[andychase]

1. Things are changing, plenty of agencies like GSA, 18F, USDS are trying to modernize government technology and there are many movers and shakers in the government trying to make things better

2. The government is huge, there's small, medium, and large agencies and agencies all of have their own culture. Hard to generalize across the whole thing

3. On many teams your direct management will shield you from a lot of the paperwork.

4. The average 2210 series technologist is a GS-13 which is $100k+. Not super star status but competitive in many regions and experience levels.

5. The vast majority of software development in the US government is contracted in

[jcrites]

Until the government is willing to pay technologists market wage salaries, they're better outsourcing technology work. For some reason, they're willing to pay massive prices for contracts to firms, but not hire employees at compensation levels on par with FAANG companies. I'd probably be earning 10% of my current income if I worked for the government.

(The other unfortunate problem is that outsourcing firms are not typically where strong engineers want to work: they want to own their own and build their own products. So outsourcing companies aren't a good solution either.) My personal theory? Offer FAANG companies an incentive to put together strike teams to solve government technology problems. (Isn't that how HealthCare.gov got fixed? A bunch of Google people got involved?)

There are certainly technologists and scientists of equivalent or greater skill level who are happy to serve the public with such compensation, but if the government really wants to get things moving then they need to assess their compensation versus the prevailing wage for high-talent jobs in competitive areas of the country, and pay that wage. That means your top performing engineers make more than the US President (whom I believe is the most highly compensated government employee -- not considering all the perks he gets). Doesn't seem likely to happen.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect technologists to accept compensation that's 10-20-30% of what they're able to make at private companies to work for the government. Maybe our government would be more effective if it paid market rates for important scientific and technology jobs.

[nonameiguess]

It's not some reason; it's the law. The GS pay bands are set by legislation. No matter what some federal agency wants to pay, they can't pay more or less than Congress has allowed them to. Procurement budgets don't work like that. You still have a capped pot of money, but you can choose to allocate that to fewer projects because the contractors doing the work pay their labor high enough rates that the cost of a project is too high to pursue more.

As to your proposal of giving government contracts to big Silicon Valley players, they already do that. Amazon already runs all the government cloud infrastucture, with Microsoft trying to get a piece. Google may have dropped the Project Maven thing, but they have plenty of other government contracts.

Congress is never going to make pay rates for engineers directly employed by the government comparable to private companies because they have to answer to voters, and voters kick, scream, and shout if they find government employees are earning high salaries. We're in the middle of a 40-year drive to cut taxes and privatize all government functions. You're not just going to turn that around.

On the other hand, give out big money to private contractors who pay their engineers well and Congress can go brag about they brought money and jobs to their home state.

[webmaven]

> (Isn't that how HealthCare.gov got fixed? A bunch of Google people got involved?)

Yes. And that is basically the USDS and 18F origin story:

https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/17/technology/us-digital-servi...

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/the-s...

[ketzo]

> there are many movers and shakers in the government trying to make things better

This is probably the thing you said that makes me feel most optimistic, and you sound like you actually have a decent idea what you're talking about, so that's a little bit of relief to me. I feel like it's easy to be overly pessimistic about this stuff.

[bushbaba]

What market in the US is a 100k comp competitive for a software engineer these days?

[snowwrestler]

The announcement says “early career” and “recent graduates,” so pretty junior.

$100k is a competitive salary for a junior software dev in DC. Heck, for someone right out of school, it’s probably competitive anywhere but the Bay Area, NY, maybe Seattle.

[vmception]

Staying limited to a middle market region is a waste of time

You only live once

Make your bed and sleep in it, but at least do it objectively

Regional cost of living discussions are cute - in that they masquerade as an insightful understanding of money - but most monetary thresholds do not take it into account. Accredited investor status or convincing anyone of it to get access to private equity for a better chance at making some real money? Cost of living is not a factor, its >200k income annually or >$1mm assets without including your home. Lying conveys no negative consequence but you still need the disposable money.

Being responsibly ahead of rent/mortgage payments every paycheck means an extra $1500 - maybe - in a middle market place versus an extra $4500-$7000. These are worlds apart in capabilities. Impulse buy a new console? Flight to Europe? Everything is more accessible and faster. The former amount will get eaten up by some random repair or holiday activity or friend’s life event. The latter will get you all that and everything you want and accumulation at a much higher velocity.

Saving up for various things is for the birds, we have all the same fixed amount of time with lots of randomness to shorten it. Not worth rationalizing lower comp, when the same or less work gets you 3-10x more.

[knownjorbist]

You'd be surprised what you find if you peek out of the HN/valley/techbro bubble.

[crooked-v]

Here in Portland, which is a relatively cheap city compared to most tech centers, $100K isn't enough to get the attention of any dev who isn't just out of school, and even those devs will have an easy time getting something better-paying in a year or two once they have some practical experience under their belt.

[HenryKissinger]

That's not true. The average salary for a Software Engineer is $101227 per year in United States. Data > personal anecdotes. Many SWEs earn less than that.

[giantg2]

Portland might be cheaper than SV, but I think it's still in the top 25% most expensive (just my impression).

[kortilla]

So which market then? Because that’s not competitive in DC, Denver, Phoenix, Salt Lake, Minneapolis, Dallas, Austin…

[ketzo]

Yeah but like, those are still huge cities

$100k/yr is still enough to provide for a family of four in a huge number of places in the U.S. if you're in a more suburban or rural environment, which is still 9 digits' worth of human beings easily

[bushbaba]

100k/year is roughly 5-6k/month after tax in most places. You can buy a house for 2.5k/month. Seems like enough for most

[bsagdiyev]

Where the hell are you getting 2.5k/mo? The mortgage on my 350k house is 1600!

[ketzo]

Agreed, except that you can buy a house for a lot less than 2.5k/month.

[jcrites]

If they're offering remote work from anywhere in the country, including areas with low cost of living, for recent college graduates, maybe this makes sense.

For anyone who has been in the industry 5-10 years at successful corporations the max total compensation of under $150K would be taking a massive pay cut.

[giantg2]

I think many people are not saving enough for retirement. $100k for a family of 4 in many suburban areas could be tight if sufficiently funding retirement accounts.

[crooked-v]

Also, the pay scale completely maxes out at GS-15 step 10, with a base of $142,180 and a maximum CoL adjustment of 41.44% in places like San Francisco.

[verst]

I used to be a GS-15, Step 5 for a short stint in government while living in SF. I was within $5k of the pay cap due to the location adjustment. Cap was somewhere around $165k at the time. Still, this was significantly worse than my job before and after.

For some people on the team their government salary was a good step up, others didn't necessarily need the money and were there for the mission only. I was there for the mission, but certainly also needed the money.