| Its not. jschveibinz is straight wrong. I worked in the area for quite some time, with security clearance, and in the software sector for several contractors dealing with 3 letter agencies. The wealth in the area (if you can even call it that) exists because of networking, namely people with connections to decision makers in the government are very valuable because they can bring in companies lots of money when they win contracts. The way you get promoted in the area into the high paying exec roles is solely though people skills. The amount of metaphorical dick sucking that goes on would make any sane person barf (on one occasion I was working in the Pentagon with setting up some software, as a civilian, and my boss who was there with me told me to stand up when some upper rank military guy came in the room to show respect, because otherwise it would look bad for the company). If you aren't connected or know anyone, you basically fit into the standard working class, and really don't make that much money factoring in high cost of living And those people pretty much are working towards making in the 200s. My friend who was in "systems engineering" (i.e microsoft word/excel operations) got a position where he made 220-260 depending on bonus, and that was considered EXTREMELY good for the area. I didn't have the heart to tell him that a fresh hire at Amazon can work 2 years and make that much at a minimum. The thing also with government contracts is that government sets rates for how much companies can charge the government for a certain person with certain qualifications, and companies essentially try to pay people as little as possible under that value to maximize profit. This also drives salaries down. And because that area is filled with those type of people who by their nature tend to be pretty materialistic (in addition to a lot of foreign presence with Korean and Middle eastern people who also tend to be materialistic), seeing endless bmws/mercs/audis may make it seem like there is wealth in the area, but there really is not - you can easily do the math on cost of living versus salary and figure out
that all that shit is financed at maximum length loan terms. Have been in conversations where people talk about having 30k worth of CC debt like its a normal thing. As far as tech goes, there are 2 things that happen. First, a lot of the work gets subcontracted out by the 3 letter agencies to all the companies in the area, and 2, the work is VERY compartmentalized. So if you do end up working on something in the NSA or on a contract for the NSA it could be literally some basic shit, like a library to parse some stuff out of http, and you ship that and you never see it used or know what the bigger picture is. So no, working for NSA, other 3 letter agencies, or contractors of, won't give you an advantage in terms of experience. You may get a clearance but that is only valuable to companies in the area since they will hire you because of your clearance then shove you onto a project that you may be ever so slightly qualified for, so they can collect money from the government while not having to pay for your clearance. TLDR; that area sucks, no smart people ever go work for government or contractors of. Because smart people realize that they can not only make more money in the private sector, but have favorable living arrangement, especially with remote work, and can do engineering instead of circle jerking management to get promoted. |