[tptacek]

You should encourage your peers not to go work for the government. There's a misconception on HN (I don't think you hold it) that GSA work is a major feeder for infosec, for vulnerability research, and for defensive security work. It isn't. Most of the researchers anyone here has "heard of" don't do any work for the government at all.

I talk every once in awhile about how Matasano chooses not to do government work, which makes it sound like we're taking a difficult principled stand. In reality, it's a very easy principled stand; our calendar is uniformly packed, we have no sales team, and I don't even remember the last time we needed to think about the the USG.

I personally have no problem with offensive security people working for the USG. It's not a choice I would make, but I see how other people might decide differently. But if you decide to do that, to make your work part of the national defense, it makes sense to me that you're going to lose some control over that work and over some of what you learn as you do that work.

Let's be honest: people doing "cyber" work for the government aren't poor kids from the suburbs trying to pay for college by doing a tour of duty. Relative to the market as a whole, they're immensely well compensated.

[dfc]

Its funny that you say "people doing "cyber" work for the government aren't poor kids from the suburbs trying to pay for college by doing a tour of duty." This is essentially what the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service is sans combat. The program has been going on for a long time now, Mudge played a part in the creation of the program.

https://www​.sfs.opm.gov/

[ballard]

Qui tacet consentire videtur

And more selfishly, .gov/.mil rarely pays on time.