[lowkey_]

(1) Are you saying it's bad if they're upping engineer pay to be more competitive, or you're just skeptical that they will?

(2) I'd actually like the American government to pay better wages for its engineers, and optimize for hiring the best, rather than those desiring a stable, low-paying bureaucracy — I don't think that attracts the best people.

(3) On talent and recruiting: This is being done by the National Design Studio, it says at the bottom. That's led by a cofounder of Airbnb - I know one person who works at the National Design Studio and he's a phenomenal engineer. The administration also has the involvement of David Sacks, who founded Craft Ventures and is pretty well-known in SV. I think this is probably the most tech-competent the government will have been in a long time. I'm not crediting Trump at all for that, to be clear - just pointing out that tech talent in government seems to be getting better, not worse.

[zbentley]

> I'd actually like the American government to pay better wages for its engineers, and optimize for hiring the best

Yes, and a big part of this involves changing the way agencies rely on contractors for specialty work (including tech work).

[jotux]

#1: I am extremely skeptical they are paying that. I suspect this was put together by someone who has no understanding of federal pay systems. "$150,000 to $200,000" is already an erroneous number, federal salary is limited by federal law and cannot exceed $195200.

#2: Overwhelmingly I agree. Federal pay is very, very broken. They should reform it to align more with the private sector, and there are laws in place that do that, and every year the sitting president literally writes a letter stating it would be an economic emergency to pay federal employees equivalent wages and instead sets them low. You are still limited by federal law to that current $195k, so it means it's impossible for the federal government to hire technical experts and pay them a fair wage.

#3: I'm sure the federal government is paying those people some ridiculous amount of money to put this together, and they'll probably do a decent job because of it. It still doesn't change the fact that federal hiring is really broken, and has become significantly worse in this admin.