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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> You do reduce the workforce through attrition, but eventually you have to hire again and hire almost exclusively junior people (< 25 or 30).

This wouldn't be true if government pay was competitive (low pay partially offset by, particularly, pension benefits means entering government mid-career except as a box-checking thing to move to a private position leveraging the knowledge of government is discouraged, but entering at a junior level for a full career is less discouraged.)

Of course, the kind of people embracing starve the beast aren't going to mitigate the skill impact by improving pay.

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Low pay and hiring freezes are two sides of the same coin though -- these processes both transfer employees into contractor roles where private companies can charge double for the same worker and pocket the difference.

Contract workers are actually much cheaper. When I worked on a government contract we were loaded at 1.85 and the civil servants (who made more money to start with) were loaded at 2.25.

Total compensation for civil servants is quite a bit higher.

Not necessarily. And even if just in raw pay/year, the institutional effect of outsourcing is still incredibly costly in the end. And this neglects the bonus payouts negotiated into most contracts that don't occur in organic projects.

There isn't much institutional effect of outsourcing if you keep outsourcing. Where I worked there were people who'd been in the same job for decades, even though they'd technically worked for a half dozen different employers during that time. And all the contract payouts were built into the load - if I made $10/hr the government paid $18.50 for each hour.

Working as a civil servant is much nicer, but it's not cheaper for the government.

Not a chance in hell this is true for engineering / computer science / tech type positions. If you are talking about janitorial staff or something that doesn't require an advanced degree like basic clerical work then you maybe correct but it isn't a private sector vs. government efficiency issue it is a matter of the government overpaying employees in low skill jobs.

Everybody I worked with was an engineer or a scientist. All GS 12+

I'm not sure where you worked or what gave you the impression that contractors are "cheaper" but among the EE/CS people I know that work in that industry it is common knowledge that government contractors make about double what a government civilian employee makes for the same work role even if you include the value of benefits. In other words they are making more than even the highest paid civil servant is allowed to by law.

Well, there's "common knowledge" and then there's what you experience when you actually try to get a job at the salary you thought you could get. I agree for software developers you can make more money in a commercial setting at Google or wherever.

But unless things have changed drastically you're not going to make more money working a government contract.

That's one of the things that would help. Particularly for scientists and engineers. The salaries are way below what they could achieve in the private sector (often doing the same or similar work with contractors, in the defense industry).

Depends on your area of the country. In tech-dense areas with high costs of livings, the adjusted cost of living to federal civilian salary doesn't nearly catch up. However, there are many, many bases in suburban and rural areas where an early career income is over twice the median income and you get a lot for the money.

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