NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg
It seems like it&#x27;s pretty hard for the government to compete with private industry in compensation. Federal pay grades are capped by Congress, and the top grade is around ~$150k a year [1]. And note that since it&#x27;s the top of the scale, you have to start people off lower so that there is salary progression.<p>Pretty sure a top cryptographer or security expert should be worth several times that, especially if they are also dealing with classified information and safeguarding all the data collection (e.g. if the NSA is going to spy on us, wouldn&#x27;t you like that to be as secure as possible?).<p>This is another reason why we&#x27;re going to enter an era of corporate feudalism. There has been a cycle of:<p>1. perception of gov&#x27;t incompetence<p>2. normal people ask &#x27;why are we paying people so much for doing a bad job?&#x27;<p>3. gov&#x27;t pay scales fall further behind private industry<p>4. rise in relative mediocrity<p>5. repeat<p>I think voters largely don&#x27;t realize how much competence actually costs in the market now and will vent about their justified perceptions of inequality by preventing equalization of pay between the gov&#x27;t and private sectors, but that will paradoxically just make things worse in the long run as the private sector snaps up all the talent and we end up with a barely-functioning federal bureaucracy.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;work.chron.com&#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;work.chron.com&#x2F;nsa-pay-scale-16399.html</a>