One thing to keep in mind if you're interested in joining: the Digital Corps is for early career technologists, so if you have much experience in tech, you might want to apply to USDS (https://www.usds.gov) or 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov) instead.
Until the GS salary cap is something that doesn't look like a bad offer from a decade ago, it'll be extremely hard to swallow the pay cut of working for the feds.
I get the "public service" discount, but it'd have to be something like 30%, not 70%.
Former Fed for 10 years. Loved working for the Federal Government. I made 100k+ as a software engineer.
I left Federal Service in February 22 because the private sector doubled my salary.
My work is much easier in the private sector and I work a lot less. I’m getting paid double. I have a team now I can rely on. I didn’t have this in Gov.
Many Gov IT positions will go unfilled for months. I had one organization offer me 25k, fully remote to work there and I declined. Why? The amount of work is insane for a individual developer.
This idea that we shouldn’t pay people because they work in Government is insane. Peoples mistrust of government, but really it’s misguided.
I think government work culture is handicapping the salaries more than anything else. If a consultant comes in for a year at $200/hour, the government ends their contract when they're finished with them. When the government hires someone at $50k/year, they are stuck with that person pretty much as long as that person wants to continue working there. There's a common joke with civilian defense employees that you can't get fired without committing a felony. Government work culture has this maternal mentality where it feels the need to care for workers from cradle to grave. You can never get rid of low performers, there's no layoffs when priorities change, you just have the same people that need to be shifted around to do a mediocre job elsewhere. It's completely immune to outside market forces and that makes it literally impossible to compete with private sector salaries, who have no problem laying people off if a project doesn't work out.
Each person hired by the government is a massive, open-ended liability that can most likely never be fired, never be demoted or take a pay cut, regardless of changes in circumstances for the employer. I think the USDS was a huge step in the right direction by focusing on having "tours of duty" where the term of employment is fixed. I think the government should adopt that much more broadly if it wants to be competitive with the private sector.
USDS salaries are even more absurd relative to the responsibility of the positions. Think 75%+ compensation cut even at the top of the GS scale for the calibre of people they are looking for; and the primary benefits of a Federal job like a guaranteed pension and job security don't apply in a meaningful way.
You really have to be in it for the service aspect.
Outside of the federal gov, the benefits make it difficult decision to leave .gov mid-career. (Federal pensions are not as lucrative)
It is rewarding work, especially if you’re self-motivated as there’s always new interesting work. But the salaries paid at tech companies are so nuts it’s difficult to ignore.
The place I used to work at has attrited about 30% of staff between burnout from 18 hour COVID work to greener pastures. One guy I worked with went from $125k to $500k. Assuming the tech economy doesn’t implode, even the awesome pension and benefits just aren’t worth that much.
I think there's an argument to be made for the networking benefits of government and military jobs. Having the experience and connections they bring may open doors that purely commercial employment does not.
Most governments have this problem. I've thought about this a lot in the Australian context and think the best way of solving the problem would be to hire on a 5 year contract that doesn't auto renew by default so you have to stay in shape for the job or look around for new options at year 4 - 4.5 and plan your exit.
In addition to this, I would also reform certain benefits that government employee's get such as long service leave after 10 years. I'd make it available at a pro-rata rate from 2.5 years onwards so people can either bank it up or start using it earlier.
I feel like these two things alone would create a lot of flexibility for government agencies and departments that would allow them to take people on for serious work, over serious timelines but not be burdened by the threat of a bad hire that will stick around forever.
"You can never get rid of low performers, there's no layoffs when priorities change, you just have the same people that need to be shifted around to do a mediocre job elsewhere."
I don't think this is unique to government, these are commonly a characteristic of any organization of large size. The larger the organization the higher likely hood it has these problems. It also isn't a matter of can't but unwillingness to do so by those with the reasonability to because it is extra work or would require an uncomfortable social interaction.
> There's a common joke with civilian defense employees that you can't get fired without committing a felony.
That seems strange in the context of defense since the government has a high degree of latitude in revoking or refusing security clearances. There are certain appeal mechanisms, but there is still a lot of room for the government to keep the actual evidence secret and a lot of deference to the governments opinion.
At any rate, it could take as a little as talking to someone from the wrong country, or a crime much less serious than a felony to lose one and therefore one's job.
There are strong network effects at the level where clearances are actually hard to obtain, though. People leave government service (both military and civilian) to start consultancies and other businesses that sell products and services to the organization(s) they formerly worked for. Both they and the government workers buying their goods are incentivized to build strong relationships: the former so they can easily win contracts and the latter so they can continue to receive and expand their budgets/fiefdoms.
NY State has non-unionized positions called MC (Management/Confidential). My understanding is that it's sorta like contract work... you are "appointed" on a yearly or session basis. It's not a panacea though... if you look up kaloyeros, you'll see the dark side. It's disheartening how a single person in a particular position can bog down and kill the organization. It's not an easy problem to solve.
Partnership for Public Service, a much heralded public/private partnership between MasterCard, Workday (sp?), MSFT that interviews and places cybersec grads into GS roles for 2+ years and then preferred interviews into private sector, were insisting:
GS-7, and max, maybe, but would be hard, GS-11. Experiences of selectees pushing back on that salary due to how low it was vs. the market ($30-$50k) with requirements to live on DC or similar were met with almost disbelief and offense from that org when candidates pushed back, because the program was for "new grads."
Knew someone who turned it down and took a private sector interview/offer going on concurrently for $145k remote, despite providing offer/pay stubs to try at help the GS/PfP teams meet the on-paper salary even remotely close.
I’m guessing that this was actually a 7/9/11 position, with automatic annual promotions (apprentice, journeyman, master, iirc).
Still… that’s really low for someone who can get a decent tech job in the private sector.
Note that an ambitious person with the right skill set could probably be GS-15 in the DC area in their late 20s, and they would hit the GS salary cap soon thereafter. I’m not necessarily saying that’s a good thing (total comp still low), but I just wanted to throw that out there.
It’s rather hard to get hired in a spot over GS 11/12. It happens but it’s not common. From 13 on I believe promotions are in front of a panel. Getting hired as a 15 would usually imply the hire-e was recruited.
I meant that a motivated and skilled person who enters federal service at the age of 22 in a 7/9/11 position could probably be GS 15 in their late 20s in tech in the DC area.
You’re absolutely right that getting directly hired into a higher level is much tougher, although not impossible if you are connected.
14s and 15s are relatively easy to access in a few fields in the DC area at a young age (tech and contracting are the two fields I know people who have fast-tracked in the GS system in DC). Anywhere else… not so much. Those are usually mid-career or late-career positions outside of DC area.
I worked for state government, in a very red state (read, does not like to spend on government) for my first “real” job at around $37k, circa 5-6 years ago.
This gets to the heart of a contradiction in red state philosophy which is actually quite hard to solve, at least in my mind. On the one hand, it's understandable if someone doesn't trust the government to spend their money wisely, and if they use that as a justification for voting for smaller government budgets. I get that part completely. Governments have little if any internal motivation to spend your money wisely. If anything, they have a vested interest in spending 100% of their budgets, regardless of whether it's spent wisely, so that their budgets don't decrease in the following fiscal year.
At the same time, "if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys". If red states don't pay competitive salaries in competitive fields, their citizens shouldn't be surprised if they end up scraping the bottom of the barrel to source their public servants. The service they experience while interfacing with this dreck then further reduces their faith in government, and the whole thing becomes a vicious circle.
Again, this is a hard problem to solve. I don't know what the answer is, but it seems to be rooted in a mis-alignment of incentives in government spending.
I agree that this is a problem, but I don't think it is that simple in practice. My personal observation moving from a blue state to a red state a few years ago is that the quality of the service I get from the state and local government is drastically better in the red state. I don't think I can read very much into that, since it's a minuscule sample size and every state and municipality is different. But it's striking to me how much nicer the employees are, how much better the services are, and how much less apathetic everyone seems to be, despite what I assume has to be lower pay.
I don't agree with the policies of most of the local elected officials where I live now, but that is more about bigger picture items. As far as day-to-day operation of the government, I can't say with a straight face that my old, deep blue, west coast community did things anywhere near as well as my new red home state.
Given that you don't like the policies of your elected officials, but you enjoy the higher quality of services you seem to be getting, and appear to be drawing a relationship between the two, how will you be voting next election?
Yes, I don't know what would work. I often like to bring up Japanese trains/subways which are privately owned and AFAIK the reason it works is because the train companies own buildings and land around their stations so they have a positive feedback loop, the more people ride their trains, the more their buildings get used, the more their land is worth, and visa versa. ~10 or so of the famous buildings in Shibuya are owned by the Tokyu Corp including the famous one with the giant screen, the 109 building (10 + To, 9 = Kyu), and the new 50+ story one directly over the station. The also own the building Google moved to. They own grocery stores at probably around 50% of the stations on their lines.
Other examples include any building you see named Atre (https://www.atre.co.jp/) which are shopping centers above JR train stations owned by JR.
I have no idea what the equivalent would be for government IT, nor am I saying all government services should be privatized. I do agree though that it's about incentives.
Even in Japan people complain about government construction projects where the incentive is always to spend all the money so near the end of the fiscal period a bunch of random unneeded projects start to make sure all the money is spent for fear that budgets might be lower the next year if they don't use all the money.
Reminds me of the PJ O'Rourke quote: "The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."
That isn't a contradiction. The philosophical position is that the government shouldn't be sucking good employees out of the private sector.
The strategy that follows is coherent and consistent - there won't be an attempt to hire great employees, the government won't have great employees and will be run appropriately for those realities.
The 'contradiction' only appears if you assume that secretly people believe that they can find good politicians and public servants even if their political opponents can't.
The actual "philosophy" is the privatization of government functions. Concepts like "libertarianism" and "government is inefficient" are constructed to push this agenda. In the US this force can be so destructive that it willingly starves the government to prove its inefficiency and pushes services to the private sector, which is oh-so-well-alligned with its incentives (healthcare, owning infrastructure and other natural monopolies).
If the Digital Corps can't get it done with people who can only make 25k a year, I guess we need some free market consultants for 200$/hour!
Why do you assume that these ideologies are "constructed" in order to support a pre-existing agenda, rather than the (imo) much more likely possibility that the ideology is legitimately held and the "agenda" flows naturally from that belief?
The real reason is that don't want to pay a lowly programmer more than a lofted manager and they have a stack of 15 managers on the project with the most junior one making 40k. Its a cultural thing within the government itself.
Given the tone of the quoted comment, I expect that was a typo for 250k. IE. They offered me 250k fully remote, but I turned it down anyway because it would be so much work.
> This idea that we shouldn’t pay people because they work in Government is insane. Peoples mistrust of government, but really it’s misguided.
Never worked in Federal (Federal Contracting... don't get me started) - but I did work for years in a regional water service. We had about a 50% haircut, probably worse and with worse work-life setup in any regard.
Easily 1/3 of our department were do-nothing folks skating to retirement. I'm not opposed to paying well, but for any policy proposal to do so we'd really have to find a way of cleaning house, finding and retaining good talent, and working to rid the place of folks not only "phoning it in" but truly abusing their employer.
I didn't think it could be that bad, and then I went looking. Apparently to get a pay level that aligns with typical base salary in tech for senior level IC positions, you'd have to be an agency director of a large agency or in the Cabinet. And that doesn't even take into account losing RSUs and smaller bonus payouts.
This actually goes a long way in my mind of explaining why the US government does so much contracting of people for work as well. It's probably not possible in the current legal framework to pay high quality tech workers a fair compensation for the market, but they could hire a firm as contractors for a project and that firm could pay fair compensation. I just wish more firms were honest rather than milking the government.
There are a few ways to get an IC role that pays more than the GS salary cap, but they are fairly rare. Some jobs have an "ST" level that is classified above GS for senior individual contributors in scientific or technical roles, and some agencies (like the CFPB) have their own pay scales that go beyond what the GS schedule allows.
I only worked with one computer scientist in an ST role during my two years at USDS. He was an ACM Fellow and had a PhD from MIT, so it's not something anyone should expect to get just because they had "senior" in their title at a FAANG.
Contractors don't have the same statutory caps on how much an individual role can pay, but salaries are part of contract bids, and a bid can be rejected if an individual salary is too high.
Yup, to emphasize, this is "we want to hire linus torvalds for a specific project" level exception, not "we'll be handing these out to line programmers because comp is higher in that sector" level exception.
You won't be getting one of those unless you're exceptionally well-known enough that an average practitioner in your field would perk up their ears when someone mentions your name as a potential hire.
And really, for the tier of people that would be getting those exceptions, that's still not a great rate of pay and they'd still be taking huge paycuts to work for the government. Like ok, we can get $300k a year for Linus but... he can walk into fifty companies and drop off a resume, cold, asking for triple that and get offers before he's back to his desk.
> I just wish more firms were honest rather than milking the government.
Generally speaking, they aren't.
I remember commenting (years ago) on here on an article about the government paying a million dollars for what amounted to basically a Wordpress installation that anyone here could do in ~half an hour.
Maybe a million dollars sounds like a lot, but to those who've actually _worked_ as a government contractor, it seems fairly reasonable.
Consider:
* You need to have past relevant qualifications for other government agencies, so the only people who can install blogs for the government are those who have installed blogs for the government. If nobody has ever installed a blog for the government, they'll leverage the closest relevant experience they can.
* You need to have a contracts attorney on staff for the duration of the contract, and since you likely don't want to fire them every few weeks, that's a year's commitment at (conservatively) $200k
* You need to have a physical address -- weirdly, the government isn't keen on home addresses and/or 100% distributed teams
* You'll need to hire a software architect (maybe 2) to justify the changes needed to __competitors who also likely placed bids on your contract and didn't win but who also have existing contracts managing the database, network, etc__
* Those competitors want you to fail so that the contract will get rebid so that they can try again, now armed with the information you presented them
* Nobody in the government wants your project to succeed, and will actively try to get it to fail quietly
* If it ever seems as though your project might achieve success, every stakeholder will want to jump on board your ship -- not in an effort to sink it, but so they can make their mark on the project and have their names associated with a potential success
* It takes decision-by-committee to get even the smallest thing done, and a Wordpress blog is comprised of mostly small things. The smaller the thing, the bigger the committee. (I once had to bill the government 24 man hours at a median rate of $100 an hour because the CTO of the agency pulled 4 of us in a meeting for 6 hours to "discuss" which header background we preferred -- one was a winter shot that allowed visibility of the building, the other was a summer shot where trees obscured it... the winter shot felt dead and colorless, but the summer shot obscured their fancy new $130 million building)
Ironically the amount of oversight and red-tape is so intense that it becomes self-defeating. The only companies who are capable of successfully bidding and executing the contract are the exact sorts of companies you don't want winning the contract. The small, agile team full of domain experts isn't going to be able to jump the hoops to win the bid - they don't even have a contracting lawyer / combat-disabled veteran owner / etc.
I don't like the idea of my tax money getting wasted by Lockheed or Accenture on a failed project with no recourse, any more than anyone else, but I'm not convinced that micromanaging the bidding and execution actually resolves that. At a certain point you're chasing away the talent and selecting for the players that are willing to play your games rather than the best ones to do the job.
The way I always viewed it was that the USG just was willing to pay a large amount of money to sit in meetings and talk to contract officers, and if that's what they want to spend their money on, fine, we'll provide that service. Which is exactly why everything is expensive and nothing gets done.
It's the contracting version of "nothing is getting done, let's add a daily meeting to make sure that productivity remains high". At a certain point you'll chase away the 20% who are getting the work done, but you'll always have the 1xers and 0.1xers who are content to sit in meetings and take home a check every 2 weeks. If you keep doing it - that's what you'll be selecting for, and you'll end up with the Dead Sea effect but with contractors instead of employees. Which is where we are today, it's a toxic environment and the only thing that can survive are organisms that are specially adapted for it.
Agreed completely, and many times the contracting owner is a figurehead with zero job responsibilities who just takes down a grand salary so that the contractor employing him is eligible for more contract opportunities.
I think you better gave examples of government being inefficient. But also I was to add that there are places that do milk the government. Both of these can be true. It's not homogeneous. But you're right that we should be more nuanced and it's good to have an insider perspective.
For a more funny example of your point, I like The Pentagon Wars' Bradley tank evolution
This got me reading about the history of 'armored fighting vehicles', and eventually this early model, which I still can't stop laughing at: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Simms_Mo... It, uh, certainly can't be faulted for its complexity.
That's actually kind of a brilliant design given the time period, once you look at other designs of the era that either have no idea what they actually want to accomplish, or try to do everything and so succeed at nothing at all, or both.
Oh, tell me about it. I think that's the kind of innovation that's happening now with the drone warfare you see in Ukraine. People tell me that "Russia has 100k tanks to Ukraine's 10k", and I think: those high-level numbers do not matter; what matters is what happens when the two meet on the battlefield. If one $50k drone can consistently take out millions of dollars of equipment, it doesn't matter how expensive or numerous that equipment was, or how good it would be at fighting some hypothesised similar adversary.
The superpowers of the world have gone through several successive 'generations' of military technology without really having a war in which to use them. (Just skirmishes with pre-industrial desert and jungle people, and the occasional mismatched murky proxy war with export-grade technology.) These mega-elaborate aircraft carriers and fighter jets and tanks are like radar-enabled cavalry, and will be taken out with drones and handheld rockets, and whichever modern-day Kroll is clever enough to strategise will make an absolute, uh, killing.
As someone that works in ML, this is actually what is concerning to me. Everyone is talking about AGI (artificial general intelligence) but I don't think that's something of huge concern yet. We have already entered a world where you can create drone "mines". It is cheap and easy to build a drone that can have an explosive payload, hide, and automatically seek out enemy combatants or vehicles. (Note that drones are pretty difficult to detect) The tech is a little difficult now and requires oversight if you don't want to violate international war laws, but it is definitely possible (and rapidly getting better).
> If one $50k drone can consistently take out millions of dollars of equipment, it doesn't matter how expensive or numerous that equipment was, or how good it would be at fighting some hypothesised similar adversary.
Because this isn't true anymore. It is really a $1k drone being able to take out millions of dollars of equipment with a 70+% success rate. That's a real game changer.
We don't need AGI to for ML to be dangerous. We just need people to use existing algorithms dangerously and/or recklessly.
It's amazing (in the most uncharitable sense of the word) that a bunch of private sector office workers who joke about how relatable The Office is don't realize that stuff like Pentagon Wars (for feds) and Parks and Rec (for state and local government) are also basically documentaries for their respective industries.
I could mortar the cognitive dissonance together and build a wall.
So did you go with the summer shot or winter shot?
I can understand having the sentiment:
> Nobody in the government wants your project to succeed, and will actively try to get it to fail quietly
But I actually think Hanlon's razor applies. I think individuals do want your project to succeed but there are often systemic issues that make it seem otherwise. These systemic issues are not easily affected by individuals.
There are many situations where the government isn't managing work well but because that fiscally helps the contractor, the contractor works - hard - to keep the status quo in place. That is to the detriment of all of the other companies that could do it more efficiently.
This is also why we need strong technologists in government to ensure the contracts are written correctly from the start.
This is one of the great accomplishments of the "small government" efforts in politics: all the money leaves the system. Imagine a business that losses all it's money, every year, by design.
The current system also incentivize quid pro quo via revolving door for high level government employees. You accept under market pay with the government, but expect to be repaid for favors to the governed entities by taking a job with them afterwards. Or selling your services to them. Or getting a niece or nephew hired. Etc.
My current position was put to bid as a contract from a school district.
They tried to hire the position directly, but couldn’t fill the position w/a qualified candidate at their salary bands.
So they sent it out as a ‘service’ and approved a contract for fulfillment that was more than triple the salary band, to pay for my salary and the overhead the private company is incurring to staff the position.
If they’d been willing to break the ‘band’ and compete w/the private market directly they could of spent double instead of triple, but then they’d have to figure out how to deal w/the union and non-union staff since the salaries are public record…
Right. There's literally no-one paid by the Federal government that makes the same as your average Google L6, according to what I can see; and to get to that kind of a level you need to be e.g. Joe Biden, Tony Fauci.
Unfortunately the GS salary bands are pretty below market for everything and the quality of people that is resulting in shows.
I recently got offered a GS-11 (with promotion to GS-12 after a year) position and it's just not worth it. This wasn't for tech either; this was for a rather odd skill set.
I was offered a GS-15 a while ago and even that was a lot lower than a starting FAANG salary for a new grad. I would happily work for the USDS or a TLA for a 20% pay cut, but the process of getting anywhere near that is a nightmare. It seems like the path is generally to work your way to GS-12 or higher, then quit and become a contractor for the same group.
Essentially yes. Lockheed already has jobs posted for higher pay than was on offer for that skillset and has asked me if I'd be interested in talking to them.
Since that skill is odd but required by every single contractor that does classified work there's a whole lot of opportunity out there I wasn't aware of until recently. The lack of quality people doing it in the GS ranks now makes a whole lot more sense to me. Prior to me understanding that it was just an annoyance.
GS-15 salaries top out at $176,300 in the DC metro area. (Most (all?) USDSers get exactly that salary.) That is certainly more than I made as a new grad at a FAANG!
You wouldn't get hired at GS-15 as a new hire. You might reach that after 20-30 years, and you'll need to get a Ph.D.
Also, DC Metro is an extremely high CoL area (not SF levels but probably around Seattle levels). Normal GS-15 pay is $112k-146k and you'd trend towards the bottom of that in most areas.
So, $112k average at the peak of your career, with a required Ph.D. More realistically as a new hire you might be GS-12 (which only takes a master's) which is $68k-89k, so you make $68k in most areas. That's certainly not great as far as competitiveness with tech salaries, that's pretty close to the bottom of the market these days for a new hire working entirely remote, not even highly-desirable talent.
You do not require a masters for a GS-12. Many entry-level engineering positions (hard or soft) have a target grade of GS-12, so if you do your job at all you'll be there in a few years. If you're even slightly serious you'd likely snag a GS-13 position within 5-10 years. If you're in a low-COL area, ~110k is reasonably competitive. Also keep in mind that you're working 40-hour weeks -- none of this exploitative 60+-hour week death march nonsense.
USDS may only get away with this because their roles are term-limited excepted service, but pretty much everyone comes in as a GS-15-10, regardless of education.
Also the Executive Office of the President can get away with a lot of things offering special incentives and pay rates and what not, but they can't go above the GS 15 step 10 cap for non SES/ES employees because that is statutory.
I should have said starting TC, not salary. When I looked at it years ago, GS-15 salaries capped out at the average salary of a Google L3.
It looks like it may be a little above L3 salary today (moving in the right direction!), but still far below L3 TC, and a Google L3 job is not even remotely comparable to a GS-15 job.
IMO if the government had a separate band of GS pay for highly competitive job markets which paid 50-100k more, they would be a lot more successful.
Security Manager. I deal in Personal, Physical, Communication, and IT Security as an Active Duty member, and since I'm retiring they wanted me to shift to a Personal/Physical SecMan that handles thousands of clearances and multiple TS assets spread around a couple sites.
If you're a software developer, and your goal is to maximize income, then yeah, don't work for the federal government. If your goal is to do meaningful work that has a tangible positive impact on average people's lives, while being paid a fair living wage, then these jobs are unbeatable.
I did a stint in the government working for a team that eventually had a lot people go over to 18F. I joined on hoping to see exactly what you describe, willing to take a pay cut for meaningful work.
My experience was very different than yours has been. My impression was that it was largely bureaucrats looking to further their own position in the massive bureaucracy. It was virtually impossible to do any "meaningful work". The handful of people passionate about doing good for the world were constantly blocked by other bureaucrats who were only interested in maintaining (or expanding) their tiny island of power they had accrued.
I vividly recall needing data from another agency to help solve a problem we were working on and being told that it would be virtually impossible to get any cooperation because it would make them look bad if we succeeded using their data. My entire time as a Federal employee was filled with similar such moments. All of the work I did, which ended up proving some seriously privacy vulnerabilities in another project, was dismissed because people didn't want to hear it. The experience forever changed my view on government.
The plus side is I did meet some fantastic, although terminally frustrated, people while I was there. It is a great place to meet people who have similar ambitions.
For someone looking for meaningful work I would advise staying far away from the federal government.
Only guy I knew who ever worked for the government quit in disgust after 6 months because of how little was getting done, so I don't think it's particularly good for that either.
Here's a cynical take: you could also be a government contractor, work on those same meaningful projects that have tangible positive impacts, etc., and make $200 an hour.
Healthcare.gov is the project that kicked off USDS (because the site was so horrible and the contractors charged billions). That site impacts millions of lives.
There’s lots of important government projects. I actually think the rate of BS/meaningful may be higher in government than private given the number of cow clicker/BS-type projects.
Congressional members (House and Senate) earn $174k/year, which is rather less than leadership of comparable scope is paid in private industry.
Of course, having powerful people who control trillions of spending be not be very well paid themselves above the table has...myriad exciting ways to go wrong.
As a taxpayer I'd rather government leadership paid extremely well and heavily fund GSA audits to ensure strong oversight (and jail time) for those that abuse the position. Fun fact: GSA saves taxpayers $10 for every $1 spent.
Are member of congress leaders? Which people do they lead? They have teams of assistants but they're not huge teams. They seem more like individual contributors.
Insider trading is probably the least perk, if one wanted to abuse their government authority and access. There are myriad ways to go much bigger with corruption.
NASA federal salaries are on the higher end of the GS scale because we tend to recruit better talent, and some of our key locations are in cost high areas, near Washington DC, or Silicon Valley. Likewise with our contractors & consultants.
However, we've been losing lots of talent recently to fortune 500 companies that poach our federal talent, and our contractor talent.
200% increases in compensation are not unusual for those leaving NASA federal, or contracting gigs.
Yeah federal pay is rough and probably the primary reason I avoid government jobs, at least for the time being.
I don’t do anything remotely exciting, difficult or demanding for a company you’ve never heard of, yet I make as much as one of the higher paid NASA positions I’ve seen requiring extremely niche experience you will only get from and full of places. Probably more when you consider CoL and such.
Similarly, I saw a position with everyone’s favorite three letter agency. The job looked really cool, and required some modestly niche skillsets and experience in security, reverse engineering, exploit development. Only issue: the starting salary was very rough, particularly for the DC area.
The other thing is just the bureaucratic nature of the pay scales. I’ve seen jobs asking for a PhD or significantly more in YoE that probably requires because that’s what the GS requirements were. I’m not even sure if the usual “don’t interpret job requirements literally” is of any value. After all we’re talking about government agencies. I’d also hope agencies have become to relax degree requirements on certain types of positions but I doubt it. I was told for years, the federal government probably wouldn’t hire me without one.
All that being said, I’d probably be willing to hop on over if the work was really interesting and the pay wasn’t complete atrocious.
My project lead when I was a NASA contractor took a remote offer somewhere in the ~$350k range, which I think must've been at least a 200% raise, if not more. I don't believe he would have left if the agency were able to at least meet him halfway, but that's obviously not possible right now. NASA would save money in the long run by paying market rate imo, it's such a loss of talent and experience when any random startup with a solid funding round can poach the cream of the crop for a few hundred grand.
> Gov spending on salary and perks is really hard for congress to swallow (except for their own salaries).
It's just the opposite. With a few rare exceptions, a federal employee cannot make more than a congressional salary. And since they make just over 174k year, that's the highest a GS-15 can make (after the mandated raises). Hence, GS-15s start at 172.6k.
As someone not in FAANG, I was super-interested in their remote option, since it'd have been much more like that 30% cut (for me) than a 70% cut—until I saw the weird "term of service" limitation. Half the point of taking a government job is the retirement, and stable health benefits et c. over the long haul! Taking that out of the equation ruins the value prop.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but I'm seeing this as an analog to the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps (maybe the name is swaying me there?). Something specifically for people right at the beginning of their career to have an opportunity to perhaps do something meaningful. And once they have that experience on their resume, it'll help them do the next thing.
Plenty of people move from USDS to permanent civil service roles, but they do need to plan for it and apply. Your time in USDS counts towards government retirement benefits, but you can't stay in that particular position for longer than 4 years.
Ah, the language on the descriptions back when I was looking at it made it seem like you had to leave when it was up, and didn't make it look like transferring was a possibility (wouldn't you take a big cut, moving somewhere else, or do you keep your USDS GS rating?).
Everyone I saw moving to other government roles were going to equivalent or higher ratings. I'm actually not sure what the rules are if you were to go from a GS-15 position to something lower.
The max GS15 salary is like $175k and there’s lots of government benefits. Max GS14 is $150. Max GS13 is $125.
And there’s lots of benefits (23 paid days off, 13 sick every year), pension, etc etc.
This won’t compete with FAANG or with HCO, but in most areas of the country (or full remote) this is fine for a programmer’s pay.
I hear the complaint that fed doesn’t pay for tech and I think that’s not true.
The BLS has median programmer pay $90k in 2020 [0] so government pay is certainly competitive. This is median too, while the lowest possible GS13 pay is $100k.
Without locality pay, which varies by locality, a GS15 max salary is $146,757. The max GS14 is $124,764 and the max GS13 is $105,579. [0]
The 23 paid days off per year is only after 15 years of service. Someone new, without prior military service, would start at 13 paid days off per year.
The pension, for those hired after 1984 is roughly 1% x 3 yr high salary x years worked. (If you your three year high salary was $100,000 and you worked for 30 years, you get a pension of $30,000 per year.) You would also collect Social Security. (Feds hired prior to 1984 have a much higher pension and don't get Social Security.)
15 years of service gives you 26 days of leave (normal paid time off) plus 13 additional days of sick leave.
If you retire at 62, you get 1.1% per year of your high-three salary for the annuity. This is in addition to whatever contributions you make to TSP, which are matched to 5%.
"Computer Programmer" is basically an obsolete job classification at this point. You want "Software Developers, Quality Assurance Analysts, and Testers"[1], which has 10 times as many people and a much higher average salary.
> The max GS15 salary is like $175k and there’s lots of government benefits. Max GS14 is $150. Max GS13 is $125.
They are actually higher than that based on locality pay, here are FY22 numbers.
DC for example:
GS12 Max $116,788
GS13 Max $138,868
GS14 Max $164,102
GS15 Max $176,300*
Silicon Valley by comparison:
GS12 Max $126,742
GS13 Max $150,703
GS14 Max $176,300
GS15 Max $176,300*
> I hear the complaint that fed doesn’t pay for tech and I think that’s not true.
While the federal govt does pay, in many cases the federal pay is not as competitive as it needs to be for high demand specialties that require a good amount of skills.
Recently I was talking with an executive about building a software security capability within our engineering division for the space domain.
Trying to hire great talent capping out @176k is simply not competitive with all the local FAANGs and startups doing specialized software security work in the aerospace/aeronautics domain.
From my experience, GS14 and above roles are allocated in limited numbers to each program/branch/division. Of course, many other companies do this to some degree, and one obviously can rotate in the government. However, not every program will have GS14, nevermind GS15 opportunities.
GS is also (like all companies, etc, etc) adjusted per locality, so not every GS13 step 4 will be the same.
From my experience, ICs in technical fields like programming, data science, and cyber get hired in as Gs13-15 in non-supervisory roles.
Yes, GS is adjusted for locality and it’s up and down. But $100k is the minimum for GS-13, step 1 in most localities and is higher in high cost of living areas like DC, NY, etc.
But if you want a programmer job in government it’s not a big pay cut unless you’re a superstar working for Google or something. If it’s a decision of random Fortune 500 or government, government will usually pay more, AND have more benefits and stability.
I am in a HCOL area on the locality chart :/ We get hired in at $70k and this seems rather common among my peers + contractors, so I don't exactly know how someone is getting $100k at the door. People who have been here ~5+ years are GS13 or equivalent. However, most of us aren't and I don't see any upward trends, as our GS14/+ slots are being slowly retired/transferred away. There seems to be a large age gap between the newer engineers and the older ones. Sounds silly, I know. I am wondering if most of us are going to wander off then come back for retirement? Or is the program doomed in the long run?
Thanks. I think I just needed to see it from someone outside of my program.
I live in a landlocked state and make >$200k with <5 YOE, as do 5 of my friends (all different companies). None of us work for FAANG. I think you are significantly underestimating private compensation at most companies that sell software.
That’s a normal (and still very good) salary for devs working in quieter metro areas.
I left the Bay Area five years ago. My salary is now $100k, a substantial pay cut from my SF years. But quality of life is soooooo much better here, in so many ways. It’s worth the drop in pay.
Yeah, as someone whose salary has been around that amount recently (though at the moment it’s slightly higher) 110k is not at all poorly paid. You can have a very high standard of living for that much in a lot of places in the US; I’m in Philadelphia and consider myself very well off making that much.
Philly suburbs are quite expensive for housing. It seems about $100k to support a family is decent but not "very well off". I image that extra $10k could make a big difference. A single person making that (or a dual income family around $200k) would certainly be well off.
I was single at the point when I was making around that much so that’s probably the only fair comparison I can make. You’re right that a family on just that income would be tighter. Between my girlfriend and I right now we’re definitely not making $200k though and I still feel pretty comfortable. No kids yet though :)
Philly suburbs can be expensive (although that’s not universally the case) but Philly proper is relatively affordable.
I guess it depends on where in Philly and the suburbs you want to live, and it's tough to go apples to apples given that most of the suburbs are detached sfh with a yard and most of the stuff in the city is attached and have little to no yard.
In either case, it's $300k+ to be in a decent neighborhood for about a 1500sqft house. Cheaper than many cities, but more than smaller cities or rural areas. And anything with land is outrageous ($500k+). And property taxes can be high.
It really seems to be a tale of two cities. On one hand, housing can be affordable for the people making six figures, but on the other we have the highest extreme poverty rate for any big US city (not sure if that's still the case, but was a few years ago).
Yes, that’s true - it’s not affordable for a lot of people who live here, because a lot of people who live here are very low-income. Seeing $100k described as “poorly paid” felt weird for just that reason though. By the standards of just about everyone I know outside of my cushy tech job, $100k from a single job is extremely privileged.
Slight aside on yards, front yards are typically out of course, but I was astonished when I visited one of my coworkers in South Philly and he had a sizeable backyard behind his rowhome. Don’t know how common that is, satellite imagery is too low-res to tell, but I see a decent number that look like they’re 1/3 of the lot!
Also, perhaps my standards are skewed - walkability and bikeability are pretty important to me, which means I’d want smaller lot sizes anyway. Big SFHs on big expensive lots aren’t so appealing as a result :)
Yeah, I agree that $110k is decent and the median for devs.
Most of the yards are small - a couple hundred sqft. So maybe we have different preferences for yards. I have fruit trees, a garden, bees, playset, etc. That takes up a lot of room. The garden alone is about the size of many of the yards I've been to in Philly.
Yeah, walkability isn't great here. I don't feel safe biking on any road. There are quite a few cyclists around though, so it can be done (bunch of stores within 2-4 miles).
I hate how expensive land is around here. I'd love 10+ acres. Rural areas are much cheaper.
That’s the direct tradeoff you make though - if you want to be near other people (which typically also means being where the jobs + interesting things are), you get less space. If you want more space, you can go live somewhere rural, but everyone else around you also gets more space, so there won’t be much nearby.
If you want a lot of space and to be near a lot of people, you’ll have to pay more. You’re basically paying to have more than your neighbors at that point.
(That aside, if you want that much land, why haven’t you moved to a more rural area then?)
Developer salaries are very bimodal (or even trimodal). Working for a contractor pays like shit, and pre-COVID many non-coastal locations were also significantly worse than average. That group is just trying to churn out contracts at minimum-cost and that means squeezing wages too, generally they're not willing to go up, they'll take what they can get at fixed costs and modulate the work they take on to match staffing. It was usually $50-60k 10 years ago and $75k ish territory nowadays I think. And sure after 5-10 years you might be making closer to $80k or $90k but that's still under-market for basically a senior dev.
Then you've got "market-competitive" wages that actually needs to get stuff done on a fixed timeline and are willing to pay to get the staffing to do it, deliberately, rather than just letting people fall into it. And finally the FAANG club and lead/architect tier positions, paying the most for top talent, with the latter two cohorts being smaller.
Think about the stuff that everyone was trying to offshore to india 10-20 years ago and that's the cheap tier. And there's a lot of it.
When I was poking around after my bachelor's, IBM Global Services was hiring around $50-55k in my area for java developers.
Consider that your experience may not be representative of all programmers' experiences (even if you exclude the experiences of the ones that we could broadly agree are not among the competent ones). Life involves green lights and red lights. If you manage to hit a lot of green lights, it can be hard to grasp what's going on with the people who didn't. (This is true even if your number of green lights is average.)
They're in California/NYC and by the time you finish paying for housing and taxes you get <100k.
Atlanta can get you to 200k with a (relatively) reasonable CoL but the current housing situation there is rapidly degrading, so get in fast if you're looking. Traffic is miserable, which is true about anywhere.
However, the public transit is hilariously bad with a heavy reliance on buses running on hourly schedules and sitting in said miserable traffic. I think there's one very specific corridor that has the buses equipped to override the traffic signals, but it really led to absolutely nowhere useful to a tech worker and just mostly ran Emory students between dorms and campuses. They never expanded the idea any further. That said, if you can land a job and an apartment within walking distance of a MARTA rail station, you're living the dream. (Good luck with rent! Anything within a half hour walk of a rail station is 2x-3x the cost.)
Any attempt to market Miami as "a tech hub" is a scam. The pay offered is completely out of step with the CoL before COVID. You could swing a Miami senior level job with either an hour commute on some of the most dangerous Interstate in the USA (that's using the toll lanes, too) or a two hour-ish drive + train + bus commute (one-way for both times) utilizing public transport.
I can't speak much to Austin or Dallas, though I've heard highly conflicting anecdotes about them. I doubt you're finding $300k below a Senior Architect type title, though.
Nobody is doing 2-hour one-way commutes utilizing three modes of transportation, especially now.
Chicago has a great pay-CoL balance, especially if you want to live downtown, walk or take the train, and not have a car. But even commuting from the suburbs isn't bad. I-90 into the city is always a parking lot though, regardless of day of the week or time of day.
I started as a dev in the 2010s at 32k/yr. My next job was with a cohort of 60 at 42k/yr, and roughly half of them didn’t have the personality type to negotiate pay raises or be mercenary if the company didn’t give them an increase.
If you didn’t go to college for comp sci it’s kinda hard to get your foot in the door. There’s coding boot camps now but those are pretty new
That salary[0] is from 2020 and includes QAs and testers, which presumably drives the number way down. It baffles me why the government lumps all of those together.
I wouldn't be surprised if those statistics are not really worth anything.
Like, it's possible they don't take under account people who are contracting, RSUs/options, yearly bonuses and whatever alse companies are offering now.
Median base salary at 110k might be possible then ;)
It's definitely steep and getting steeper by the month. The other downside, that's actually more significant than the base salary difference, is the lack of upside from stock, etc. (which a sibling also commented on).
However, there are a couple of significant things that are often overlooked. There's a strong mission that really speaks to some people. Additionally, there's a lot of structure applied which helps to enforce a work/life balance. Some people really want to dive in and work a lot of hours (which is generally allowed) but others (like me) struggle to turn work off w/o that structure.
Two things to keep in mind: the federal government offers a very good pension, which most private employers do not. Also, if you have student loans and work for qualifying employers (govt and/or nonprofit IIRC), you can have some of your loans discharged after a period of time. But both of these perks require you to work for 10 or 20 years, in one branch or another.
Government pension is actually very bad. You pay 4 % of your salary per year, and get 1 % * years worked * avg(3 top highest salaries).
You get far more money if you put that 4 % into a 401k or other investment vehicle.
Also, with loans being discharged, you have to have made a ton of payments, to the point that most will pay off their loans before they're eligible in a stem position.
You only pay 4.4% of your salary if hired after 2014 (I only pay 0.8%). If you retire with 20+ years of service at 62 or later, you get 1.1% per year of your high-three salary. That amount is adjusted by cost-of-living increases as well, though of course that may not keep up with inflation.
Also keep in mind that TSP contributions are matched up to 5% of your salary. Consider the pension in the context of also maxing out contributions to TSP (which has the same yearly contributions cap as a 401k). A fair comparison should include the whole package.
But generally I’d say no felonies, no drugs (convictions and/or test results) and no strong ties to foreign governments. But the details will vary a bit.
No drugs, specifically cannabis. I've heard that admitting to using cannabis in the past gets you tossed, despite it being common, safe, and legal in much of the country.
In the late 80s to early 90s as I attended college and then spent a couple of years following the Dead, I smoked pot, ate mushrooms, dosed LSD, and snorted cocaine on a regular basis. I also sampled various other substances along the way.
Several years later I applied for and received a Top Secret clearance. I fully admitted all prior drug use as part of the process. I was working for a government contractor at the time and was not a government employee.
At the same time I had a couple of friends who worked for a 3 letter agency and had prior regularly smoked pot. They admitted their prior use during the hiring process. This again was during the late 90s when attitudes towards pot were more negative than they are today.
Public sector IT was an extremely frustrating experience for me.
- incompetent administration (org flow chart, constantly changing paradigms, misnomers ("open source" == we tape together stuff from public git-repositories, push nothing upstream, and outsource lots of core development))
- administration's priorities change with every election (project funding as a flag in the wind depending on current political climate)
- red tape everywhere
- bureaucrats everywhere
- the whole job-stack attracted incompetent people, the kind that values stability over deep understanding and progress. the kind where I thought "man, good that they are working here in [$current_politically_opportune_project] so they can't do actual damage somewhere else". this applied for the business administrators, the project managers, the "developers", the admins, even a large part of the contractors.
- "you're working too fast! haven't been here for long, eh?"
- compliance > security
Never, ever ever ever again. Granted, this was in Europe, maybe the US sucks less in the public sector. I would bet a good amount of money that there is a large intersection of problem spaces among the regions though.
I have been a gov developer. I have never been held to a lower standard, but a lot of that is not the developer's fault. It is that leadership is not technical.
This is in Canada.
A colleague still there tells me that they purchased a software library without consulting a single software developer.
Yes, I felt the same way, the fact that leadership was not technical was huge. But it’s also the inherent reward incentives in a politically driven dynamic. The environment just felt cursed
Not to mention if you fuck up, you're creating permanent record in your state's system. Whereas if something goes bad with a private employer, (unless it's gross) just quit and move on.
Same thing here friend! The trick is realizing that the federal salary and benefits package is absolutely astronomically generous for the amount of work that the average fed puts in per month.
Then there’s the standard 10% of them that struggle to carry the load, burn themselves out, and leave to double their pay at the same workload. Work hard, deliver more? At best you’ll get a 1000$ yearly bonus.
Slack off, deliver nothing? Same thing, still get promoted.
A ridiculous thing from my time in government was that promotions were interview driven only. If you aced the interview, you got a promo. Didn't matter if you did shit beforehand.
A guy on my gov team got the promo over our by far most experienced and skilled developer as he spent his time practicing for the interview instead of working.
I like that the Digital Corps exists in theory. I applied many moons ago, I believe during the Obama administration. Service to our country is something I feel is important so I applied to at least see if there was a fit.
When I got to the phone screen, I made a point to ask if recreational cannabis would disqualify you from joining and they confirmed that yes, even if it was recreationally used, a positive cannabis result on a drug test would disqualify you.
Major bummer, but unsurprising. The entire reason I asked was due to how many posts on HN I’ve seen about government agencies having a hard time hiring tech folks for this reason. I have what I believe to be a decently desirable skillset and a lot of tangible experience working in startups AND enterprise companies, and if I had to guess, would have brought some good value to the team.
Interested? Too bad. "Applications are currently closed."
Huh? Maybe it's related to the FAQ: "Why is there a limit to the number of applications in each track?"
Ok... so presumably they were not closed two hours ago when this hit HN? This isn't sending the message that the program is serious, it's sending the message that they cannot handle even the volume of applicants that they are getting right now - in spite of the majority of the posts here dumping on government jobs.
I applied when applications opened in November. They were upfront about the fact that they would only look at the first 300 applications -- which they received in the first week. They had engineers review the resumes, which were allowed to be 3-pages, which I imagine is responsible for the low volume.
For those people thinking this is a huge opportunity: there are 30 spots total for this year. This is a very small program, so will be highly selective.
Also, since it's Federal and requires a Background Investigation drug use will be an issue. Surprisingly they allow fully remote though, which is a huge plus.
Being so selective means that only those with the highest credentials get approved - and we all know how these credentials can be harvestered: 90% nepotism and elitism, while only 10% skill. Those 10% will be the brains, while the 90% will bring the network onto which these solutions will be promoted
Normally I would agree with you. In this case, it was the opposite. They truly looked at the candidates skill set and capabilities.
Unfortunately, the government agencies where the chosen candidates were supposed to be funneled to and hired is where the usual government dysfunction kicked in. Those agencies didn’t seem to be on board with the whole program.
The clearance thing pisses me off. I saw a job listing, at actually decent pay, with some niche technologies that some people feel strongly towards (Haskell, etc.) albeit with a contractor not a gov agency.
Form the description, it sounded like they had a contract to rip off QubesOS (or at least develop something which sounded eerily similar), which apparently requires one of the highest clearances possible.
gotta start somewhere.. empowering people is a big "yes" here.. on the other hand, government in the USA is plauged by an outsourcing addiction. Get the budget and signature authority, say whatever you have to say in any number of meetings to get that, and then it is off to margaritaville while pressured, less-authority people are required to make things happen, and they in turn hire outsourcing companies, who then in turn run modern-day "IT shops" which vary wildly, lets say ..
What effect does this good-looking GSA program have, over time, on this addiction to outsourcing for USA government work ? on the culture of bosses who run that, and on worst yet, companies that thrive on failure in government contracting.. which apparently is endemic.
Sincere good wishes to the people who are in this for the right reasons. I have to call the dark side though, since empowering that dark side with lofty words and new budgets, is worse than picking up litter in the park on volunteer day and going about your own business.
> government in the USA is plauged by an outsourcing addiction.
Favorite relevant story from recently: an old friend of mine who enlisted in the army told me he is unable to do the job they trained him to do rn, at least until the contractors doing it at the moment have their contract run out.
It's not necessarily bad everywhere and for everyone - I think park rangers in East Nowheresville do ok. There's a base GS pay scale and then locality adjustments for different metro areas, and the big problem with the WASHINGTON-BALTIMORE-ARLINGTON, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA locality is right there in the name: WV-PA. They pretend that folks working in downtown DC ought to be paid the same as folks at some remote site in WV. So yeah, I believe that means a 31% adjustment compared to the base GS pay scale, when to be competitive with other DC area salaries, the adjustment probably needs to be more like 80%.
I know many, many people who commute daily from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to DC. York and Harper's Ferry are short commutes. I know more than one Bucks County resident who make the trip.
Good luck convincing 70 year old congressmen that 22 year old software engineers working for the government should be paid as much, if not more, than them.
Government needs a pay raise across the board. The president should earn $10 million per annum. Senators, $2,000,000.00. Representatives, $1,200,000.00. Government employees, an average of $175,000.00. And entry level software engineers for the government, $200,000.00.
I got a BS in botany thinking I wanted to work for the Park Service, Forest Service, BLM, something like that.
Not only was entry level a paupers wage, and strictly seasonal, but there was no clear way to get into a career tract position. I ended up going into industry and making 2x, and within 3 years was making 3x.
I would much rather be out in the world counting plants, but I would have never been able to buy a home, or get ahead in any reasonable fashion had I continued that path.
A word of caution: these programs sound great until you realize they’re mainly there for big govt consulting firms to take tax money. It’s the sad truth about tech and US govts. They don’t actually want to change. They just want to appear that way. My two cynical cents.
Aren't things the opposite of how you describe? My understanding is that the big govt consulting firms exist to allow the govt to access competent developers who are paid market wages since the govt is constrained from paying govt employees adequately. The US digital corp is an attempt to hire good developers as govt employees who would replace some of the current developers working for the big consulting firms.
Now, whether the strategy of providing a less terrible govt work environment, and a more inspiring story, will actually be successful in outweighing the still-extant salary limits is very unclear. But this is at least an attempt to reduce the reliance on consult developers and the corresponding middle-man fees taken by the consultanting firms.
I understand this viewpoint but in this situation its not accurate. There are huge communities of people working to improve systems. 18F's github repos are public if you want to see exactly what they are doing: https://github.com/18f
I can't believe that you expect to be taken seriously while pretending the millions of people encompassed by "tech and Us Govt" are all a single hivemind with only the one motivation.
I've tried to apply to federal positions for years. I won't even get so much as a "fuck off".
However when I apply to commercial, I'm snapped up in weeks. The most recent move was to a contractor. Again, 2 weeks to hire. 3 interviews total 2h. I have no degree, but my work expertise speaks for itself. Commercial sees that. The feds dont seem to care.
It is with a contractor for the federal govt. $150k/yr. Generous benefits. But being a contractor, it is without federal protections, without school debt forgiveness, and others.
Whatever. I prefer to stay for the length of the project. In this case, it's 2-3y. Would I work for the feds again? Absolutely. Will I even get a response when applying? Hardly.
Every person I have ever met who worked for the feds has had an attitude that govt. employees are THE BEST WHO EVER DID IT!!!!!! Maybe you didn't give them the vibe that you would play along with this farce? I have often asked such people how this is true since they pay way less than private and recruit from a smaller pool. This just gets you dirty looks and some "I'm proud to serve" platitudes.
> Empower the next generation of technology leaders to launch careers in public service and create a more effective, equitable government.
Can someone explain to me how this program will achieve this? The problem of government inequity is unfair and unbalanced representation as a result of valuing corporations and special interests over the citizenry.
This shit entirely understates the political bullshit that any truly innovative approach to service delivery would encounter. Show us the Memoranda of Understanding with the unions running the bureaucracy before you tell us we can make anything resembling change.
Anyone know what the red-tape / pay is like there? It seems like government organisations are just at such a disadvantage in terms of red-tape and large pay gap between the private sector. I know some have more discretion in their hiring ability, particularly in the defence space, but does it come close to private sector? You're probably better off working for a contractor working for the US Digital Corps than for them directly.
My experience is working with the Canadian Federal gov at a few national research labs. It was amazing work but joining the private sector is a major culture shock in that you can pretty much do anything and get paid 4x.
Sleeping well at night when you're older knowing you helped Grandma get her social security checks, your cousin in the Marines got the surgery he needed, the Post Office trucks got the maintenance they needed. A good career doesn't need any public service, but most great careers probably do.
Yeah, there is definitely something to be said for that. There is also the feeling though of knowing you afford a house, have a family with kids, and put them through college. So, there is sort of a balance here. Realistically, I guess you can have both, spend a few years there building your career then jump over to the private sector.
I tried to apply about 5 years ago and the process looked like it was going to take longer than a full set of Google interviews and it was going to be a big pay cut so I dropped out.
EDIT* It seems I was thinking of the United States Digital Service, which is a different thing.
Unless this side-steps the GS payscale then no, it won't be remotely competitive with private-sector. GSA basically tops out at the salary of the average senior developer and doesn't even start at the payscale of entry-level FAANG.
Plus you also will have to plan for the reality of regular shutdowns during republican congress/democratic presidency situations - this occurs frequently, the federal employees always get paid (or at least have so far) but bridge loans from credit unions (USAA, DFCU, etc) only go so far and you really need some cash savings as a federal employee.
Benefits aren't great anymore, and it's hard to see how benefits won't be trimmed further in the future for younger employees. It's just too tempting a pot of money for lawmakers.
Plus yes, red tape. Digital Corps and 18f and so on are attempts to remediate this, but it's just an uphill battle all the way, it's not an environment where you're going to change the world in a year, or even show meaningful progress in a year.
And all the other "culture fit" issues. Smoke pot? Thanks for applying. Even if you don't, hope you like some dude staring at your dick a couple times a year as you pee in a cup to keep your job.
Again, Digital Service, 18F, and Digital Corps are an attempt to remediate all this, but there is still absolutely no reason to work for the federal government outside patriotism. Like game development, they know they are free to continue the negative practices because there is an endless supply of patriotic bodies waiting outside for the chance to serve.
I worked for a company that subcontracted on a ton of federal work and the federal-adjacent stuff (non-military) was the biggest waste of time there. One project was software support for addressing medicare requirements, that was shelved after it was finished, and the other was remediating a failed project from a big-name contractor that never worked properly due to keycloak issues, that was also shelved after we were done (but we did get it working). It took over a year of fighting to even get the software we were supposed to be remediating. The federal agency had no idea why we would want a copy of the software "for ourselves" when we were supposed to be helping states deploy it in their environment. What's a dev env precious? That's the level of competence the feds generally have.
If you own the contracting entity (prime contractor is particularly juicy) federal is profitable, because you're drinking from the river as it flows by. Otherwise, as an employee, you are far far better working for a contractor that is federal-adjacent, to insulate you from "government work" issues as much as possible. And obviously as you can see from above - even that experience is not pleasant and you will have to drag them every step of the way justifying why standard engineering practices are standard.
A few inaccuracies here, but one thing that's hilariously wrong:
> Even if you don't, hope you like some dude staring at your dick a couple times a year as you pee in a cup to keep your job.
That's for the military. Civil service gets to go into a stall and shut the door. Also, unless you've got a TS clearance, you can go years between drug tests. Even with a TS, it's very random, some people getting tested nearly monthly, and others every 2-3 years.
True, it depends on what you're doing. If you have a security clearance (which, importantly, is not true for all federal employees) then you are in a drug testing position. Otherwise, it depends on what you're working on/with. Like many jobs involving heavy machinery, wage grade employees without clearances are going to get drug tested, while a clerk in an office probably won't be in a drug testing position. Finance stuff? Probably a drug testing position, whether with a clearance or not.
I think the current cutoff is something like 7 years. So if you haven't used it within 7 years you are good (used to be 10, IIRC, and before that lifetime but that's been 20 years or so since that was true, I think). But this is for your background check/security clearance paperwork, I think it's a checkbox like "Have you used marijuana within the last X years? [check yes or no]". If you aren't going for an actual secret (or higher) clearance then the background check is very cursory (check financial records and criminal records, verify education and listed addresses for the reported period).
EDIT: Also, in almost all clearance paperwork you only report back to age 18. So if you're a recent graduate (what this seems to be for) at around age 22-23, and you stopped after high school you likely wouldn't have to report anything at all.
You're confounding the investigation period for a clearance with what they'll accept as far as drug use. Generally speaking Secret clearances investigate back 7 years and Top Secret clearances go back 10. There are, however, questions on the SF-86 that are "ever" questions that ignore these timeline. Regardless you can have used drugs during these periods and tell them as such and there's a chance that they'll grant you the clearance. It's ultimately up to the people adjudicating the clearance and they use a reference guide that's periodically updated to determine this.
Years ago the rule of thumb was that they'd give you a clearance if it'd been 1 year since you used marijuana and 3 years since you used hallucinogens so long as you'd demonstrated a commitment to a drug-free lifestyle since. Anything serious like opioids or alcoholism would require you to have gone to rehab and seriously reformed your life.
In more recent times they seem to have gotten more lenient regarding recent marijuana usage, but I've been out of the industry for a minute so I can't say for sure. What I've always told people is that if you want a cleared job and have done drugs then 1) tell the truth, and if that would get your clearance application denied then 2) wait until it's been long enough so that it won't and clean your act up in the meantime.
> If you aren't going for an actual secret (or higher) clearance
Note that despite how important it sounds, "secret" is not a very high clearance at all. It is the actual lowest classified status - there is "public trust" below that (eg for cops/etc) but that's not an actual classified standard, and FOUO/confidential/etc are not actual classification levels either, just handling guidelines.
Any time you are working on anything military-related you will probably need secret clearance at least. Anyone working with even a basic level of knowledge of military technical or operational capability, or force strength/moment/etc, will be at least Secret.
Anything that you think of as actually being deserving of "secret" most likely falls into the "top secret" category, "secret" is just the completely banal stuff, and you don't have to go far to bump into TS/SCI positions in STEM fields doing military contracting. Any sort of advanced research or development work is probably at least TS if not TS/SCI.
Actual low-level enlisted don't need to be secret (notionally you don't need to know that stuff to "go there and shoot him") but all officers are cleared secret, for example, and I would guess probably NCOs as well (so there's a cap on how high you could be in the military without it). And basically everyone in the civilian world who interacts with the military will be secret.
Federal employees and contractors are subject to regular and random urinalysis.
Until marijuana is legalized at the federal level (which has been passed by the house but is not yet law) you could be terminated for marijuana.
This seems like an EXCELLENT way for junior engineers to finally get out of the "no job can't get a job" box. Super curious to see what comes of it, and to recruit those who complete the fellowships.
Is this a real problem? The hiring market for engineers is really hot, and if anything tech really over-indexes on technical/coding interview questions and under-indexes on past experience and having a formal degree. If you can reliably solve medium Leetcode problems you can easily get a junior developer job at all sorts of companies (and hard Leetcode problems will get you a job at FAANG) without any past experience.
I think the much more common problem for new folks trying to break into software engineering is "not very good at coding yet, can't get a job". Not sure if Digital Corps is optimizing for these people but they really should be (given that they can't compete with the private market on comp).
A lot of DC area people view federal public sector as the “amazing [stable] opportunity” and dont think FAANG opportunities as options, many dont know about them
High five figure to low six figure salaries are the aspiration
Everything else is too absurd or too risky
Very risk averse dynasties there that will drill this into their neighbors and children their whole life
Many contractors are also chasing a carrot on a stick hoping to convert to a federal employee if “mastuh is pleased”
There is a whole industry there catering to that
There are also a lot of opportunities for actually ambitious people such as making the contracting firm or selling something stupid to an agency that your friend working there signed off on
I've got a friend who went through the Code Fellows program last year. They advertise 93% job placement within six months. Based on conversations we had through his program, it seems like they're generally teaching a well-rounded set of skills, though tbf it's still a bootcamp, not a full CS degree.
Six months later, only 2 out of the 10 members of his cohort have gotten software jobs. He's still applying, but he's getting very few interviews and so far no offers.
I applied, and was not accepted, to this program.
I did a 5th-year Master's program in CS, had a part-time dev job in undergrad,
developed a full-stack web app that has thousands of free users,
and have been applying to jobs, without success, for the past 6 months.
I can solve Leetcode problems,
but have only ever been given one algorithmic problem in an interview.
Perhaps I could get a job in FAANG, but I don't want to:
I want a job that will benefit society.
That market for junior engineers in government and non-profits is not "hot"
– it's close to non-existent.
You are too romantic about it. Read the other comments. This is such an excellent idea, but it's a closed sourced system wrapped into sweet package. I don't doubt the output of it, but c'man man, we know better right ?
One thing to keep in mind if you're interested in joining: the Digital Corps is for early career technologists, so if you have much experience in tech, you might want to apply to USDS (https://www.usds.gov) or 18F (https://18f.gsa.gov) instead.