[qmalzp]

That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's. Not to mention free food, potential for career growth, and an open non-militaristic culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie.

I honestly don't understand why someone would work for the NSA given the choice.

[schoen]

A few possibilities:

Believing in what the organization does (which could include several different narratives about why its work is good and/or legitimate and/or necessary)

Recruitment via channels that civilian firms aren't using and offering people an educational and career path they didn't expect to have

Recruitment via family, friend, and teacher channels

Wanting to get to know lots of secrets

Wanting to work with smart people

Wanting to work with fancy hardware (for some subspecialties)

Wanting to have one's unusual abilities appreciated and put to use

Wanting to be paid to work on cryptography at all before the 1980s

Wanting to be in a spy movie/novel

Wanting to get to perform real attacks against real people and organizations and not go to prison for it

I know I've met people in all of the first three categories, and I imagine I've met people in the other categories and not known it.

[rdtsc]

> Wanting to get to know lots of secrets

A bit tongue in cheek, but that's the people NSA should least want. They should be looking for those who want to know only the minimum amount of secrets to get their job done.

> Wanting to have one's unusual abilities appreciated and put to use

That's a hard too I'd imagine. I wonder if many end up going in thinking they'd be writing kernel exploits all day and end up twiddling excel spreadsheets or porting a bunch of scripts from python 2.4 to 2.6 once they pass the clearance process. It's not something they could check in advance and not something they could advertise much if they want to tell others when they look for employment elsewhere.

> Wanting to be in a spy movie/novel

Wonder how much the recruitment appeals to those tendencies. Just like with wanting to know secrets bit. They probably really don't want people who think themselves as James Bond. Though when recruiting college kids, I could see them pulling a bait-and-switch.

> Wanting to get to perform real attacks against real people and organizations and not go to prison for it

That's a tough one as well. If there is a desire and tendency to attack real people and organizations, there are probably red flags to look for in there as well. Did they already attack? Did they break the law? Did it bother them that they broke the law? Will they continue to break rules and possibly leak classified info...

> I know I've met people in all of the first three categories, and I imagine I've met people in the other categories and not known it.

Yeah I was offered something like that from a teacher in college. But I was an international student so it didn't possible.

[pc86]

Given how much information is classified, the minimum amount of secrets to do just about any job at the NSA is probably "lots of secrets" to most people.

To your attack point, when I was in the Marine Corps, one of my drill instructors said something to the effect of "You know why I joined the Marine Corps? Because it's one of the only jobs where you can legally kill a [expletive]." He didn't work in intelligence before coming to Parris Island but did have an active Secret clearance. Some people are just psychopaths and that doesn't necessarily preclude them from a security clearance. And there are plenty of folks who simply want to fight the enemies of $COUNTRY and aren't necessarily psychopaths because of it.

[leroy_masochist]

> when I was in the Marine Corps, one of my drill instructors said something to the effect of "You know why I joined the Marine Corps? Because it's one of the only jobs where you can legally kill a [expletive]."

How confident are you that he actually earnestly meant this? I've heard DIs / SOI instructors say things like that on several occasions, but it was all pretty clearly within the context of trying to be "motivating"....they didn't come across as actually psychotic.

[pc86]

This one did seem legitimately off to me, but I'll be honest it wouldn't surprise me to learn it was all an act and he was the smartest one of the bunch.

[659087]

> I've heard DIs / SOI instructors say things like that on several occasions, but it was all pretty clearly within the context of trying to be "motivating"....they didn't come across as actually psychotic.

If that's their idea of "motivational speaking", there's a whole new set of problems.

[rdtsc]

> , the minimum amount of secrets to do just about any job at the NSA is probably "lots of secrets" to most people.

Could be yeah. I guess was thinking of TAO mostly where say someone would be working on accessing Juniper routers and that's all they know. They can't be going around browsing through all the programs and capabilities.

> And there are plenty of folks who simply want to fight the enemies of $COUNTRY and aren't necessarily psychopaths because of it.

Agreed. I meant "red flag" in way that it should be look at more in depth. It could be they are driven by patriotism or they just like to break rules and get a high from that.

[geodel]

For the simple reason not everyone will get job at top 5-10 tech companies. There are jobs at consulting /contracting companies but apart from money they are in different league of crappiness. So once you eliminate those 2 categories govt job becomes pretty decent option if one can get it.

[qaq]

Work at a company that has big security consulting arm a ton of people came from NSA.

[paloaltokid]

Some people are genuinely patriotic.

[1001101]

It's a requirement given the stringency of clearances. The article didn't touch on it, but since Binney/Snowden and revelations about the domestic focus, you may not have the same kind of recruitment/retention you would have otherwise in this demographic.

[mindslight]

You'd think the genuinely patriotic would avoid working for the NSA, since it apparently results in exile to Russia.

[prewett]

Generally breaking the law and seeking to escape the consequences has always resulted in effective exile, throughout history. In fact, how could it not? Would you like the law to be suspended in this case, but not in the case of people leaking secrets to China? Where's the difference? Is it just that what you like should be an exception? You could argue it was patriotic to break the law, but working for the NSA hardly forced him to break the law, nor did it force him to avoid the consequences. He could have been like Rosa Parks who accepted the consequences. Admittedly, hers were smaller in magnitude, but there are other options than what Snowden took.

[watwut]

He did accepted the consequences. The consequence is his life now, quite literally. He has zero trust toward legal system as that is not designed to be fair. He his not willing to become martyr more than is necessary - and there is nothing wrong with that.

Rosa Park consequences went well beyond being arrested for one night. I am pretty sure she would prefer if she had the option to escape them - she did not. Altrough she did eventually left the city, due to consequences imposed on her there.

[mindslight]

Talking about "the law" is a red herring. The NSA is in explicit violation of USG's founding charter, and yet it remains in comfortable operation.

But more importantly, the concept of patriotism is orthogonal.

[nostrademons]

Exile is the consequence, in this and most other cases.

[Codestare]

He's not exiled? The US wants him back very much.

[TheCoelacanth]

To be unfairly tried in a trial where he won't even be allowed to argue to the jury that his actions were justified.

[westmeal]

(Presumably so they can kick his teeth in)

[flukus]

Would a genuinely patriotic person work for the NSA? I'd consider Snowden more patriotic than all of their current employees.

[lazyasciiart]

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/12/who-is-reality-...

[mcculley]

> culture where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie

I was amused by this as I have worked in a lot of DoD environments where a tie is "overdressed" and makes others uncomfortable. Likewise for a lot of environments where the uniform is a hoodie.

[mrep]

And about matches FANG companies for bachelor degree graduates (I know Amazon's is now 145k total comp starting and I think the others are even higher).

[girardthelinear]

145 total comp would not be very high lol. FB returning intern bonus was 100k alone thanks

also NSA Intern/FT pay was much much lower. I'm not sure where you're seeing that they match

[mrep]

> That top pay grade is less than the starting compensation for PhD's at the big tech co's.

The top pay was 150k so that closely matches Amazon new grad offer of 145k which is what my comment was responding too.

[snowwrestler]

Because you can do things that would be illegal in private practice, like developing and deploying systems to hack into computers, phones, cars, telecomm equipment, etc.

There is a type of work and a class of problems that can only be legally pursued in a federal agency like the NSA.

[jnwatson]

You can do the same as a contractor and make double.

[wang_li]

>where you can wear a hoodie instead of a tie.

A little off topic observation here, but people who can't handle adhering to a business professional dress code are exhibiting a low resilience personality. Not a good thing.

Not to mention the reality that a button down shirt, slacks and a tie, when properly fitted, are not constrictive at all.

[vesrah]

I suspect that business professional dress codes coincide with a number of other workplace downers that a lot of us don't like.

[softawre]

People who can't handle life at minimum wage aren't showing much resilience either, but why put yourself through that?

[x14]

Some people value self-expression and would rather be judged by the quality of their work than their appearance.

[krapp]

Hoodies have become as much a standard of conformity as suits. You're just conforming to an unspoken requirement to appear sufficiently non-conformist.

Show up in such an environment wearing a suit and see how much your self-expression is valued.

[taejo]

I've worked at one of the big Bay Area software companies with a guy who wore a suit every day. If I wore one at my current (non-US) company, people might ask me about it for a few days, but I'm pretty sure it'd become the new normal within a week.

[mozumder]

I designed & architected supercomputers at the NSA as a teenager, starting as a co-op, using manufacturing tech that still isn't public decades later.

LOL @ the idea of anyone in private industry giving me the opportunity to do that.

These are some of the smartest, yet most normal people in the world. They don't go apeshit about free food or Silicon Valley startups. You'll never get fired, and you can raise a family perfectly fine, especially with the great schools in the area. After about $70k in salary, people are generally happy anyways. They're perfectly happy with dealing with pure tech challenges, because it's interesting to them.

It should also be clear that the NSA does everything per law. The NSA doesn't spy on US citizens. Remember the Snowden leaks revealed filters that removed US citizens communications. Why would a TOP SECRET program have filters to remove US citizens communications if they were trying to skirt the law?

I can't recommend the NSA enough. NSA caused me to understand that nothing is impossible and that everything in tech is small stuff and manageable. After the NSA, I rapidly did impossible things. (want me to list them?) I honestly don't understand why anyone would do obvious & routine things at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., when they could be doing more awesome & surprising things at the NSA. It's always fun to see Google come out with something the NSA did years earlier.

Finally, and it should be obvious, going to work in a tie is a lot cooler than going to any job where people wear hoodies... but the NSA doesn't make you do that.. I do hate badges though.

It's the opposite of Silicon Valley, and it's great.

[rdtsc]

Saw you were being down-voted, seems unfair, it's good to have a counter-example or an opposing view in a discussion. Maybe it seems to much like a recruiting advertisement...

> After about $70k in salary, people are happy anyways.

Unfortunately living in DC/VA/MD on that you are competing with private companies which pay more and thus housing and well just about everything is a bit hard to manage on that salary.

> I honestly don't understand why anyone would do obvious & routine things at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc

What's stopping them from pulling a bait-and-switch. Telling kids they'll be doing exciting stuff that Google and Facebook haven't dreamed of yet, then being a stuck converting perl scripts to python, twiddling excel spreadsheets or writing TPS reports. I think most people would expect more routine working in a govt agency than say at Google.

[throwaway9982]

> What's stopping them from pulling a bait-and-switch.

If you're a contractor, you can just quit and find another contracting position. When I worked as a contractor at NASA, I routinely quit (3 times) when the job turned undesirable and then found another contracting gig through networking in under a month.

>Unfortunately living in DC/VA/MD on that you are competing with private companies which pay more and thus housing and well just about everything is a bit hard to manage on that salary.

No, these places (NSA and NASA) are in the not-so-close suburbs. When I was working at NASA at $85K I bought a condo and biked to work.

[qaq]

He/She was down-voted because a) Never worked for NSA b) never lived in DC metro.

[throwaway9982]

Why?

[yarrel]

The NSA records on their communcations show this. ;-)

[rdtsc]

Old math dept joke:

Q: How do you apply to work for the NSA

A: Call your mother and ask for an application form

[pinewurst]

How many people work at Google and Facebook hacking scripts for ad sales? There's an equally large potential gulf between their reputations for Giant Alien Head genius and prosaic, if not social damaging, reality.

[mozumder]

NSA lets co-ops rotate through various departments to give them a sense of what career path works for them. And nothing wrong with converting old Perl scripts when you're starting. It's a good way to get ramped up in the basics.

[vgy7ujm]

There's everything wrong with converting old WORKING Perl scripts to something else that probably will not be working when they are old like the Perl scripts would... Talk about introducing maintenance overhead...

[mozumder]

They're usually converted because the hacks don't work anymore with the new software system you bought...

[yarrel]

> The NSA doesn't spy on US citizens

That is a lie, but I understand why people would need to believe it in order to work for the NSA.

[mozumder]

If you want to believe fake news, that's your right.

[throwaway990099]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)

[mozumder]

Yes. From your link:

"Each of these agencies has slightly different protocols and safeguards to protect searches with a US person identifier."

[kowdermeister]

> want me to list them?

Yes, please

[throwaway9982]

I'm not the OP, but here's what I did at NASA that I found interesting:

- Developed the space lidar that will measure the polar ice cap melting

- Created a dashboard to monitor a spacecraft in deep space (and then ran ops for it)

- Developed learning models on a top500 supercomputer

- Optimization of 1000-GPU (yes) detailed simulation of the earth's magnetosphere

Yes, I knew that the industry will pay more, but honestly, I was young and just wanted to have a good time and stay around family in the area. The other jobs in the area didn't seem as exciting.

[mozumder]

For highlights, after NSA I went to Intel and worked on early CMOS camera image sensors - you could put processor logic in the same die. Then went to a small company that designed Iridium Satellite communications chips - personal satellite communications from anywhere in the world! - as well as hyperspectral imaging spy satellites - instead of just Bayer RGB, you had 1000 wavelengths of sensor per pixel.. good for identification. Then went on as a consultant to help companies & startups make their first ASICs, as well as make GPUs at ATI, including XBox360's GPU - probably the longest produced game system.

After that I went directly into fashion where I got to make a fashion magazine that included contributors like Cindy Crawford and other top fashion industry people, based solely on our creative draw (I never pay contributors, but each issue kept getting higher-and-higher profile contributors), and now engage with thousands of top fashion brands, dealing with the art, tech, and business aspects, an industry still largely separate from Silicon Valley.

[jessaustin]

Can you link to your magazine? It sounds interesting!

[mozumder]

Our site is at: http://www.futureclaw.com

Our magazine is print, but you can view it online as well at: http://www.issuu.com/futureclawmag/docs/issue_6

[justatdotin]

> the NSA does everything per law

legal != right

> The NSA doesn't spy on US citizens.

I'm not a us[a] citizen.

qbros.