It's funny to me that even before Snowden NSA (like literally every other federal agency) was facing a monumental challenge because you can hardly find anyone w

It's funny to me that even before Snowden NSA (like literally every other federal agency) was facing a monumental challenge because you can hardly find anyone with decent qualifications to accept the middling salaries and hard cap on potential compensation as a government worker. Why go to NSA as a GG-9 (there's other schedules than GS, guys) out of college when you could go to Google for maybe similar... and maybe actually get to share your work possibly? The other part of the equation is that cost of living in the DC area has risen quite a lot and tech salaries in private sector have met the tide when most federal workers can't keep up with it. When it takes two federal workers at about $70k / yr each to have a chance at a comfortable living in the suburbs it's pretty sickening. Median house price in Fairfax County hit $700k the other year, and up in Anne Arundel County in Maryland it's maybe $550k last I saw years ago).