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NSA wooing thousands of laid-off Big Tech workers for spy agency's hiring spree
- magwa101 4y ago[dead]
- LinuxBender 4y agoNon-JS Version [1] [1] - https://archive.ph/OPror https://archive.ph/OPror
- theknocker 4y ago[dead]
- purututu 4y agoWhere does NSA get the money from to hire thousands (=multiple 1000s) of big tech workers? How comes big tech is laying them off but NSA can afford to hiring them, in the thousands?
- slavboj 4y agoIt gets the money from you, and unlike MicroGoogBook, you are absolutely obliged to be their customer.
- kilgnad 4y agoTax dollars. These jobs are safe from layoffs. It looks really bad when the government starts laying off people.
- nostrademons 4y agoAlso borrowed dollars. The federal budget deficit is $1.38T in 2022, enough to fund 16 NSAs.
- tcoff91 4y agoIts insane that NSA is 1/16 of federal budget. Thats way too much money to spend on merely one part of the defense budget.
- MattGaiser 4y agoDeficit, not budget.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- archgoon 4y ago[dead]
- willis936 4y agoSnapshots are valueless. The deficit shot up to 3T in 2020, though I'm not really sure why (;. Then, in 2022 it was cut in half. It looks like we're on track to hit pre-Iraq War levels of deficit in another few years. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio...
- nostrademons 4y agoWe haven't run a surplus since 2001, and I'd be very surprised if we continue to see the deficit decline. You can think of 2020/2021 as outliers because of all the pandemic spending assistance, and then taking them out, we're back on the same trendline since 2015, i.e. up. Likely will be even steeper if we get a recession later this year or next.
- photonbeam 4y agoAre they safe from government shutdown brinkmanship
- shadowgovt 4y agoUsually, government shutdown excludes security-critical programs.
- xhkkffbf 4y agoIn the past, the government workers got unpaid time off. Then Congress quietly voted to reinstate all of lost pay so it turned into extra paid time off that didn't count toward the vacation allowance. It's not guaranteed, but I would guess that Congress would do the same thing again.
- dpflan 4y agoBlurb in the article: "The NSA declined to say how much taxpayer money is allotted for the hiring effort. Total spending on the intelligence community for fiscal 2022 was $89.8 billion."
- MattGaiser 4y agoGovernment budgets tend to be stable so I suspect they have always been hiring this many positions, but have had severe difficulties retaining talent with the lower salaries.
- lokar 4y agoThey pay a fraction of big tech
- dogma1138 4y agoThe gravy train isn’t running as well as it used too, and even during the glory days it’s not like every FAANG employee was on a half a mil+ total comp… and not ever tech worker worked for FAANG. You can get a very decent salary with amazing benefits and job security working for the government, living in a far lower cost area than SF or Seattle and retire early on a very generous retirement plan.
- mason55 4y ago> living in a far lower cost area than SF or Seattle If you're talking about DMV, it's not that different. This random calculator has SF[1] as 15% more expensive and Seattle[2] as slightly less expensive [1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/san-francisco-ca/?city=washington-arlington-alexandria-dc-va&income=70000 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of... [2] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of-living-calculator/seattle-wa/?city=washington-arlington-alexandria-dc-va&income=70000 https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-estate/cost-of...
- rhino369 4y agoI’m not sure the DC is really much (if at all) cheaper than Seattle. And GS salaries are bad. GS-15 tops out at like 160k at the most senior levels. Maybe NSA puts them on a special track, but even that isn’t very good.
- Klonoar 4y agoI’ve lived extensively in both Seattle and DC. DC works out to be cheaper at this point. The GS salary, as you noted, is the bigger issue.
- loeg 4y agoOk but like 80-90% of FB engineers are E5s making ~300k+. That’s a lot more than an upper limit of 160-185k (sibling comments). And cost of living in Seattle is not substantially higher than DC.
- fnordpiglet 4y ago[flagged]
- fogforthought93 4y agoAll kinds of source I'm sure—for example, the CIA has financed all sorts of black operations with drug trafficking since at least WWII. Now, that money would not be used to hire the rank and file, but it does relieve pressure on the budget. Ransomware attacks come to mind. It wouldn't be hard to subcontract that out and keep even the hackers themselves from knowing who they're working for.
- flir 4y agoMuch smaller scale, but I'm sure most of the VPN companies run at a profit.
- Pegasus930 4y ago[dead]
- nirav72 4y agoNSA is part of the DoD - the DoD's annual budget at this point is north of $700 billion. While NSA's exact slice of the overall DoD budget is classified - they're by far the largest intelligence agency in U.S government. Many times larger than even the CIA. It's safe to say they have the funds to hire 1000s of tech workers.
- JoeyBananas 4y ago1. congress 2. big tech has to actually make a profit
- simple-thoughts 4y ago[flagged]
- kilgnad 4y agoYou'd have to be ok with doing a lot of f-ed up shit working for the NSA. Enough shit to cause someone like Snowden to Exile himself as a whistleblower. There is no-doubt in my mind a lot of those programs are still running and new ones have been initiated. Although The government protects whistleblowers, the government does not really protect whistleblowers that whistleblow government shit.
- lokar 4y agoWhy go to the NSA when you can do just as much evil (for the same people) at palantir for twice the pay?
- kilgnad 4y agoBecause palantir can lay you off. Also the scope of the NSA is much more broad and you'll also have the possibility to work on stuff that could be closer to ops stuff as well. For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet or deploying stuxnet. Last I read about palantir it was some boring ass search graph relationship thing.
- gizmo686 4y ago> For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet or deploying stuxnet. You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war) that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause? Setting aside the fact that the NSA work sounds a lot more interesting from a technical perspective [0], a lot of people would find the work far more fulfilling than convincing people to buy widgets they don't need. [0] Especially considering that the day to day work of working for a large government organization is far more boring, even without the extra headache that comes with working with classified materials.
- filoleg 4y ago> You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war) that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause? I think the parent comment fully agrees with you on this. Their whole reply is just saying that despite paying more, Palantir isn't nearly as layoff-proof as NSA, and you don't get to work on such a wide range of "cool" things (such as stuxnet) at Palantir either.
- Pegasus930 4y agoThis article doesn't make sense. The NSA, which has to hire U.S. citizens and cannot touch H1Bs, is wooing laid-off big tech workers previously making 300K a year to work for <$150,000 in D.C. and Baltimore? This is just a paid advertisment.
- renewiltord 4y agoNo chance someone who chose to work at Google for half a million is going to work at the NSA for $120k. Then again, they probably both have lots of jobs where they do very little work.
- giantg2 4y agoThey likely want people to switch for ideological reasons. I know of one person who as done something similar.
- exegete 4y agoWhat are the ideological reasons? Patriotism? Can you clarify?
- dopeboy 4y agoPatriotism is a good one. A lot of people want to serve their country but don’t want to run for office. This is one way to exercise your talents and also serve your country.
- ttul 4y agoIt’s easy to criticize the NSA because what we see in the news is mostly criticism of their failures and mistakes. My understanding from the little information I have ever received from former NSA colleagues is that the work they do is critical for global security. They actually prevent a lot of badness and people who work there feel they are making a difference. The other thing I have gleaned is that the work involves tech that no one else would ever invest in. For example, a former professor of mine worked on an integrated circuit VLSI design that was, at the time, at least 10-fold larger than any commercial chip. Entirely in secret, of course. The salary may not be world-beating, but - from what I can glean - the work is rewarding and meaningful in ways that compensate for the difference in pay.
- aaomidi 4y agoSecure retirement?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- encryptluks2 4y agoAs stated, they are wooing you... At a time when you were let go for having nothing special to offer. So now you get to decide if you want to be a pawn for the government and entertain their stupid offers so that you can essentially be a monkey in front of a keyboard, or if you want to wait and improve your skills for a time when they are not trying to take advantage of you being jobless and for when you have a newfound confidence in yourself.
- alephnerd 4y agoIt's a good job with great benefits, but idk how many FAANG employees wokld be eligible due to Drug Testing or Marijuana requirements (if you smoked within the last 10 years, you're ineligible). The pay is pretty good for DMV and the hours are great (a strict 40 hours and work doesn't come back home) edit: according to vlovich123, past drug use won't make you illegible anymore if you stop at the time of hire
- kilgnad 4y ago10 years?? How would they know?
- vlovich123 4y agoI imagine lying on a federal form is going to be a risky move, especially when going to a spy agency that’s going to do background checks. I’d recommend being honest if you’re interested in this line of work.
- kilgnad 4y agoThis line of work is all about dishonesty. Espionage and spying and dishonesty is the job description. They can't know. Also I would argue people in the NSA are less honest then normal despite the background checks.
- samdcbu 4y agoPeople with security clearances spill their guts and tell all on their security clearance forms, because not doing so is a felony that the DOJ takes incredibly seriously. People’s most personal and intimate secrets are in those forms. Never, ever lie or knowingly omit information on a security clearance form. If you tell the truth and you are disqualified, it’s extremely unlikely that information will be used against you. The FBI isn’t going to come after you for doing mushrooms. If you lie to the federal government while trying to obtain a security clearance, they will put you in federal prison.
- pharmakom 4y agoIs NSA pay still uncompetitive though? I think this might be the biggest obstacle to mass surveillance honestly.
- philip1209 4y ago"The 2023 salary cap for all GS employees is $183,500 per year. You cannot be offered more than this under any circumstance." https://join.tts.gsa.gov/compensation-and-benefits/ https://join.tts.gsa.gov/compensation-and-benefits/
- thdespou 4y agoAt least they get to play with some cool "toys".
- Godel_unicode 4y agoThat’s only base salary. There are quite a few performance and skill based bonus programs in the federal government which end up in the mid-200s.
- photonbeam 4y agoAre there published guidelines for this, or is it more that you negotiate with a hiring manager?
- Godel_unicode 4y agoThere are published guidelines within the agency, your recruiting human capital person or hiring manager could tell you more. There’s no negotiation though, either the billet is part of the program (CISA calls their CTMS) or it’s not, and either you check the box (usually with a certification) or you don’t. Edit: found this on their site. https://dhscs.usajobs.gov/assets/pdf/Career_Level_Guide.pdf https://dhscs.usajobs.gov/assets/pdf/Career_Level_Guide.pdf
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
- dbg31415 4y agoNot what the world needs.
- voytec 4y ago"I got an offer from the NSA" would be a good synonym for "I have a very clean and rather thoroughly checked background".
- Klonoar 4y agoNot necessarily - one can get govt offers without the clearance in some cases, then go on to fail the clearance check.
- giardini 4y agowayrec says >""I got an offer from the NSA" would be a good synonym for "I have a very clean and rather thoroughly checked background"."< Or perhaps not. Complete the initial phrase: "I got an offer from the NSA to be a hitman." hardly qualifies one for general employment! I would prefer to not be the one who turns down such an applicant for a job.
- necroforest 4y agoi don't think the NSA has hitmen.
- jschveibinz 4y agoThis comment section is useless. Here is a useful comment: working for that agency results in a strong technical experience, a security stamp of approval, and a social network that often leads to very high paying contractor jobs or the development of startup businesses that end up being worth tens of millions. Did you ever wonder why there is so much wealth in the Maryland-DC-Northern Virginia area? Well, now you know.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoSure, but some people have morals.
- Entinel 4y agoIs there really such a big leap going from working for Facebook to working for the NSA except the spying you are doing is much more direct and not surrounded in business speak?
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y agoAnd “patriotism.”
- roarcher 4y agoI consider myself fairly patriotic and I'd never work for the NSA, because I can think of few things that are more antithetical to this country's (hypothetical) ideals than mass surveillance. The Patriot Act has to be the most ironically named piece of legislation in history.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoPeople can (mostly) opt out of Facebook. There's no opting out of government surveillance. There's no opting out of zero days and built in backdoors and secretly modified hardware.
- 4y ago
- nonrandomstring 4y agoSome years ago there was a "Intelexit" campaign to try persuading agency staff to quit. Problem with convincing the most morally upstanding people get out is - who does that leave behind? I'm not sure bad crowds can be changed from the inside, because you'd have a hard time smuggling a truly sceptical mind past indoc, but an optimistic take is you could see this as an opportunity to change things for the better.
- qualudeheart 4y agoSelection pressures go brrrr.
- simple-thoughts 4y agoSomeone who is morally upstanding will not pass changes through a corrupt political process, because executing change requires power which is why the process is corrupt in a first place. In contrast, if people refuse to work for rogue agencies, it has real and immediate effects. First, it increases staffing costs as the pool of immoral prospects is heavily in demand from the private sector. This means funds that could have gone to other rogue agencies must go to this one. Second, it reduces the quality of output as competence and morality tend to be correlated.
- blame-troi 4y agoCalling Y.T.'s mom...
- vulcan01 4y agoIt's a shame you're being downvoted for this, especially when the reference (or the reference's author) is one of the more highly-upvoted suggestions on the yearly book recommendation thread on HN.
- Julesman 4y ago[flagged]
- danrocks 4y agoConfusing comment with nothing to back it up. Says more about you than the entities you’re racing against.
- dredmorbius 4y agoThe relationship of the Washington Times with Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church is well-founded and widely known. The nature of the Unification Church similarly. From its founder's obituary in The Washington Post: "Sun Myung Moon dies at 92; Washington Times owner led the Unification Church" (2012) Sun Myung Moon, a self-professed messiah who claimed millions of religious followers in his Unification Church and sought to become a powerful voice in the American conservative movement through business interests that included the Washington Times, has died. He was 92.... His stated ambition was to rule the world and replace Christianity with his own faith, which blended elements of Christianity, Confucianism and Korean folk religions.... His most prominent investment was the Washington Times, founded in 1982 as a conservative counterbalance to what Mr. Moon perceived as The Washington Post’s liberal bias.... <https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/sun-myung-moon-dies-at-92-washington-times-owner-led-the-unification-church/2012/09/02/001b747a-f531-11e1-aab7-f199a16396cf_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/sun-myung-...>
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- cgb223 4y agoIs there such a thing as a “Product Manager” at the NSA? Not sure how requirements work when your “customer” is intelligence chiefs and requirements relate to gaining access to data in …unconventional ways
- spookthesunset 4y agowas wondering the same thing...
- necroforest 4y agoyes, they are called Program Managers
- sprash 4y agoFrom Alphabet Inc to Alphabet Soup. Why not? The former is just a front of the latter anyways.
- rootbear 4y agoWhen I was at the University of Maryland in the late 70s, we had a student chapter of the ACM that met regularly. Once a year (or semester, I forget) we had "Career Night" when local IT companies would do a presentation of what they had to offer to future comp. sci. grads. We always had a good turn out for Career Night since the vendors provided the refreshments, which were orders of magnitude better that what we had at a regular meeting. NSA was always one of the presenters, and it was an amusing talk because they couldn't really tell us anything about what we'd be doing. They just said they had interesting problems, pretty much any hardware you could name, and decent salaries and benefits. I don't think any of my friends ended up working for them, but I have known quite a few NSA employees over the years. A friend who worked as a Russian language specialist had little good to say about the IT system they had to use. I imagine the cryptanalysts were the ones with the really good systems.
- alephnerd 4y agoThey try their damndest, but the systems can be a hot piece of garbage. That said, it isn't drastically worse than other foreign agencies I've dealt with.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago>NSA was always one of the presenters, and it was an amusing talk because they couldn't really tell us anything about what we'd be doing. Same problem as submarine recruiting. Lots of 'really cool' stuff going on, none of it available for discussion.
- philip1209 4y agoWith the federal salary cap - I'm curious. Is there as much pressure to move from IC to Manager? My impression is that so many people move from IC to Manager at startups because they seek comp increases.
- threadweaver34 4y agoMy not notable FAANG job is within the top 100 pay for government jobs.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoSES pay has a different salary cap. IIRC it's something weird like they can be paid as much as the third most highly compensated member of the president's cabinet.
- zxcvbn4038 4y agoIt’s less the NSA specifically and more civil service in general that you should worry about. Civil service is the opposite of everything that you love in big tech - it’s neither fast, nor efficient, nor progressive, the people you work with will not be “best and brightest”, the technology you work with will not be latest and greatest. You know how anytime you see more then one cop they are always talking about seniority and benefits and how many years, months, and days until their next pay grade or benefit tier kicks in? That will be you every day for thirty years. I knew people who got jobs at NASA, their life long dream, finished their first project in record time - were informed the project was a three year contract so even though they were done they needed to fill the desk for the next two and a half years - so they left.
- aaomidi 4y agoOnce they get rid of drug testing, NSA is going to boom in hiring.
- rib3ye 4y agoSource: The Washington Times Founder: Yong Myung Moon, Founder of the Unification Church
- Julesman 4y agoMy comment to this effect was flagged and deleted. Maybe because I used the popular term for these folks, which is not an epithet as we don't take cults seriously in this society. Or maybe my comment was deleted because I refereed to our culture as a racist empire? Not sure. Anyway, I hope people don't work for the NSA. I hope that opinion is allowed here.
- infamia 4y agoI'd like to point out to the folks up at arms that anyone would even consider a job at the NSA, that they might not fully understand the dualilty of the NSA. The SIGINT (signals intelligence) mission of the NSA is constantly in the news and is what folks mostly associate with the NSA. However, it's other mission of Information Assurance/Central Security Service gets little notice which is responsible for defensive security. The hopelessly conflicted nature the NSA is reflected in the title of the NSA's website which is NSA/CSS, and it describes the director of the NSA as "dual-hatted". The CSS/IA portion of the NSA is responsible for protecting the Dept. of Defense from cyber attack. It also helps government agencies, academic instituitions, critical infrastructure providers, and other companies (particularly government contractors) secure their infrastructure from cyber attacks. It also develops standards around the protection of systems and communication links. Unfortunately, this work is tarnished by the SIGINT role of the NSA. Very understandably this leads to a lot of mistrust, like when the NSA proposes cryptography algorithms for example. It also works closely with the NSS who helps produce NIST security standards. Just thought I'd point out the two hats of the NSA, since many folks don't know about this duality. There was some talk about splitting the NSA's dual missions into two agencies, but sadly that died off years ago with nothing being done.
- daydream 4y agoMy understanding is the SIGINT and CSS groups are essentially two separate organizations, somewhat firewalled from each other, with separate reporting chains all the way up to the director of the NSA. Is that true?
- Rebelgecko 4y agoI think that's been somewhat less true since the NSA21 reorg, which merged IAD with some of NSA's sigint groups.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- michael1999 4y agoI got the impression that old crook Poindexter and friends decided to go all-offence all the time at the turn of the century. I remember the arguments that since COTS was the future, and industry practices could never be practically hardened without rebuilding our entire software foundations, it was time to give up. The exploit market became regularized, deep, and liquid, and the TIA vision was the mission. Leaving the OPM twisting in the wind for total compromise reinforces the impression that if anyone at the NSA is actually focused on defence, they aren't doing a very good job. That's more than a generation of attack first, defend last. The S-box fix for DES was 50 years ago. Recent crypto contributions seem much less benevolent. I'm an outsider, and can't really know. I don't doubt your good will, but everything in my career from the Clipper chip fiasco, through Microsoft's incomprehensible 20 year fascination with code-signing in place of actually effective methods, and on up to the present day reinforces this impression.
- Der_Einzige 4y agoI'm sure that simply working in big tech is enough to get the attention of the three letter agencies. I'm sure they have the folks that they especially want listed already. How can one in big tech know that the things that happen in their life are genuine and not due to the influence of an agent who sees this tech worker as a future "agent of change" which needs to be "cultivated"? How many big tech workers are basically living in a lower stakes lower quality Truman show world ran by the three letter agencies?
- oars 4y agoAnyone know what the salaries are like for a mid level SWE in the NSA?
- LatteLazy 4y ago[flagged]
- dredmorbius 4y agoI'd be curious what other, and potentially far more ethical, opportunities might be arising.
- ravagat 4y agoI'd like to work for NSA at one point of my career. I feel like there's a lot of transferrable skills and applications that could benefit future business ventures.