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The answer to every problem cited is simply pay. When there’s unlimited DoD budget for Palantir or Anduril contracts compared to barely livable wage for enliste

The answer to every problem cited is simply pay. When there’s unlimited DoD budget for Palantir or Anduril contracts compared to barely livable wage for enlisted personnel, it’s a no-brainer why people go work for defense contractors instead. Enlisted or Officer, you’ll not break $200k annual earnings until at least 20 years of experience and Lieutenant General or higher rank. NSA after a decade of experience you may approach 200k. Anduril starts entry-level at $200k.

master_crab 2y ago
Yup. 95% pay. 5% antiquated culture. There are some aspects of the military culture that are a bit anachronistic, but it’s minor compared to the pay and the career progression problems the military creates. It forces an up and out system where you can’t continue doing what you’re good at for increasing amounts of pay.
- generic92034 2y ago
  But is that not also a common issue with many IT companies? The technical career path is short and the higher levels on that path are already supposed to work more on powerpoints and meetings than on code.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    There’s thousands of companies you can hop between, but there’s only a single military. They need to have good career progression.
    - relaxing 2y ago
      You could probably switch militaries once, but it gets tricky.
      - bigfatkitten 2y ago
        It can and does happen, usually with a few years doing other things (and gaining citizenship in a new country) in between.
alephnerd 2y ago
1. Palantir is a data store, and overstates it's "defense" credentials. A major defense customer they keep mentioning churned years ago. If Palantir is a cybersecurity company, then so is Salesforce. 2. Enlistees are bucketed based on rank and years within the service. It is almost impossible to make a case for Cyber Enlistees to get a separate payscale from other Enlistees because other enlistees can and do get pissed. A mix of public-private offensive security partnerships plus a strong reserves component for cybersecurity related roles is the best solution - this is what Israel does. Finally, CyberCom is a joint command, not a branch, so they are limited in comparison to what individual branches can do.
- master_crab 2y ago
  Palantir has been overstating its benefits for decades at this point. Slick UI can’t hide the almost minimal usefulness you get out of it (and even that minor utility requires an army of support engineers anyways)
  - wildzzz 2y ago
    You wouldn't want to make something that can stand on its own and actually get complete the mission. How would you afford an army of Agile developers with inflated salaries constantly churning out code that solves problems that don't exist? How could you possibly pay back the VCs that poured millions into your company without ripping off the American taxpayer? If a defense contractor's website doesn't immediately show you what they make or can articulate the services they actually provide, there's a good chance are they are scam artists and should be in prison.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ericmay 2y ago
  > Enlistees are bucketed based on rank and years within the service. It is almost impossible to make a case for Cyber Enlistees to get a separate payscale from other Enlistees because other enlistees can and do get pissed. I wonder if (and maybe this is already in practice), there's an opportunity for warrant officers in this context. In the United States Army where I enlisted, our helicopter pilots were mostly warrant officers and then you had the staff officers who would always try and get more flying time. The warrant officers were, I believe, paid less than the staff officers, but there's no reason to think the military can't provide additional pay. Retention and sign-on bonuses for expertly-trained cyber warfare and other compute-related activities warrant officers could be something to consider. Even as an enlisted soldier since I worked in aviation we'd get extra pay because of the odd shifts we worked which was supposed to make up for/supplement on-base meals. I may be remembering incorrectly but being airborne trained provided some extra money as well, though nominal. All that to say, if a W-1 is making $50,000 in base pay per year, if we wanted to we could just double that via retention and sign-on bonuses. Of course you might say, well sure but then you know you really aren't making as much as that engineer who is pulling $180,000/year + bonus/equity, and you're right, but in a similar vein I'd say yea and you can only fly an AH-64 in the military....
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
I think that it's complicated. Military service always looks like a bad deal on paper yet my military service is probably what I'm most proud of. I think we are fixated on $ to an unhealthy degree. Where is Anduril getting that money? They're paid the same rate for govt contracts as everyone else no? Do they boost that with investor cash?
- alright2565 2y ago
  > Unlike most defense companies, we don’t wait for our customers to tell us what they need. We identify problems, privately fund our R&D and sell finished products off the shelf. The idea is to be more like Microsoft or SpaceX. The government doesn't micromanage Microsoft's R&D, they simply purchase licenses for Windows off the shelf. Same thing happens for SpaceX rocket launches at this point.
- alephnerd 2y ago
  > Where is Anduril getting that money? A mix of VC funding, foreign defense sales, and private sector deals, because their products are dual use. Also, as a private company, they don't have the same kinds of expenditures that a service has (pensions, capex on infra, etc) > I think that it's complicated Yep! Esprit de corps does play a role in retention to a limited extent. Also, after this hearing happening in 2018, all the branches began pushing heavily for Cyber Reserves branches because it's the easiest way for them to remediate the skill and pay gap.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    They also get a ton of money from the US DoD.
- arccy 2y ago
  because the military can't retain talent, they pay through the nose for contractors who don't enforce their "standards"...
  - ozim 2y ago
neodymiumphish 2y ago
Agreed! I left the Air Force with 12 years of service, 4 SANS certs, certification as a federal law enforcement officer, and experience working against APTs. At the time I left, I was getting less than $80k in compensation (excluding healthcare, cause I don’t know how to account for that), and accepted the first job offered ($103k). Left that less than a year later for a job paying $140k plus bonuses, and now I’m in an even better spot 2 years later. The military can’t compete unless they change how they pay their service members.
- hed 2y ago
  Did you get BAH? In high CoL areas like DC metro the housing allowance is like an extra 33k, tax free.
  - neodymiumphish 2y ago
    I did. Not quite that high, but ask any member of the military living in those areas. It’s not even set to cover 100% of the costs anymore…
- ozim 2y ago
  But it would take you much more to jump to that $140k if you were not in military. It wasn’t like you could get that right of the bat. Military experience is valuable on itself. Yes you don’t want to stay there for whole career- but doing 5 or 10 years is going to pay off later. Just be good for your mates ;)
- giantg2 2y ago
  I mean, the reason you're getting that much is due to the experience and creds you earned during service. I can't even post into real security roles at my current company because they only want external candidates with federal experience. They post internally for 1-2 days as a formality. Even then, most of those roles are under $120k. The only roles available to me are shitty ones like application security champion and managing/configuring SAST tools. Also a major point not covered was defined benefits vs the 401k model.
renewiltord 2y ago
Anduril fires people. That’s why the government can give Anduril money. The government can’t do things that Anduril can.
- zaphar 2y ago
  I mean, the government absolutely could fire people. They aren't giving money to Anduril because Anduril can fire people. They are giving money to Anduril because: 1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire. 2. Giving Anduril money funnels funds into local enconomies and individuals that are important to political objectives.
  - ozim 2y ago
    3. Andruil sales are “friends” with people making decisions ?? Just asking, not accusing anyone of anything.
  - FpUser 2y ago
    >"1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire" Interesting. They can't afford to hire person. But by paying to company like Anduril they somehow can afford not only salary of said competent person and a boatload of overhead. Kinda contradictionary.
  - analogwzrd 2y ago
    It's notoriously difficult for the government to fire an employee. It can also be difficult to fire an employee in a defense contractor. From what I know of Anduril, part of their business model is that they've found a way to handle government procurement differently where they are not as constrained? They may well be able to fire people more easily, but I think they might also do a better job of hiring and retaining talent. The government outsources things to contractors because they have no idea how to manage those projects. Do you want your mayor as the foreman for the crew paving your roads? As with most businesses, the government has the money but not the know-how so they need to outsource or contract.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
michaelt 2y ago
The pay is part of the equation, absolutely. But in my experience, there comes a point where people start saying "OK, now I'm earning $x00,000 I'm rich enough to afford some luxuries, what luxuries would most improve my life?" and it turns out things like "not being on call" are kinda popular. I'm not sure there's any reasonable amount of money that would make me want to go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks. So they might need pay and fixes to the culture.
- crooked-v 2y ago
  And that's before considering things like the probably higher-than-usual rate of neurodiverse workers in software, for whom military cultural issues would often go from merely unpleasant all the way up to fundamentally incompatible.
  - Xymist 2y ago
    The military's difficulties with the hacker mindset and common neurodiverse mindsets goes deeper than "culture". The military wants/needs to be able to give orders and expect them to be followed. An _active rejection_ of orders, conformity, standardisation, and externally-driven imposed change are all very common within those communities at a level that is closer to biology than culture; it's not something that could straightforwardly be coached out of either side. To be a comfortable place for a lot of us to work, the military would need to understand that "because I felt like it" is both a complete explanation and a valid justification for either a 100,000 line software project or a two day nap.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      I mostly agree. However, some nuerodivergent individuals could benefit from the structure and routine. The only real problem is when wrong or political orders take place since there's not any real recourse. There's not much recourse in the civilian side, but at least quitting is a potential option.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  > go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks Marine Corps recruit training and Air Force BMT are world’s apart.
giantg2 2y ago
Pay is only part of it. There's a huge mindset difference between controlling organizational structure/policy and the type of people that want to freely explore creative ideas that don't fit in the normal boxes (hackers). As an example, lot of people wouldn't be ok with being told you have to move, or you can't move, which is common in the military. $200k is huge for most people. Even $100k is a good salary for most of the country. Start adding in housing allowance and a defined benefits program and it's really pretty decent. Most branches will do direct commissions up to O5 for cyber roles now.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  $200k isn’t huge for people capable of cyberwarfare.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    $122k is the median for cyber security professionals. $200k is substantially above that. More importantly and tothe point of my previous comment, $200k firmly puts one in the upper class nationally considering the median personal income is only $42k. The perspective on money here is wild.
    - TheCoelacanth 2y ago
      The median cyber security professional reads the results of security scanners and then turns them into Jira tickets. That's not even remotely the same skill set that we're talking about here.
      - bigfatkitten 2y ago
        Most of the people working in government CNO are just operators. They're pushing buttons in a GUI when they're told to. They aren't writing exploits or developing tools. Most (though certainly not all) of that work is done by contractors on very good money, or purchased from industry.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
miki123211 2y ago
This is a general problem for all (western) governments everywhere, not just the US or the US military. The thing about contractors is that paying $ x million for a project is "normal", but paying a entry-level software dev twice the salary of e.g. the national police's commander in chief is completely unacceptable. If you do that, people in other branches of government will most definitely strike, and doing it will involve incredible amounts of feather ruffling. It's probably one of the hardest things for a government to do, and it stands against everything governments traditionally stand for. I don't think democratically-elected governments have a good way out of this problem. Propaganda about "protecting the nation" probably helps somewhat with convincing people to just stomach the lower pay, but that's far from enough.
lesuorac 2y ago
I mean until the USG stops footing the bill for the President and VP this isn't going to change. You can pay an external contractor more than the VP but not a federal employee (some handwaveyness around locale benefits). If Kamala had to actually pay for all of the stuff she did out of her $284,600/yr salary we'd see that number go way up real fast. I doubt that even covers her security detail if she stayed at the Observatory all year. The USA has a revenue of ~4.5 Trillion and the 2nd in charge gets <300k while companies with well under 1T revenue have numerous employees with $xx million compensation. > [1] The aggregate limitation on pay for members of the Senior Executive Service and employees in senior-level or scientific or professional positions covered by a certified performance appraisal system is the total annual compensation payable to the Vice President under 3 U.S.C. 104 on the last day of the calendar year. [1]: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/aggregate-limitation-on-pay/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...
- jki275 2y ago
  Most federal employees are limited by the amount paid to a member of congress. The SES doesn't have a lot of people in it and they mostly run a bureaucracy, they're not doing real work.

master_crab 2y ago

Yup. 95% pay. 5% antiquated culture. There are some aspects of the military culture that are a bit anachronistic, but it’s minor compared to the pay and the career progression problems the military creates. It forces an up and out system where you can’t continue doing what you’re good at for increasing amounts of pay.

generic92034 2y ago
But is that not also a common issue with many IT companies? The technical career path is short and the higher levels on that path are already supposed to work more on powerpoints and meetings than on code.
- Aeolun 2y ago
  There’s thousands of companies you can hop between, but there’s only a single military. They need to have good career progression.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    You could probably switch militaries once, but it gets tricky.
    - bigfatkitten 2y ago
      It can and does happen, usually with a few years doing other things (and gaining citizenship in a new country) in between.

alephnerd 2y ago

1. Palantir is a data store, and overstates it's "defense" credentials. A major defense customer they keep mentioning churned years ago. If Palantir is a cybersecurity company, then so is Salesforce. 2. Enlistees are bucketed based on rank and years within the service. It is almost impossible to make a case for Cyber Enlistees to get a separate payscale from other Enlistees because other enlistees can and do get pissed. A mix of public-private offensive security partnerships plus a strong reserves component for cybersecurity related roles is the best solution - this is what Israel does. Finally, CyberCom is a joint command, not a branch, so they are limited in comparison to what individual branches can do.

master_crab 2y ago
Palantir has been overstating its benefits for decades at this point. Slick UI can’t hide the almost minimal usefulness you get out of it (and even that minor utility requires an army of support engineers anyways)
- wildzzz 2y ago
  You wouldn't want to make something that can stand on its own and actually get complete the mission. How would you afford an army of Agile developers with inflated salaries constantly churning out code that solves problems that don't exist? How could you possibly pay back the VCs that poured millions into your company without ripping off the American taxpayer? If a defense contractor's website doesn't immediately show you what they make or can articulate the services they actually provide, there's a good chance are they are scam artists and should be in prison.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ericmay 2y ago
> Enlistees are bucketed based on rank and years within the service. It is almost impossible to make a case for Cyber Enlistees to get a separate payscale from other Enlistees because other enlistees can and do get pissed. I wonder if (and maybe this is already in practice), there's an opportunity for warrant officers in this context. In the United States Army where I enlisted, our helicopter pilots were mostly warrant officers and then you had the staff officers who would always try and get more flying time. The warrant officers were, I believe, paid less than the staff officers, but there's no reason to think the military can't provide additional pay. Retention and sign-on bonuses for expertly-trained cyber warfare and other compute-related activities warrant officers could be something to consider. Even as an enlisted soldier since I worked in aviation we'd get extra pay because of the odd shifts we worked which was supposed to make up for/supplement on-base meals. I may be remembering incorrectly but being airborne trained provided some extra money as well, though nominal. All that to say, if a W-1 is making $50,000 in base pay per year, if we wanted to we could just double that via retention and sign-on bonuses. Of course you might say, well sure but then you know you really aren't making as much as that engineer who is pulling $180,000/year + bonus/equity, and you're right, but in a similar vein I'd say yea and you can only fly an AH-64 in the military....

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

I think that it's complicated. Military service always looks like a bad deal on paper yet my military service is probably what I'm most proud of. I think we are fixated on $ to an unhealthy degree. Where is Anduril getting that money? They're paid the same rate for govt contracts as everyone else no? Do they boost that with investor cash?

alright2565 2y ago
> Unlike most defense companies, we don’t wait for our customers to tell us what they need. We identify problems, privately fund our R&D and sell finished products off the shelf. The idea is to be more like Microsoft or SpaceX. The government doesn't micromanage Microsoft's R&D, they simply purchase licenses for Windows off the shelf. Same thing happens for SpaceX rocket launches at this point.
alephnerd 2y ago
> Where is Anduril getting that money? A mix of VC funding, foreign defense sales, and private sector deals, because their products are dual use. Also, as a private company, they don't have the same kinds of expenditures that a service has (pensions, capex on infra, etc) > I think that it's complicated Yep! Esprit de corps does play a role in retention to a limited extent. Also, after this hearing happening in 2018, all the branches began pushing heavily for Cyber Reserves branches because it's the easiest way for them to remediate the skill and pay gap.
- relaxing 2y ago
  They also get a ton of money from the US DoD.
arccy 2y ago
because the military can't retain talent, they pay through the nose for contractors who don't enforce their "standards"...
- ozim 2y ago

neodymiumphish 2y ago

Agreed! I left the Air Force with 12 years of service, 4 SANS certs, certification as a federal law enforcement officer, and experience working against APTs. At the time I left, I was getting less than $80k in compensation (excluding healthcare, cause I don’t know how to account for that), and accepted the first job offered ($103k). Left that less than a year later for a job paying $140k plus bonuses, and now I’m in an even better spot 2 years later. The military can’t compete unless they change how they pay their service members.

hed 2y ago
Did you get BAH? In high CoL areas like DC metro the housing allowance is like an extra 33k, tax free.
- neodymiumphish 2y ago
  I did. Not quite that high, but ask any member of the military living in those areas. It’s not even set to cover 100% of the costs anymore…
ozim 2y ago
But it would take you much more to jump to that $140k if you were not in military. It wasn’t like you could get that right of the bat. Military experience is valuable on itself. Yes you don’t want to stay there for whole career- but doing 5 or 10 years is going to pay off later. Just be good for your mates ;)
giantg2 2y ago
I mean, the reason you're getting that much is due to the experience and creds you earned during service. I can't even post into real security roles at my current company because they only want external candidates with federal experience. They post internally for 1-2 days as a formality. Even then, most of those roles are under $120k. The only roles available to me are shitty ones like application security champion and managing/configuring SAST tools. Also a major point not covered was defined benefits vs the 401k model.

renewiltord 2y ago

Anduril fires people. That’s why the government can give Anduril money. The government can’t do things that Anduril can.

zaphar 2y ago
I mean, the government absolutely could fire people. They aren't giving money to Anduril because Anduril can fire people. They are giving money to Anduril because: 1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire. 2. Giving Anduril money funnels funds into local enconomies and individuals that are important to political objectives.
- ozim 2y ago
  3. Andruil sales are “friends” with people making decisions ?? Just asking, not accusing anyone of anything.
- FpUser 2y ago
  >"1. Anduril is more competent than the people they can afford to hire" Interesting. They can't afford to hire person. But by paying to company like Anduril they somehow can afford not only salary of said competent person and a boatload of overhead. Kinda contradictionary.
- analogwzrd 2y ago
  It's notoriously difficult for the government to fire an employee. It can also be difficult to fire an employee in a defense contractor. From what I know of Anduril, part of their business model is that they've found a way to handle government procurement differently where they are not as constrained? They may well be able to fire people more easily, but I think they might also do a better job of hiring and retaining talent. The government outsources things to contractors because they have no idea how to manage those projects. Do you want your mayor as the foreman for the crew paving your roads? As with most businesses, the government has the money but not the know-how so they need to outsource or contract.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago

michaelt 2y ago

The pay is part of the equation, absolutely. But in my experience, there comes a point where people start saying "OK, now I'm earning $x00,000 I'm rich enough to afford some luxuries, what luxuries would most improve my life?" and it turns out things like "not being on call" are kinda popular. I'm not sure there's any reasonable amount of money that would make me want to go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks. So they might need pay and fixes to the culture.

crooked-v 2y ago
And that's before considering things like the probably higher-than-usual rate of neurodiverse workers in software, for whom military cultural issues would often go from merely unpleasant all the way up to fundamentally incompatible.
- Xymist 2y ago
  The military's difficulties with the hacker mindset and common neurodiverse mindsets goes deeper than "culture". The military wants/needs to be able to give orders and expect them to be followed. An _active rejection_ of orders, conformity, standardisation, and externally-driven imposed change are all very common within those communities at a level that is closer to biology than culture; it's not something that could straightforwardly be coached out of either side. To be a comfortable place for a lot of us to work, the military would need to understand that "because I felt like it" is both a complete explanation and a valid justification for either a 100,000 line software project or a two day nap.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    I mostly agree. However, some nuerodivergent individuals could benefit from the structure and routine. The only real problem is when wrong or political orders take place since there's not any real recourse. There's not much recourse in the civilian side, but at least quitting is a potential option.
hipadev23 2y ago
> go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks Marine Corps recruit training and Air Force BMT are world’s apart.

giantg2 2y ago

Pay is only part of it. There's a huge mindset difference between controlling organizational structure/policy and the type of people that want to freely explore creative ideas that don't fit in the normal boxes (hackers). As an example, lot of people wouldn't be ok with being told you have to move, or you can't move, which is common in the military. $200k is huge for most people. Even $100k is a good salary for most of the country. Start adding in housing allowance and a defined benefits program and it's really pretty decent. Most branches will do direct commissions up to O5 for cyber roles now.

hipadev23 2y ago
$200k isn’t huge for people capable of cyberwarfare.
- giantg2 2y ago
  $122k is the median for cyber security professionals. $200k is substantially above that. More importantly and tothe point of my previous comment, $200k firmly puts one in the upper class nationally considering the median personal income is only $42k. The perspective on money here is wild.
  - TheCoelacanth 2y ago
    The median cyber security professional reads the results of security scanners and then turns them into Jira tickets. That's not even remotely the same skill set that we're talking about here.
    - bigfatkitten 2y ago
      Most of the people working in government CNO are just operators. They're pushing buttons in a GUI when they're told to. They aren't writing exploits or developing tools. Most (though certainly not all) of that work is done by contractors on very good money, or purchased from industry.
  - Aeolun 2y ago

miki123211 2y ago

This is a general problem for all (western) governments everywhere, not just the US or the US military. The thing about contractors is that paying $ x million for a project is "normal", but paying a entry-level software dev twice the salary of e.g. the national police's commander in chief is completely unacceptable. If you do that, people in other branches of government will most definitely strike, and doing it will involve incredible amounts of feather ruffling. It's probably one of the hardest things for a government to do, and it stands against everything governments traditionally stand for. I don't think democratically-elected governments have a good way out of this problem. Propaganda about "protecting the nation" probably helps somewhat with convincing people to just stomach the lower pay, but that's far from enough.

lesuorac 2y ago

I mean until the USG stops footing the bill for the President and VP this isn't going to change. You can pay an external contractor more than the VP but not a federal employee (some handwaveyness around locale benefits). If Kamala had to actually pay for all of the stuff she did out of her $284,600/yr salary we'd see that number go way up real fast. I doubt that even covers her security detail if she stayed at the Observatory all year. The USA has a revenue of ~4.5 Trillion and the 2nd in charge gets <300k while companies with well under 1T revenue have numerous employees with $xx million compensation. > [1] The aggregate limitation on pay for members of the Senior Executive Service and employees in senior-level or scientific or professional positions covered by a certified performance appraisal system is the total annual compensation payable to the Vice President under 3 U.S.C. 104 on the last day of the calendar year. [1]: https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-administration/fact-sheets/aggregate-limitation-on-pay/ https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/pay-admi...

jki275 2y ago
Most federal employees are limited by the amount paid to a member of congress. The SES doesn't have a lot of people in it and they mostly run a bureaucracy, they're not doing real work.