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Or: Amazon is going to heavily recruit former-DoD and government workers, luring them from low pay rates to high paying jobs. Reduce hiring friction: you don't

Or: Amazon is going to heavily recruit former-DoD and government workers, luring them from low pay rates to high paying jobs. Reduce hiring friction: you don't need to convince them to uproot their families to move. They already live in the area, hell, their commute doesn't even change. Are you more likely to award contracts to AWS if you work at the DoD knowing that in two years you can move over and suddenly quintuple your salary?

samstave 8y ago
+1 If anyone in the consulting field is paying attention - right about now is almost too late to begin going out and lining up a bunch of clearance techies who can be on your secure GovCloud consulting team to provide all the services that the DoD will be needing.
- JBlue42 8y ago
  Yeah, it seems the already available people with clearances would be the big selling point.
- moron4hire 8y ago
  Most of the people with clearances are already working at major consulting firms in the area.
drawnwren 8y ago
This comment is hilarious to me. Quintuple your salary? I worked in consulting for 5 years, and I can assure you that Amazon is already paying less for equivalent candidates. I'm not sure what you think happens in government consulting, but it is nothing like government employment. Edit: The strategy you outline re: government employees is already employed by all of the large government consulting firms. Amazon is late to the game and behind the ball with their lack of awarded contracts. They might be able to catch up, but contracting is one field that has repeatedly shown itself to be resistant to disruption.
- erichurkman 8y ago
  Agreed: government employment is not the same as government consulting. There are generations of future government employees that haven't even graduated high school yet. Amazon is not dumb. Bezos has never played the short game.
JPKab 8y ago
Your statement is incredibly naive and ignorant. The Federal government pays incredibly well, but has few technology workers. They instead primarily act as managers for embedded contractors, who themselves are paid far above average for a given role. Additionally, AWS already has a DoD presence. Source: Lived in DC area for 8 years, worked on numerous federal contracts, witnessed highly overpaid, lazy shitbags who were so incompetent that government shutdowns forcing them to stay home sped up work on contracts. Amazes me how the "government workers are underpaid" meme is so strong in people who haven't spent time in DC area. I grew up in an impoverished rural part of Virginia 6 hours from DC. Going home and seeing my hard working relatives scrape by and do without after paying taxes, then going back to DC and seeing people who arrived at work at 9, left at 3:30, and yapped half the day made me transform from Leslie Knope to Ron Swanson. I always tell people this: The US political parties have it wrong. One thinks gov't is always bad and shouldn't exist. The other thinks it is fine, but just needs more money. The reality is that it is a broken organization that used to be amazing, but has rotted, and the last thing it needs is more money. It needs to be radically reformed and reinvented. End rant.
- dc_wtf 8y ago
  How could the federal government possibly pay "incredibly well" in the context of software? ~185k is the current cap on salaries. That's not the bottom or the median, it's the top, a place most people will not reach in their whole careers, and there are rigid rules around how to get there. As far as I know, pretty much everyone is on something equivalent to the GS? Even contractors are on a proxy version of it, based on my experience in the space (it's why I left). I know people talk about 18f a lot on HN and I was under the impression they had to get an ultra-special allowance of some kind for even their salaries. What makes the pay so good, I really don't get it? There are benefits, sure, but I am under the impression that pensions aren't what they used to be, and a FAANG is going to give you health insurance as a dev. What am I missing? Maybe they pay the people in question too much for their skills, motivation, or work product, but that is not "incredibly well" for a software developer in the USA. DC isn't that cheap, though certainly not like SF. If you are a good developer who doesn't show up at 9 and leave at 3:30 and don't want to, who can make it to a decent pay band at a FAANG, or have a specialization that demands high income, I just don't see how the government could be a good choice economically.
Spooky23 8y ago
No, because as a procurement officer, you’ll be more worried about getting moved over to a US penitentiary a year after that.
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  That's not how it works. There are no restrictions on who you can work for, even if you were a CO/COR. The restriction is on representating a firm to the government. This happens very frequently; it's seldom that a flag officer retires without multiple offers from industry. """ it might be assumed that a former contracting officer representative could not be hired by the same company whose contract they oversaw as a federal employee. Even though seeking such employment while still in federal service would represent a prohibited conflict of interest, seeking and being hired after federal service ends would be allowed ... the rules would bar the employee from representing them, such as through a communication or appearance, before a federal employee regarding the specific contract he or she oversaw """ https://www.army.mil/article/194019/moving_to_private_sector_employment_after_federal_service_comes_with_restrictions https://www.army.mil/article/194019/moving_to_private_sector...

samstave 8y ago

+1 If anyone in the consulting field is paying attention - right about now is almost too late to begin going out and lining up a bunch of clearance techies who can be on your secure GovCloud consulting team to provide all the services that the DoD will be needing.

JBlue42 8y ago
Yeah, it seems the already available people with clearances would be the big selling point.
moron4hire 8y ago
Most of the people with clearances are already working at major consulting firms in the area.

drawnwren 8y ago

This comment is hilarious to me. Quintuple your salary? I worked in consulting for 5 years, and I can assure you that Amazon is already paying less for equivalent candidates. I'm not sure what you think happens in government consulting, but it is nothing like government employment. Edit: The strategy you outline re: government employees is already employed by all of the large government consulting firms. Amazon is late to the game and behind the ball with their lack of awarded contracts. They might be able to catch up, but contracting is one field that has repeatedly shown itself to be resistant to disruption.

erichurkman 8y ago
Agreed: government employment is not the same as government consulting. There are generations of future government employees that haven't even graduated high school yet. Amazon is not dumb. Bezos has never played the short game.

JPKab 8y ago

Your statement is incredibly naive and ignorant. The Federal government pays incredibly well, but has few technology workers. They instead primarily act as managers for embedded contractors, who themselves are paid far above average for a given role. Additionally, AWS already has a DoD presence. Source: Lived in DC area for 8 years, worked on numerous federal contracts, witnessed highly overpaid, lazy shitbags who were so incompetent that government shutdowns forcing them to stay home sped up work on contracts. Amazes me how the "government workers are underpaid" meme is so strong in people who haven't spent time in DC area. I grew up in an impoverished rural part of Virginia 6 hours from DC. Going home and seeing my hard working relatives scrape by and do without after paying taxes, then going back to DC and seeing people who arrived at work at 9, left at 3:30, and yapped half the day made me transform from Leslie Knope to Ron Swanson. I always tell people this: The US political parties have it wrong. One thinks gov't is always bad and shouldn't exist. The other thinks it is fine, but just needs more money. The reality is that it is a broken organization that used to be amazing, but has rotted, and the last thing it needs is more money. It needs to be radically reformed and reinvented. End rant.

dc_wtf 8y ago
How could the federal government possibly pay "incredibly well" in the context of software? ~185k is the current cap on salaries. That's not the bottom or the median, it's the top, a place most people will not reach in their whole careers, and there are rigid rules around how to get there. As far as I know, pretty much everyone is on something equivalent to the GS? Even contractors are on a proxy version of it, based on my experience in the space (it's why I left). I know people talk about 18f a lot on HN and I was under the impression they had to get an ultra-special allowance of some kind for even their salaries. What makes the pay so good, I really don't get it? There are benefits, sure, but I am under the impression that pensions aren't what they used to be, and a FAANG is going to give you health insurance as a dev. What am I missing? Maybe they pay the people in question too much for their skills, motivation, or work product, but that is not "incredibly well" for a software developer in the USA. DC isn't that cheap, though certainly not like SF. If you are a good developer who doesn't show up at 9 and leave at 3:30 and don't want to, who can make it to a decent pay band at a FAANG, or have a specialization that demands high income, I just don't see how the government could be a good choice economically.

Spooky23 8y ago

No, because as a procurement officer, you’ll be more worried about getting moved over to a US penitentiary a year after that.

Godel_unicode 8y ago
That's not how it works. There are no restrictions on who you can work for, even if you were a CO/COR. The restriction is on representating a firm to the government. This happens very frequently; it's seldom that a flag officer retires without multiple offers from industry. """ it might be assumed that a former contracting officer representative could not be hired by the same company whose contract they oversaw as a federal employee. Even though seeking such employment while still in federal service would represent a prohibited conflict of interest, seeking and being hired after federal service ends would be allowed ... the rules would bar the employee from representing them, such as through a communication or appearance, before a federal employee regarding the specific contract he or she oversaw """ https://www.army.mil/article/194019/moving_to_private_sector_employment_after_federal_service_comes_with_restrictions https://www.army.mil/article/194019/moving_to_private_sector...