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Why Are the Best and Brightest Not Flooding DARPA?
David W. White writes "Wired mag's Danger Room carried an article today that highlighted how desperate the US Military's DARPA has become in its attempts to bring in additional brain power. The tactics include filmed testimonials, folders and even playing cards all screaming join DARPA! Where are all the Einsteins who want to be on the cutting edge for the Government?"
It's DARPA. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They do research. They don't do spying. The spooks all work for CIA, DIA (that's Defense Intelligence Agency), and NSA. And probably a few organizations we don't know about. But DARPA just ain't one of them.
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Here's a free one: DARPA gives grants. Unless you want to be a grant administrator, chances are you don't really want to work for DARPA.
A little, um, research into DARPA would have uncovered that insight.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
No one with real expertise wants to be stuck in a bureaucratic agency, shuffling the papers and attending meetings at least 6 hours a day. I've been a low-level engineer in one of the military's RDT&E agencies (not DARPA), and everyone there who has ever had any technical skill complains of skill atrophy, boredom, and endless unproductive bureaucracy. I was very lucky to get out while I could. One of the high-level managers there had been known to say that their strategy was to bring in the best and brightest technical minds they could and keep them 3-4 years until their skills had atrophied to the point that no one else would hire them.
If the government wants to succeed here, they absolutely have to throw out all the rulebooks and start over. I've been in project groups that tried to do true engineering work within the government, and it was a resource management nightmare. It would take months to order most anything. Everytime I tried to do something, I always needed something I didn't have and couldn't get for a long time. What we have now is simply an exercise in getting people paychecks. This is the real government welfare system.
As a young professor at a top CS program, I can give a simple reason CS interest in DARPA has waned: because DARPA funding as waned, both in the amount of available grant money and the attractiveness of the terms.
While NSF grants have little oversight, require few deliverables, and have 3-4 year terms, DARPA grants increasingly have 1.5-2 year horizons, require regular reports and site visits, and have go/no-go mid-term decisions. Furthermore, DARPA projects increasingly want deliverables and seek classification. Thus, while NSF still allows you to engage in more blue-sky, high-risk research, DARPA is interested in advanced development. Not quite the thing academics and grad students signed up for. No surprise most DARPA funding has switched from universities to contractors.
Most academics I know would love to return to the DARPA gravy-train of pre-Tony Tether days; the funding terms and dollar amounts just aren't there currently.
This CRA post summarized it well:
http://www.cra.org/govaffairs/blog/archives/000624.html
As a veteran of several Federal institutions, both as a contractor and a Fed, I can tell you that there are a multitude of reasons why the government has a hard time getting people:
1. The hiring process for Federal employees sucks. It is byzantine and SLOW. One of the more progressive agencies was able to bring me on in a couple of months, but another took a YEAR. The average is somewhere in the middle. I had reasons to wait at the time (had to see what was behind that big NSA fence) but why would anyone wait under normal circumstances when contractors/the private sector moves so much more quickly?
2. The pay sucks. The GS scheme tops out at around $120K right now. There are grades that pay more (SES) but without going into detail, good luck with that. Anyone with solid experience in security/enterprise IP engineering/etc can smoke that as a contractor or in the private sector.
3. The atmosphere sucks. The government may be trying to change, but everything you've ever heard about the stereotypical gov't employee is generally true. Some agencies are better than others, but at most the fat guy with the polyester leisure suit lives on.
4. The positive reinforcement sucks. Managers have little ability to give raises or promotions. In some agencies, spot awards are used, but most still view them as evil.
5. The benefits suck. Is there any other employer in this day and age that doesn't have maternity leave? The rest (medical, 401(k)) are par. The pension is nice, if you stick around long enough to qualify.
6. The culture sucks. No matter how much they try to change, years of hiring the sub-par have infused the gov't with a culture of sluggish bureaucracy. This will take decades to undo. Also, this is precisely the kind of environment that will drive a decent technical person raving mad in short order.
Noone who [knows|can do] better would ever work for the Federal Government.
The government is obviously corrupt Well this must be false, it's been proven time and again that our government is beyond corruption.
The government is obviously corrupt and working hand in hand with organizations out to destroy the internet. It's quite obvious to even the most cynical of observers that there is absolutely no collusion between the government and any organization that might be seen as antagonistic to the foundational principles of the internet. The government is obviously corrupt and working hard to make it easier for these same organizations to engage in a domestic terrorism campaign via lawsuits. Well here the OP just get silly, I mean come on, a campaign of terrorism via lawsuits? That would imply scaring people into following an organization's agenda by scare tactics, such as unlimited, unprovoked, irrational, abusive lawsuits and illegal legislation. That's just ludicrous.
You guys are right, OP is a troll.