I’m curious how many HNers would like to add their skills and join an USDS or 18f considering you can make hundreds of thousands more in private practice
"at a senior level at FAANG-level companies" is the last bit of that sentence you left off.
The median software engineer salary in the US is something on the order of $120k/yr. The GS pay scale tops out at just under $160k before locality is taken into account and that's only a small single-digit percentage increase at best, but nobody is getting hired as a GS15 to do development work.
You will make more in the private sector for sure but "hundreds of thousands" is going to be the minority by far.
Agreed - I'm a state-level government employee with 2 YOE and I'm making $100k, projected to make $120k over the next three years and project managers top out at ~$240k. While that's nowhere near a senior-level FAANG engineer, the job security is nice and there's a guaranteed pension if I'm patient enough.
One thing I don't understand is why at the federal there are plenty of employees in the $300k salary range, and several employees (single or low double digits in absolute numbers) make more than POTUS but for some reason 18F pops everyone into the GS pay schedule and it seems puts them at level 12 or 13. So clearly there's no law requiring employees not made something roughly comparable to what they could get in the private sector so it's hard to understand why the 18F folks aren't getting $150-200k/yr.
Edit: After a bit more research there's a separate executive pay schedule (not that different than the private sector after all) but it's not super clear to this outsider what determines which schedule you get on other than probably just defaulting to GS.
That is the page where you find jobs for 18F, nothing there indicates anyone at 18F is not on the GS scale.
It's important to note that that is GS15, step 10, with the maximum locality adjustment (which I think is just Alaska but California is not far behind). GS15 step 1 is going to be $123k before any locality adjustment so still very likely under $150k/yr unless you're in one of the highest cost areas. Alaska is 32%; most midwest states are 17%.
Money is important, obviously, but it's not always the only thing that motivates people.