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NSA's Top Talent is Leaving Because of Low Pay, Slumping Morale and Unpopular Reorganization (washingtonpost.com)
Ellen Nakashima and Aaron Gregg, reporting for the Washington Post: The National Security Agency is losing its top talent at a worrisome rate as highly skilled personnel, some disillusioned with the spy service's leadership and an unpopular reorganization, take higher-paying, more flexible jobs in the private sector (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source). Since 2015, the NSA has lost several hundred hackers, engineers and data scientists, according to current and former U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter. The potential impact on national security is significant, they said. Headquartered at Fort Meade in Maryland, the NSA employs a civilian workforce of about 21,000 there and is the largest producer of intelligence among the nation's 17 spy agencies. The people who have left were responsible for collecting and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the president's daily briefing. Their work also included monitoring a broad array of subjects including the Islamic State, Russian and North Korean hackers, and analyzing the intentions of foreign governments, and they were responsible for protecting the classified networks that carry such sensitive information.
Just like in Russia. When the KGB did something like that, a man named Eugene Kaspersky saw this as a good moment to start hiring more people...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is SOME truth here: Government pay DOES seriously lag behind private sector pay. But the contracting world isn't MUCH better. High-end federal contractors make perhaps a quarter to a third higher than "govvies", but the 10 times cost of a fed is an exaggeration. On the average, a contractor, at fully-burdened rate, costs somewhat more than a Fed does, for the same skills and experience (and that varies by the skill in question, and location), but not overwhelmingly more.
The advantage to contractors, is that they can be dropped almost immediately at no cost to the Government. An actual Fed can drag out a dismissal for years, collecting pay and seniority while doing so. And in the meantime, if they transfer to another agency. . . the attempt to drop them goes away. . .
You forgot to factor in Locality adjustment. DC area base at step 10 is $126k. Additionally, federal employee benefits are very generous, including pension benefits that are generally unavailable in the comparable private sector jobs.
It's the usual strategy when a right-wing government comes into power. The mantra is "the private sector can do things more efficiently and cheaply that the public sector". So all those departments are required to reduced people count. They then rehire their staff as private sector consultants and contractors to do the same work as before, then claim more jobs have been created while reducing the size of the public sector.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
As ex-military I will say that the "I love my country" guys were mostly in the military to do shit that is hard to do as a civilian. Mostly blowing stuff up, but the outright psychos just enjoyed treating others like shit. Some used it to rationalize their brainwashing. "Exactly why the fuck do I keep signing up?"
Your surgeon friend would be a rare breed but was probably a good guy.