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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.
Drain the spy swamp.
Gee, I can't imagine why people are losing their enthusiasm for working for the government. Unless, of course, they can see that it's counterproductive to the goal of freedom.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...who will then charge the gov't 10x what that person was costing us before. So is the NSA's actual functionality being reduced--or just shifted elsewhere?
(And why are only NSA people demoralized? I'd be demoralized if I worked in _any_ branch of gov't...the way things are going. Private-sector jobs providing goods and services that people actually want is the most satisfying kind of work, IMHO.)
Although the departure rates are low, compared with attrition levels in the civilian technology industry
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
The low pay and low morale take a while to set in. So it existed with Obama too. The trick is now Trump is calling them liars and unamerican on a daily basis on top of everything else.
I expect in the next year to see higher turnover at the FBI too.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Believe it or not, there are still people who are loyal to the country and "believe in the mission." Lots of people in these agencies come from the military, so you're bound to have a committed core of individuals. But it's an organization like anywhere else...the place I work has serious faults but they're definitely not something to throw a temper tantrum about. Some people think differently about this, get fed up and leave. It's all up to personal choice, and I would think anyone smart enough to get a technical position at the NSA would be able to go work anywhere else...these aren't your typical Keyboarding Specialist III civil service workers who make a home for themselves deep in an agency's bureaucracy. I don't throw a fit and leave my position because I have the opportunity to do interesting work even if I have to work around dumb decisions above my level.
Just like businesses, government agencies outsource everything they can as well. I would think that some of the defection is to contractors, where they would trade job security for a higher salary. I imagine there's basically a few "Spies R Us" firms right in the DC metro area that does the same analysis work the official TLAs do.
Another place they could end up at is management consulting firms. I work for an IT services company and we respond to RFPs all the time -- there's a lot of pressure to keep up the credentials on the individuals presented as the "A Team" (who gets swapped out when the contract is signed.) There's a lot of cache in saying "Dude, this guy's ex-NSA" when referring to a security consultant. Even if they barely do any work, just having them is like the big tech companies employing Technical Fellows.
Still other employers are basically anywhere else math geniuses get jobs. Insurance companies still pay actuaries handsomely. Investment banks doing HFT would love to have a few NSA people on staff and would probably overlook some of their quirks. The private sector does pay much better than government work over the short term. And, post-Cold War and post-Snowden, there's less public acceptance of the spy agencies. I'm sure there's tons of issues they silently prevent or give advance notice of, and I'll bet that's what's keeping some people on staff...it's naive to think that other countries aren't spying on their citizens or foreign governments as well.
But when you meet someone who obviously has a brain and would have been successful even if they hadn't chosen to be a high-ranking officer, you have to wonder what their motivation is. I've never really got to the bottom of it because those people I've met like that are quite cagey and tend to hide behind some argument about "service to the country" and so on.
That's a bit cynical and possibly says much about you. Certainly you cannot totally disbelieve that there are people who truly are motivated by a moral imperative to serve their country. I understand that you may not agree with their motivations, but why can't you at least believe their stated reason?
One apropos example that has served as a sort of personal inspiration for my whole life is the case of the father of a friend of mine. The man was a successful surgeon, and an immigrant to the US. When I was in high school he resigned from private practice and joined the military as a surgeon with the stated purpose that he wanted to give back to the country that he was so proud to have joined. I'd hate to be the type of person who suspected some ulterior motive there.
A word of advice for you, since you say you've "never really gotten to the bottom of it" when trying to understand these people: Maybe you should try listening to and accepting what they say are their reasons instead of assuming they are some cagey deceivers.
I expect in the next year to see higher turnover at the FBI to
Here's the best part. The more the con artist keeps whining about the FBI doing its job, the more people leave and the more he can whine about them not doing their job.
The same with the NSA. This is one of many organizations he has called part of the "deep state", that the information they provide is worthless, they don't know what they're doing and so on.
Well golly gee, who wants to work for someone who is an incompetent idiot, a serial liar and thinks what you do is worthless?
What's that old adage about high turnover of employees? It's not them, it's you.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
From TFS:
The people who have left were responsible for collecting and analyzing the intelligence that goes into the president's daily briefing.
Daily intelligence briefings for the Chief Executive used to be a vitally important component of policy formulation. Then President Chump was sworn in, and suddenly they became completely irrelevant, because they bored him. He refuses to read or even listen to them, even when they mostly contain brightly-colored graphics, videos, and other visual elements designed to appeal to the functional-illiterate-in-chief. They've also been tailored to avoid topics, such as the latest intelligence on Russian psyops interference in the 2016 election, that push the Orange Oaf's buttons. (Let me point you to an alternative citation, because the Washington Post article may be paywalled for those who don't know how to use private browsing and cookie deletion to get around it.)
Think about how you'd feel if you had dedicated your career to producing detailed, highly-nuanced, daily reports on a whole range of intelligence topics for the most powerful national leader on the planet - only to discover that the new guy is completely uninterested in any information that can't be expressed in crayon drawings and bumper sticker catchphrases. Now throw in civil servant wages, and ask yourself whether that job would be in any way attractive to you?
Yeah - it's like that.
That's why they're leaving ...
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