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Comment by wjnc | Hacker News Reader

The most interesting thing for me is: how do you keep all those bright minds with enough knowledge and experience from striking out on their own either in academia or in business? At the end of the day creating new tech is hard, replicating 'easy'. Or is it that the "15 yr ahead" simultaneously suggests it's about 15 yrs of work on your own to replicate? Perhaps they work with great compartmentalization? But compartmentalization suggests you don't need great minds, but just very good minds with good structure. That goes against what I think I know about innovation. It's quite fun fantasizing about a world within a world with better technology.

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You are ignoring a very important part of it - some people genuienly want to "help their country" and are willing to sacrifice personal success for this. For example it's not exactly a secret that 3-letter agencies don't pay software engineers anywhere near as well as other IT companies would, but the promise of doing something "for your country" is worth more than money(just like game developers sacrifice money to work on something they really like).

>For example it's not exactly a secret that 3-letter agencies don't pay software engineers anywhere near as well as other IT companies would, but the promise of doing something "for your country" is worth more than money(just like game developers sacrifice money to work on something they really like).

You hit the nail on the head in explaining this dynamic, but I hate the fact it exists in the first place, in game dev or IC. It also exists with US special operations, as another way to sort out anyone who isn't a true believer.

Fair, you might say. I just think it's dumb a Google/Netflix/Facebook engineer working on some boring cog in their company's infrastructure gets paid a top-of-market $250k+, while an engine programmer working on an AAA title makes half that, or a firmware engineer working on offensive cyber payloads makes half that, or a special operations solider makes half that.

Maybe it's just market demand: boring stuff is paid better since everyone wants to do something exciting. But I think it's also a filter, and a lot of these places know that.

Since graduating from college with a EE degree, I've worked for 3 employers, all of which had or have very deep roots in the intel community. At my current firm, we've always had success by a large investment in new technology under IRaD. As one of our founders has said, we provide solutions to problems that our customers don't yet know they have. Payscales for engineers is consistent with commercial companies here in Silicon Valley. In my 40+ year career, I can honestly say that I've never sacrificed personal success for this job and the work that I've done has contributed, in a hugely important way, with our ability to collect and analyze data from the "bad guys". I have absolutely no regrets for my career path.

On this subject, there is a very interesting new book about Jim Simmons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, who used to work as a codebreaker in the US. I think for many of the people in these programs, the attraction is getting to solve problems beyond anyone else's reach, with tools beyond anyone else's reach.

> getting to solve problems beyond anyone else's reach

more this, and less "tools beyond anyone else's reach".

A fair number of people go to work with these groups to "check the box" that they've done it. They know who's at NSA, or CIA, or DARPA. Because they spent 2-5 years with them inside the box. There's a tremendous amount of self-confidence that comes out of a successful turn at one of these places. You know you know.

For the same reason people do research, that also "pays" a pittance compared to what those people could make in the market. And actually, it at least pays better than the academy. Most of the time you will move to some smaller, cheaper town. Sometimes even living inside a base. You can actually buy a house and have a family with defense wages. Try doing the same doing research on the academy.

knowing how to do some highly advanced tech thing and building a successful sustainable business are orthogonal skills. It is very common for somebody in one camp to overlook this.

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