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Comment by _r2gl | Hacker News Reader

I'm definitely near the fence.

Everytime the job posting comes up I pop up Zillow and try to do the math, but quite literally a comparable house to mine is $700k-$800k where mine is only $300k-$400k in TX near Dallas. I don't believe I would be able to support and provide anyway near the same quality of life for my family, especially without jeopardizing future savings I am currently able to make now.

You say after the tour of duty like you aren't able to stay employed, is this true?

If I was single and had no dependents, I think I would have already applied, because money wouldn't matter nearly as much.

I feel it is extremely unfortunate USDS doesn't offer remote work because they could pull talent across the nation given the lower pay and higher CoL.

I know this would be a much more rewarding position than working for another mortgage company or consultancy..

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The DC area is pretty suburbanized. It's not uncommon for people who work in DC to have hour-long commutes - when I lived there, I met people who commuted to DC from as far out as Frederick and Mt Airy - but the MARC is (in my experience) reliable and some of the suburbs aren't bad. Zillow has $300k-$400k houses in Germantown.

So you can't stay employed with the USDS after your tour of duty, after a maximum of four years you have to leave ( and that is a good thing ). However if you are able to be hired by the USDS you won't have a hard time finding a job in the DC area after your tour of duty is over. The tech scene there is very strong and they pay well even for the high cost of living. When I had to factor in my dependents the thing that put me over the top is I thought it would be better to show them by example the kind of life I wanted them to live, rather then just provide them money.

Why do you say that's a good thing?

Not OP but from my experience with government workers in the UK, who routinely work the same job from leaving school until retirement, their time spent there seems to be inversely proportional to the quality and quantity of their work. If I need something done right I'll try and find some starry-eyed graduate or recent ex private-sector worker to ask. I suppose public work has a habit of being both fulfilling and frustrating, and when that frustration>fulfilment, productivity drops.

For two reasons, first the work wears on you. It can lead to being cynical and it can be flat out unhealthy to continue to work at that level of government for a long period of time. The stress and pressure can be overwhelming. Secondly its good to get back out into the commercial field and have first hand experience with the state of the art. It means when you are talking to people about what it comes from a deep knowledge of what has been done and what was successful. Taking a break every half decade to refresh those skills is valuable.

Also that time limit really lights a fire under you to get stuff done. The people who are trying to use government services don't have years to wait for things to get better, their lives depend on things getting better today.

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