It's definitely the case even in the US, which is generally the poster child for "successful digital surveillance". Between low salaries and high selectivity,

It's definitely the case even in the US, which is generally the poster child for "successful digital surveillance". Between low salaries and high selectivity, it's tough to find staff. The FBI has talked about how their marijuana use rules are a major impediment to hiring programmers, and some wings of US Cyber Command have apparently been trying and largely failing to train up talent internally because they can't recruit enough. (And that's after "fully staffed" was redefined downwards several times.) Turnover is apparently also sky-high, especially for civilian contractors. Even the NSA is mostly in that situation, though. Or on the non-intelligence side of things, the US Digital Service is the same. They've both managed to pull in a lot of top-tier talent regardless, thanks to some mix of civic duty, prestige, and the promise of work you can't do elsewhere. Which raises the question: what actually determines staff counts and quality? If salaries are crap everywhere, why have some countries gotten so much more talent than others?