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People with decent STEM backgrounds can be MUCH more gainfully employed elsewhere. Higher echelons of US government are badly underpaid, which is why they attra
by general_ai 10y ago
People with decent STEM backgrounds can be MUCH more gainfully employed elsewhere. Higher echelons of US government are badly underpaid, which is why they attract the kind of "talent" they do. A Google search shows that it takes $110K to decently get by in DC. $175K for someone who is expected to be at the top of their game is a bad deal when a professional can make two to three times as much in the private sector. So you get a bunch of has-beens who aren't good for anything else. The only exception I can think of is the USDS, where idealistic young people go to serve their country and take a massive pay cut (which is even more massive if you factor in the opportunity cost), but sooner or later life will catch up to them, too, and they'll discover they need to save for retirement and college, pay for private school for their kids, etc, etc. Shit's expensive.
- makecheck 10y agoWorse, there is a massive chicken-and-egg problem here. At least with normal jobs, I only have to risk occasionally encountering someone who is difficult or slightly incompetent. While dealing with difficult people is normal, at least right now it isn’t a daily occurrence. Conversely, I can pretty much guarantee that a huge number of future colleagues would be making my life miserable when in Congress. Some of them apparently cannot be reasoned with at all (“I’m sorry, you have the wrong letter after your name therefore your idea sucks <turning brain off now>”), and a pretty insane number of them just do whatever they want without obeying rules. It reaches a point where you have to decide where you can do the most good, and there just doesn’t seem to be a way to do much “good” by being in public office. I feel better working on engineering projects that go somewhere.