To respond to your edit about ignoring the pay differential, and the other substance of your comments. I did note that some people choose to work in government

To respond to your edit about ignoring the pay differential, and the other substance of your comments. I did note that some people choose to work in government out of a sense of moral duty, but the fact of the matter is that you probably aren't going to be working on something that has any sort of impact, especially compared to what private enterprise offers. If you want to work on interesting aerospace projects, that's private sector. At the leading edge of computing, again private sector. Leading edge of hardware research, private sector. The only place where you are going to make a big difference with a CS degree in government is likely doing nefarious stuff with 3 letter agencies. Maybe with climate and environment as well. But again, you can have a big impact in cybersecurity or climate modelling in private sector as well. And we just can't discard the pay differential. There are cities where government workers have to get second jobs to make their bills. a 50% pay cut just can't be ignored.