"Most agencies are hiring new grads at GS-7 or GS-9 (in SF that's $61k to $75k to start) which is a joke." This has not been my experience, my agency hires new

"Most agencies are hiring new grads at GS-7 or GS-9 (in SF that's $61k to $75k to start) which is a joke." This has not been my experience, my agency hires new PhDs at the GS-13 level and BS/MS graduates at the GS-12 level. But YMMV. "It's possible to find a job at some agencies working on stuff that feels very rewarding and very important, but you will always constantly feel like the bureaucracy is constantly fighting you." Concur. Of course, government jobs are very stable, which can be an advantage or not depending on what you want out of life. We find that most of the engineers we are able to recruit have been to industry or academia and found the instability and poor life balance to be incompatible with having a family. So my "new" recruits tend to be a little older, married, with a child or two. On the other hand, many of my actual younger hires eventually get headhunted and leave for industry to make 2x more than I can pay them. Then they find out that on an hourly basis they're making roughly the same amount, because their new jobs expect 20-40 hours of unpaid overtime.