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One thing that springs to mind is that, while being very technical in nature, NSA work is even more secretive. I would imagine that more than a few of these fol

One thing that springs to mind is that, while being very technical in nature, NSA work is even more secretive. I would imagine that more than a few of these folks have a hard time leaving based on the fact that many of them can't disclose their previous experience, prima facie. Is that a problem? Is it surmountable? Sorry to muse in the comments, but that seems like it might be a more real problem here. The other possibility is, as res0nat0r mentioned, that the employees there just don't share the viewpoint that their work is immoral.

nmrm2 11y ago
I've heard first hand from academics who have this problem. It's less of a problem if a) you're doing something more applied/normal, like software development, where you can just have a conversation or work some problems to demonstrate ability; or b) you're happy with working for gov't contractors (and don't want to e.g. return to academia).
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > It's less of a problem if ... you're doing something more applied/normal, like software development, where you can just have a conversation or work some problems to demonstrate ability My experience trying to get a job with highly-classified non-intel software experience (distributed real-time, to boot) is that this is still extremely difficult. The conversation couldn't include anything really interesting. Hell, my resume couldn't contain anything really interesting so I rarely got the conversation in the first place. I have been gone for 3.5 years, but I still have that problem because the work I did then is what I want to do, and the work I'm doing now (Java-based NLP) was the escape. I can only given detailed information about what I do now, though, which skews everyone into thinking I'm a Java or ML developer. :/
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    Ah, I stand corrected. Sorry to hear that :-( This is one concrete way that something like Intelexit could actually make a difference -- find companies who are willing to hire people with intel backgrounds.

nmrm2 11y ago

I've heard first hand from academics who have this problem. It's less of a problem if a) you're doing something more applied/normal, like software development, where you can just have a conversation or work some problems to demonstrate ability; or b) you're happy with working for gov't contractors (and don't want to e.g. return to academia).

vonmoltke 11y ago
> It's less of a problem if ... you're doing something more applied/normal, like software development, where you can just have a conversation or work some problems to demonstrate ability My experience trying to get a job with highly-classified non-intel software experience (distributed real-time, to boot) is that this is still extremely difficult. The conversation couldn't include anything really interesting. Hell, my resume couldn't contain anything really interesting so I rarely got the conversation in the first place. I have been gone for 3.5 years, but I still have that problem because the work I did then is what I want to do, and the work I'm doing now (Java-based NLP) was the escape. I can only given detailed information about what I do now, though, which skews everyone into thinking I'm a Java or ML developer. :/
- nmrm2 11y ago
  Ah, I stand corrected. Sorry to hear that :-( This is one concrete way that something like Intelexit could actually make a difference -- find companies who are willing to hire people with intel backgrounds.