And software developers, who are often not the most mature people in the world, tend to have a habit of thinking that their thought processes are superior, and if they cannot grok yours, then clearly you must be as retarded as the people in marketting and sales (who are, of course, making a lot more than they are). Nerd machismo is the saddest kind, because, unlike other forms of machismo, there isn't the prospect of cred with the ladies.
Almost 7 years have passed since 911, and our government, military, and intelligence community have proven themselves, in endeavors foreign and domestic, incompetent to the core. A large portion of this has to do with the overall quality of people who work in "clearspace." Requirements for higher clearance clearances are so stringent that the people who are most likely to make it in tend to be the least educated, the least well-travelled and cosmopolitan, the least curious, the least unusual, and the least ambitious. This is because these qualities require a certain degree of risk-taking, and the government does not want people who take risks. However, one wonders why the government has become more stringent with their security clearance requirements, and why they have expanded them to seemingly innocuous areas such as JPL. If the clearance process has played such a major role in the US's colossal failures by discouraging qualified applicants or excluding them outright, then one would think that they would make the process more inclusive. After all, in WWII, a heavily WASP-dominated government, whose upper echelons often quietly nurtured a current of anti-Semitism, did not prevent Jewish scientists such as Oppenheimer or Feynman from working at Los Alamos.
It seems to me that the most reasonable explanation is that the stringency of the process, especially in times of such high demand, doubles or triples the value of a cleared employee with some government experience. Therefore, a network engineer who would be making 30-40k in the private sector could command a six-figure salary with a defense contractor if he obtained a clearance. While I do not think that there is some collective, malicious, planned conspiracy - a government which oversaw Katrina, 911, and Iraq is not capable of accomplishing such a task - I do believe it is possible for a group of people to collectively defend their interests when the cost of defending them is minimal. Jim Crow segregation in the South, for example, worked so effectively because all whites needed to do was say "no", and reinforce the message with an occassional lynching. Cleared employees who advocated making the requirements for entry any less stringent would be devaluing themselves. In this kind of world, a background investigator, who is often little more than a thug with certification, can destroy the career and life of a NASA scientist, who has given up years of his life in doctoral studies to advance our understading of the universe.
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And software developers, who are often not the most mature people in the world, tend to have a habit of thinking that their thought processes are superior, and if they cannot grok yours, then clearly you must be as retarded as the people in marketting and sales (who are, of course, making a lot more than they are). Nerd machismo is the saddest kind, because, unlike other forms of machismo, there isn't the prospect of cred with the ladies.
Almost 7 years have passed since 911, and our government, military, and intelligence community have proven themselves, in endeavors foreign and domestic, incompetent to the core. A large portion of this has to do with the overall quality of people who work in "clearspace." Requirements for higher clearance clearances are so stringent that the people who are most likely to make it in tend to be the least educated, the least well-travelled and cosmopolitan, the least curious, the least unusual, and the least ambitious. This is because these qualities require a certain degree of risk-taking, and the government does not want people who take risks. However, one wonders why the government has become more stringent with their security clearance requirements, and why they have expanded them to seemingly innocuous areas such as JPL. If the clearance process has played such a major role in the US's colossal failures by discouraging qualified applicants or excluding them outright, then one would think that they would make the process more inclusive. After all, in WWII, a heavily WASP-dominated government, whose upper echelons often quietly nurtured a current of anti-Semitism, did not prevent Jewish scientists such as Oppenheimer or Feynman from working at Los Alamos. It seems to me that the most reasonable explanation is that the stringency of the process, especially in times of such high demand, doubles or triples the value of a cleared employee with some government experience. Therefore, a network engineer who would be making 30-40k in the private sector could command a six-figure salary with a defense contractor if he obtained a clearance. While I do not think that there is some collective, malicious, planned conspiracy - a government which oversaw Katrina, 911, and Iraq is not capable of accomplishing such a task - I do believe it is possible for a group of people to collectively defend their interests when the cost of defending them is minimal. Jim Crow segregation in the South, for example, worked so effectively because all whites needed to do was say "no", and reinforce the message with an occassional lynching. Cleared employees who advocated making the requirements for entry any less stringent would be devaluing themselves. In this kind of world, a background investigator, who is often little more than a thug with certification, can destroy the career and life of a NASA scientist, who has given up years of his life in doctoral studies to advance our understading of the universe.