the work, you retain institutional knowledge, and it&amp;#x27;s easier to hire junior positions. Efficient and effective.&lt;p&gt;But in most federal agencies that would be illegal, as it might permit some form of corruption. The subordinate would have to keep doing the extra workload, while the supervisor requisitions a new position to replace the old one, and then runs a (highly regulated) open public application process. The subordinate can apply too, of course.&lt;p&gt;This is not because the supervisor is some terrible inflexible or dumb person. &lt;i&gt;The rules are just stricter and more burdensome in the government than in private enterprise.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it&amp;#x27;s easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules.&lt;p&gt;So: if you want people to act smarter in the government, you have to give them permission to act smarter. Firing has little to do with it. You have to give people the opportunity to try things and make mistakes in good faith.</text></item><item><author>eadmund</author><text>The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence.  Government work is for two types of people (and there&amp;#x27;s some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can&amp;#x27;t hack it in civilian life.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just a &amp;#x27;perception of gov&amp;#x27;t incompetence&amp;#x27;: it&amp;#x27;s a widespread phenomenon.  Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers.  Government work is a kind of kabuki theatre, in which everyone agrees to praise the emperor&amp;#x27;s new clothes and ignore the boy who points out that he&amp;#x27;s naked.&lt;p&gt;The unfortunate thing is that government work is really important: it &lt;i&gt;requires&lt;/i&gt; the best and the brightest, not the lazy and the uninspired.  Patriotism should of course be a &lt;i&gt;sine qua non&lt;/i&gt; for the civil service, but so should excellence.  We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality.&lt;p&gt;Raising rates without working to improve quality would mean getting mutton when we pay for lamb.</text></item><item><author>smallnamespace</author><text>It seems like it&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t you like that to be as secure as possible?).&lt;p&gt;This is another reason why we&amp;#x27;re going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of:&lt;p&gt;1. perception of gov&amp;#x27;t incompetence&lt;p&gt;2. normal people ask &amp;#x27;why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;3. gov&amp;#x27;t pay scales fall further behind private industry&lt;p&gt;4. rise in relative mediocrity&lt;p&gt;5. repeat&lt;p&gt;I think voters largely don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;work.chron.com&amp;#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;work.chron.com&amp;#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pc86</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s popular to say things like some government employees are &amp;quot;folks who can&amp;#x27;t hack it in civilian life,&amp;quot; but there&amp;#x27;s basically no evidence this is true.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever worked for government? I&amp;#x27;m a civilian contractor in a software architecture role to a public safety agency in a state government. Half the &amp;quot;senior application developers&amp;quot; haven&amp;#x27;t written code in 15 years and don&amp;#x27;t know what a unit test is. There are maybe 2-3 individual contributors for each manager. Not team lead, manager, and is in a $105-110k+&amp;#x2F;yr position that does annual reviews, on call scheduling, etc.&lt;p&gt;The floor I&amp;#x27;m on has 25-35 developers, DBAs, and BAs, and I can count on one hand the number of people who could get hired into a junior technical position at my employer. There are people who are unironically counting the days they have left until they can retire and draw their pension when they have more than 5 years left.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Anyone working the counter at your local Post Office could easily work the register at any grocery store in your town.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And they&amp;#x27;d take a 60% pay cut to do so, wouldn&amp;#x27;t they? Anyway, this is about folks in technical roles. Running a register and handing out stamps isn&amp;#x27;t particularly technical.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Second, take a look at what happens to people who do leave the government. Very often, their salaries go up in the private sector. This is especially true for specialists like the folks who work at the NSA. Seems like they can hack it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well that&amp;#x27;s sort of tautological, isn&amp;#x27;t it? &amp;quot;The people who get a civilian job are capable of getting a civilian job.&amp;quot; These folks are in the &amp;quot;Patriot, not inept&amp;quot; section of the diagram.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Firing has little to do with it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Firing has a lot to do. I&amp;#x27;ve spoken candidly about my colleagues here with higher ups in the agency. They&amp;#x27;ve openly bemoaned their inability to fire &lt;i&gt;anyone&lt;/i&gt;, especially the people who they know for a fact do nothing all day. Those people are soaking up hundreds of thousands, even millions a year, in taxpayer dollars, doing little work of substance or value, and preventing their positions from being filled by someone capable.</text></comment>
<story><title>NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-nsas-top-talent-is-leaving-because-of-low-pay-and-battered-morale/2018/01/02/ff19f0c6-ec04-11e7-9f92-10a2203f6c8d_story.html?utm_term=.0388eaf826c3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>snowwrestler</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s popular to say things like some government employees are &amp;quot;folks who can&amp;#x27;t hack it in civilian life,&amp;quot; but there&amp;#x27;s basically no evidence this is true.&lt;p&gt;First of all, let&amp;#x27;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 politics. Don&amp;#x27;t make the mistake of comparing the worst case of government to some idealized notion of private enterprise.&lt;p&gt;Second, take a look at what happens to people who do leave the government. Very often, their salaries go up in the private sector. This is especially true for specialists like the folks who work at the NSA. Seems like they can hack it.&lt;p&gt;Folks who have not worked for the government, or very close to it, have a hard time comprehending the fundamental differences between government and private enterprise. For one thing, when you work for the government, many rules of your job carry the force of law. Being too flexible might not just get you fired, it might get you prosecuted.&lt;p&gt;And there are &lt;i&gt;so many rules&lt;/i&gt;. I&amp;#x27;ll give you one example scenario: a person leaves their job, and a subordinate steps up, takes on their workload, and does great.&lt;p&gt;In a private company, you&amp;#x27;d just promote the subordinate. You already know they can do the work, you retain institutional knowledge, and it&amp;#x27;s easier to hire junior positions. Efficient and effective.&lt;p&gt;But in most federal agencies that would be illegal, as it might permit some form of corruption. The subordinate would have to keep doing the extra workload, while the supervisor requisitions a new position to replace the old one, and then runs a (highly regulated) open public application process. The subordinate can apply too, of course.&lt;p&gt;This is not because the supervisor is some terrible inflexible or dumb person. &lt;i&gt;The rules are just stricter and more burdensome in the government than in private enterprise.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it&amp;#x27;s easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules.&lt;p&gt;So: if you want people to act smarter in the government, you have to give them permission to act smarter. Firing has little to do with it. You have to give people the opportunity to try things and make mistakes in good faith.</text></item><item><author>eadmund</author><text>The problem is that we can (and should!) raise government pay scales, but we must &lt;i&gt;also&lt;/i&gt; make it easier to fire people (or manage them downwards) for incompetence.  Government work is for two types of people (and there&amp;#x27;s some overlap on the Euler diagram): patriots, and folks who can&amp;#x27;t hack it in civilian life.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s not just a &amp;#x27;perception of gov&amp;#x27;t incompetence&amp;#x27;: it&amp;#x27;s a widespread phenomenon.  Government employees tend to excel at working organisational politics (i.e., in serving their organisational customers) rather than in serving their taxpaying customers.  Government work is a kind of kabuki theatre, in which everyone agrees to praise the emperor&amp;#x27;s new clothes and ignore the boy who points out that he&amp;#x27;s naked.&lt;p&gt;The unfortunate thing is that government work is really important: it &lt;i&gt;requires&lt;/i&gt; the best and the brightest, not the lazy and the uninspired.  Patriotism should of course be a &lt;i&gt;sine qua non&lt;/i&gt; for the civil service, but so should excellence.  We should pay market rates, but we should pay them for market quality.&lt;p&gt;Raising rates without working to improve quality would mean getting mutton when we pay for lamb.</text></item><item><author>smallnamespace</author><text>It seems like it&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t you like that to be as secure as possible?).&lt;p&gt;This is another reason why we&amp;#x27;re going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of:&lt;p&gt;1. perception of gov&amp;#x27;t incompetence&lt;p&gt;2. normal people ask &amp;#x27;why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;3. gov&amp;#x27;t pay scales fall further behind private industry&lt;p&gt;4. rise in relative mediocrity&lt;p&gt;5. repeat&lt;p&gt;I think voters largely don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;work.chron.com&amp;#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;work.chron.com&amp;#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bonesss</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Why? Because everyone loves to believe the worst about the government, so it&amp;#x27;s easy to sell voters on the necessity of a shitload of burdensome rules.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s also a fundamental difference between you being cavalier with &lt;i&gt;your&lt;/i&gt; money, and me being cavalier with &lt;i&gt;our&lt;/i&gt; money.&lt;p&gt;Being tax payer funded changes accountability, investment horizons, and access to capital.   The CEO of Twitter gets to put whoever he wants in wherever, and eats the costs if it works bad, but to ensure responsible fiduciary practices with our collective wealth we, the taxpayers, demand less aggressive and efficient practices to limit corruption and incompetence.&lt;p&gt;This is a conscious social decision, to move slower and more carefully, and will hopefully be minimized with increasingly robust Civic Tech.  Alternative federal structures would historically point towards oligarchies and widespread corruption.</text></comment>