[intended]

This is the likely direction things are going. The US government can decide that EU officials are out of favor, and then those officials are locked out of Office/Gsuite.

Getting away from American tech has become an actual national security issue.

Ideally you would still have private enterprise create alternatives, but it’s easy to imagine that email, social media will simply be built for citizens by their government.

[WarmWash]

I'm curious the caliber of engineer that will turn down a $175k/yr Microsoft job to take a $45k/yr Government Office of Software job...

[intended]

There seem to be many layoffs, and the hype say that AI has made coders redundant. Who knows? Perhaps you won’t have to depend on the many people who would happily take lower pay for the chance to contribute to their nation.

There’s more incentives than pure profit - Government seems capable enough to attract people when it comes to cyber weapons.

Governments aren’t currently making these tools, because until last year, private enterprise was good enough. It still is, minus the dependency on America and its political climate.

Personally - The issue isn’t engineer availability or salary, but committee based decision making.