Many people want to make software for the public good via the public sector. For some, the opportunity to do that outweighs the benefits of earning top-of-the-l

Many people want to make software for the public good via the public sector. For some, the opportunity to do that outweighs the benefits of earning top-of-the-line paychecks. It seems deeply cynical to correlate geographic areas with salaries and infer that the best engineers in the world will be drawn there, bar none. There are other incentives. Some might even say that engineering of this sort is better executed, or more trustworthy, when performed by people with civic motivations rather than mercenary ones.