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Living in Maryland, I've met several young people who put in a few years at the agency (including TAO) who then left for industry. Millenials don't care about a

Living in Maryland, I've met several young people who put in a few years at the agency (including TAO) who then left for industry. Millenials don't care about a government pension, especially when you're in a windowless SCIF hacking Perl. The US Government as a whole has a massive talent retention problem. Only the mediocre will stay at NSA / CIA now and we'll probably see more of these leaks / hacks.

azinman2 9y ago
There’s a massive pay disparity between public and private, and those currently in power want to keep it that way and eat away even more at gov functions. That combined without a clear rallying call for public service (like the Cold War or collective pride) are a recipe for disaster.
- milofeynman 9y ago
  Until this is fixed we'll continue to be reliant on Israel intelligence
- somnolentsam 9y ago
  There is a big pay disparity, but the main thing is that engineers and other technical types have gone from having a big say in how problems get solved to being the problem itself. No amount of pay is going to retain people in those circumstances, except possibly those you don't want to retain. As far as money is concerned, NSA is way overfunded - it just spends money on the wrong things and wastes lots of resources due to inefficiency.
- jorblumesea 9y ago
  I'm not even sure it's just pay. The govt is extremely inefficient and bureaucratic. If your thing is writing code, why go to a place like that? You'd spend half your day writing memos and wrangling red tape.
- ataturk 9y ago
  I have relatives who are all steeped in public service hoo-ha because they attended a small, private college that upholds that as a primary value. I personally think they have taken it too far: Public service was traditionally not a career path and should not be looked upon as such. You do your service for a couple of years, then you go back to private enterprise. Career public servants are bureaucrats, have become a very negative voting bloc, and need to be reined in if for no other reason than public service pensions have brought this whole entire nation to the brink of collapse.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Wait, they use perl?
- rdtsc 9y ago
  Well mostly Python for scripting. But it might be 2.4 running on RHEL 5 or something silly like that.
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    Oh Sheesh
- emmelaich 9y ago
  Wasn't Perl created for the NSA? At least that's a story I heard. The official JPL reason is a cover. Or maybe it was created for both. Or neither. Shrug. Just googled it.. Here's a quote from Larry: [...] the NSA project Perl was (indirectly) written to support. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394 Another one from his 2005 State of the Onion: > You might say that Perl grew out of the Cold War. I've often told the story about how Perl was invented at a secret lab that was working on a secret NSA project, so I won't repeat that here, since it's no secret https://www.perl.com/pub/2005/09/22/onion.html https://www.perl.com/pub/2005/09/22/onion.html
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    It was for the high-assurance BLACKER VPN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacker_(security) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacker_(security) Here's the source on that: http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=5460 http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=5460 Another notable aspect of that was it used an early secure kernel, GEMSOS, that is still marketed by Aesec but probably in legacy mode in bad way. It did resist penetration during NSA certification and time on market far as what data I have says. http://aesec.com/ http://aesec.com/
    - emmelaich 9y ago
Spooky23 9y ago
Federal pay sucks by design. If you want to work for .gov, you want state/local government. The Feds want to contract out for anything they can. So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment.
- retailbuyout 9y ago
  > So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment. Right, and the profits flow to a couple people who essentially own the contract. It’s essentially modern day aristocracy, except the contracts are more valuable to farm out to peasants than land is.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > Federal pay sucks by design. If you want to work for .gov, you want state/local government State and local government employees are paid well? Where? Which ones?
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits, and don’t require that you live in the DC crazy corridor. Local governments depend on the locality — big counties and cities pay ok. It all depends on what is valuable to you.
    - forapurpose 9y ago
      > Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits Not to my knowledge. Which ones for what jobs, do you happen to know?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - fujiters 9y ago
    Public school systems tend to pay well for people who majored in early elementary education, music, kinesiology, etc. But this isn't the same demographic that would work at NSA.
bsder 9y ago
> The US Government as a whole has a massive talent retention problem. Only the mediocre will stay at NSA / CIA now and we'll probably see more of these leaks / hacks. The CIA were never noted for being the sharpest of government agencies ... However, the NSA generally had a very good reputation. The big problem with the NSA is who wants to work in a place where you can't actually talk about what you do? The primary underlying problem is that sharing and security are fundamentally at odds. If the NSA can't even get it right, what chance does everybody else have?
- retailbuyout 9y ago
  What the hell are they doing spying on american citizens? The people you’ll attract are the people attracted to abusing said power. Good luck weeding out the creeps; let’s hope only a few die as the result of beuracratic negligence.
grkvlt 9y ago
I think they will still have a steady supply of talented people who consider themselves patriots and whose politics align with the NSA and CIAs stated missions. Just because their politics don't agree with yours doesn't necessarily make the 'mediocre' remember.

azinman2 9y ago

There’s a massive pay disparity between public and private, and those currently in power want to keep it that way and eat away even more at gov functions. That combined without a clear rallying call for public service (like the Cold War or collective pride) are a recipe for disaster.

milofeynman 9y ago
Until this is fixed we'll continue to be reliant on Israel intelligence
somnolentsam 9y ago
There is a big pay disparity, but the main thing is that engineers and other technical types have gone from having a big say in how problems get solved to being the problem itself. No amount of pay is going to retain people in those circumstances, except possibly those you don't want to retain. As far as money is concerned, NSA is way overfunded - it just spends money on the wrong things and wastes lots of resources due to inefficiency.
jorblumesea 9y ago
I'm not even sure it's just pay. The govt is extremely inefficient and bureaucratic. If your thing is writing code, why go to a place like that? You'd spend half your day writing memos and wrangling red tape.
ataturk 9y ago
I have relatives who are all steeped in public service hoo-ha because they attended a small, private college that upholds that as a primary value. I personally think they have taken it too far: Public service was traditionally not a career path and should not be looked upon as such. You do your service for a couple of years, then you go back to private enterprise. Career public servants are bureaucrats, have become a very negative voting bloc, and need to be reined in if for no other reason than public service pensions have brought this whole entire nation to the brink of collapse.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Wait, they use perl?

rdtsc 9y ago
Well mostly Python for scripting. But it might be 2.4 running on RHEL 5 or something silly like that.
- raverbashing 9y ago
  Oh Sheesh
emmelaich 9y ago
Wasn't Perl created for the NSA? At least that's a story I heard. The official JPL reason is a cover. Or maybe it was created for both. Or neither. Shrug. Just googled it.. Here's a quote from Larry: [...] the NSA project Perl was (indirectly) written to support. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394 http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3394 Another one from his 2005 State of the Onion: > You might say that Perl grew out of the Cold War. I've often told the story about how Perl was invented at a secret lab that was working on a secret NSA project, so I won't repeat that here, since it's no secret https://www.perl.com/pub/2005/09/22/onion.html https://www.perl.com/pub/2005/09/22/onion.html
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  It was for the high-assurance BLACKER VPN: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacker_(security) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacker_(security) Here's the source on that: http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=5460 http://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=5460 Another notable aspect of that was it used an early secure kernel, GEMSOS, that is still marketed by Aesec but probably in legacy mode in bad way. It did resist penetration during NSA certification and time on market far as what data I have says. http://aesec.com/ http://aesec.com/
  - emmelaich 9y ago

Spooky23 9y ago

Federal pay sucks by design. If you want to work for .gov, you want state/local government. The Feds want to contract out for anything they can. So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment.

retailbuyout 9y ago
> So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment. Right, and the profits flow to a couple people who essentially own the contract. It’s essentially modern day aristocracy, except the contracts are more valuable to farm out to peasants than land is.
forapurpose 9y ago
> Federal pay sucks by design. If you want to work for .gov, you want state/local government State and local government employees are paid well? Where? Which ones?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits, and don’t require that you live in the DC crazy corridor. Local governments depend on the locality — big counties and cities pay ok. It all depends on what is valuable to you.
  - forapurpose 9y ago
    > Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits Not to my knowledge. Which ones for what jobs, do you happen to know?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- fujiters 9y ago
  Public school systems tend to pay well for people who majored in early elementary education, music, kinesiology, etc. But this isn't the same demographic that would work at NSA.

bsder 9y ago

> The US Government as a whole has a massive talent retention problem. Only the mediocre will stay at NSA / CIA now and we'll probably see more of these leaks / hacks. The CIA were never noted for being the sharpest of government agencies ... However, the NSA generally had a very good reputation. The big problem with the NSA is who wants to work in a place where you can't actually talk about what you do? The primary underlying problem is that sharing and security are fundamentally at odds. If the NSA can't even get it right, what chance does everybody else have?

retailbuyout 9y ago
What the hell are they doing spying on american citizens? The people you’ll attract are the people attracted to abusing said power. Good luck weeding out the creeps; let’s hope only a few die as the result of beuracratic negligence.

grkvlt 9y ago

I think they will still have a steady supply of talented people who consider themselves patriots and whose politics align with the NSA and CIAs stated missions. Just because their politics don't agree with yours doesn't necessarily make the 'mediocre' remember.