> Living in Maryland, I've met several young people who put in a few years at the agency (including TAO) who then left for industry. Millenials don't care about a government pension, especially when you're in a windowless SCIF hacking Perl.
> The US Government as a whole has a massive talent retention problem. Only the mediocre will stay at NSA / CIA now and we'll probably see more of these leaks / hacks.
That's a verbatim comment I made on this site back in 2017 and it's still relevant. I don't mean to toot my own horn as much as to highlight the braindrain out of DoD / the alphabet soup agencies and into other sectors. It HAS and WILL CONTINUE to bite the United States in the ass.
The US Government doesn't believe that inflation exists and also doesn't believe that a software engineer or similar professional should make more than 170k per year in the DC metro (GS-13) with 10+ years of experience.
This is only 15% higher pay than 10 years ago, meanwhile home prices are up 3x in the DC metro area.
I like the all-caps yellling here, because it simulates someone talking in detail while the other person is not really willing to change no matter what you say.. so the volume increases .. it will ALSO BITE YOU when you treat intelligent people that way COMMANDER
Those SCIF buildings try their best to make it seem like a normal office experience with holiday events and food etc.
DoD jobs are ideal for developers who don’t want to learn anything new and just make money. I’d find a lot of guys close to retirement taking up those roles.
It takes someone who is admittedly done. Otherwise it feels no less life sucking than a retail job.
> IT is a highly skilled and trained job; staff it as such
He's going to be disappointed by the private sector too - I haven't been trained on or even given time to learn anything in at least 20 years. Any learning I (or anybody I've ever worked with) undertake is strictly on personal time only.
"creation of an enterprisewide DevSecOps managed service featuring more than 800 hardened containers for software development"
An infosec manager/exec/director that made software solutions rather than a bunch of policy and powerpoint drivel?
AND he was in the federal government?
I can't believe it. My #1 complaint about practically all infosec orgs in large corporations is that they set policies and review barriers, but don't offer solutions.
> There are 100,000 software developers in the DoD. We are the largest software organization on the planet,
Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) after being employed by them(often the first degree holder in the family).
I attended an interview with them once. (I think it was for one of their clients; American Express). It started in a large conference room, where I was one of about 200 other people. Weirdest interview ever, and also totally inappropriate for my skillset - due to the recruiter not giving a crap, apparently.
Just to clarify, TCS seems to only have 500,000 people employed, the whole DOD has roughly 2.86 million as of 2018, of them 100,000 are software developers. I don't think that the entirety of TCS is made up of software developers.
I can't speak for Chaillan, but as a military member who led an agile software development team similar to his during the same timeframe, I think he's referring to DoD's fondness for buzzwords.
Because "agile" is the new hotness, every DoD office and vendor tries to slap the language of agile onto a waterfall model. See this wonderful report from the Defense Innovation Board on "Detecting Agile BS": https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB...
Contracts are written up front for two plus years of work. Waterfall. The DoD and contractors pretend to do agile in the middle by running everything through sprints, even though you can't change the plan. Water-agile-fall
I read it as water-agile-fail at first. Made more sense.
I think most of my experience with "agile" has been: we'll make a vague plan that came from god-knows-where, you'll do lots of releases, testers will test incrementally, you'll update us once a week, and at the end we'll release it and you'll do it all again when the users tell us they don't like it or (more likely) when management goes on a new whim.
It turned out making a huge plan at the start was a mistake. It also turned out that no one wanted to ask the users what they thought.
Wonnk13|4 years ago
> The US Government as a whole has a massive talent retention problem. Only the mediocre will stay at NSA / CIA now and we'll probably see more of these leaks / hacks.
That's a verbatim comment I made on this site back in 2017 and it's still relevant. I don't mean to toot my own horn as much as to highlight the braindrain out of DoD / the alphabet soup agencies and into other sectors. It HAS and WILL CONTINUE to bite the United States in the ass.
lumost|4 years ago
This is only 15% higher pay than 10 years ago, meanwhile home prices are up 3x in the DC metro area.
mistrial9|4 years ago
mastrsushi|4 years ago
DoD jobs are ideal for developers who don’t want to learn anything new and just make money. I’d find a lot of guys close to retirement taking up those roles.
It takes someone who is admittedly done. Otherwise it feels no less life sucking than a retail job.
commandlinefan|4 years ago
He's going to be disappointed by the private sector too - I haven't been trained on or even given time to learn anything in at least 20 years. Any learning I (or anybody I've ever worked with) undertake is strictly on personal time only.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
AtlasBarfed|4 years ago
An infosec manager/exec/director that made software solutions rather than a bunch of policy and powerpoint drivel?
AND he was in the federal government?
I can't believe it. My #1 complaint about practically all infosec orgs in large corporations is that they set policies and review barriers, but don't offer solutions.
Abishek_Muthian|4 years ago
Tata Consultancy Services, India employs more than 500,000 people. They manage the IT stack of companies from Walgreens to Ferrari. I'm not the person to nitpick, But I'm particularly proud of TCS's employment figures because I've personally witnessed many move from being poor to wealthy(by Indian standards) after being employed by them(often the first degree holder in the family).
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/15/economy/tcs-india-it-remo...
Pokepokalypse|4 years ago
gaadd33|4 years ago
wolverine876|4 years ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28408399
jrochkind1|4 years ago
Wait what?
markdjacobsen|4 years ago
Because "agile" is the new hotness, every DoD office and vendor tries to slap the language of agile onto a waterfall model. See this wonderful report from the Defense Innovation Board on "Detecting Agile BS": https://media.defense.gov/2018/Oct/09/2002049591/-1/-1/0/DIB...
dryst|4 years ago
tarkin2|4 years ago
I think most of my experience with "agile" has been: we'll make a vague plan that came from god-knows-where, you'll do lots of releases, testers will test incrementally, you'll update us once a week, and at the end we'll release it and you'll do it all again when the users tell us they don't like it or (more likely) when management goes on a new whim.
It turned out making a huge plan at the start was a mistake. It also turned out that no one wanted to ask the users what they thought.
unknown|4 years ago
[deleted]
eeiac928|4 years ago