>It's well known that the federal government simply DOES NOT pay market rate for talent. Now it is able to get away with that behavior in sectors (cough, bankin

>It's well known that the federal government simply DOES NOT pay market rate for talent. Now it is able to get away with that behavior in sectors (cough, banking) where there's consistent regulatory capture: so you're incentivized to spend some years at the government to learn how the system works, and then parlay that into a higher pay job subverting those systems. Notably, the SEC is exempt from the usual Federal government pay scales, so they do actually pay a lot better than other parts of the government. Still not really enough to compare to equivalent private sector salaries though.