[paulkon]

This is why federal research and development agencies should pay higher salaries to attract said engineers.

Breakthroughs achieved would be funded by taxpayers and customers of these agencies and the patents for technology produced would be more likely enter the public domain.

[_cs2017_]

It is very hard to get a large group of people to work efficiently towards some goal; very few organizations manage to do that. As far as I know such success stories are even more rare in the public sector than in the private sector. This means diverting resources away from private enterprise towards government agencies is not guaranteed to improve the situation.

[badfrog]

Yeah I'd gladly switch to government work hours, retirement benefits, etc if they paid anywhere near what I make in finance.