CIA Labs
cia.gov
cia.gov
Also, if I'm not allowed to monetize my technology or patents, do I really own them?
Is this just a bad startup incubator?
Plus you get tons of resources and the inside track to talk to "the client", you're not working out of your garage.
Could you elaborate on that?
Try living in a windowless box for 8 hours a day and having no resume.
I remember vividly one training session where they explained to us that if an attractive woman approached us, it wasn't because we were particularly interesting. And if that happened we should notify the security group immediately.
Then he cut to slides with several enemy combatants, followed by a massive explosion, followed by a large smoldering crater, and said "Pay back is a real bitch."
It's a burden.
I remember being emotionally exhausted after a particularly rough week at work, and not being able to talk about it to my wife beyond the barest "yeah, it's been a tough one". It isn't cool or sexy, at best its a layer of inconvenience and red tape over your day-to-day work life. Looking back, it was by far my least favorite job I've ever held
If you don’t want to do that work you would not view it as a perk.
I can only speak from the contractor side of things, and it is true that many job openings list "must have active [clearance X]" as a requirement, which certainly keeps the candidate pool to within people already in that community. It takes 12-24 months to get some clearances, with no guarantee that after that time invested, you will actually be approved. So it is a massive gate.
But the flip side, as others pointed out, is you have large chunks of time where you cannot talk about what you did in anything approaching the detail someone who worked on a non-cleared job can. Even if you worked on some stealth mode startup's top-secret project, with NDAs and whatnot, there's nothing like the very real threat of decades in federal prison. The best way to avoid falling afoul of an unauthorized disclosure is strongly compartmentalizing your work life - this is strongly encouraged within the industry. You talk about work at work, in a vault where the only other people there are cleared. You STFU everywhere else. Easy and simple to remember. The only time this is _ever_ a problem is when you're trying to get out of the industry, where you must talk about your work experience to potential employers. That's how your perk becomes a trap.
I'm not saying it's a ticket to being filthy rich, but it opens doors to some lucrative careers that you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.
(Caveat: these are "rules" for regular people that have been given the privilege of holding a US national security clearance. There are many examples of people that have held security clearances that get away with conduct that would otherwise result in revocation and criminal charges for regular persons)
For comparison I work at a university and we get 20 days PTO on day 1. Plus very long holidays (2 weeks in december / january when the semester is out).
And you get paid that salary and those benefits even if for reasons outside of your control you don't come up with anything. I would speculate there's a limit to how much you can keep trying and failing, but at that limit you get moved to a different role where you don't need as much luck, but I know this is a smooth process.
It's a far cry from an entrepreneur with no backing, or even VC backing. VC's generally don't take technical risk, only market risk: they won't pay for you to come up with a 10x better product, instead their contribution is backing an working 10x better product and helping it debut in the market (product-market fit, or final stages of development, but no research). And if for reasons outside your control your research fails in the market, venture capital practices "venture capitalism", you had a shot, you tried an adventure, it was an incredible journey, but they can't afford patience and faith like the federal government can, so they pull the proverbial plug.
Nope, it doesn't. Cracking 100k in the civil service requires being very very senior (equivalent of at least a colonel in the military).
It is a cool opportunity, but it does not pay well. Even the civil service salary PLUS the maximum $150k patent royalties is less than what a 27 year old at a FAANG earns.
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...
A mid-grade GS-12 in SF/DC/NY makes 100k+ which would be a non supervisory Individual Contributor with a BS.
Colonel equivalent (GS-15) is indeed rare and would be closer to $150k+
I don't know any GS-12s that don't have a Masters. Most would have come in as an 11 with a Masters, then promoted to 12. Extra skills would have earned additional extra steps (steps are 12 different levels of compensation between grades). Of course it's possible, but in my agency unlikely.
Also a GS-13 would be equivalent to a half bird Colonel. 14/15 would be full bird. SES levels would be equivalent to the different general levels.
I would imagine CIA officers get a regular civil service salary, which is emphatically not the high salaries that contractors earn.
What is a "regular civil service salary"? Presumably CIA officers are better paid than the clerk behind the DMV counter? Perhaps a CIA officer salary is still "excellent" if not on par with defense contractors?
Of course, the federal government provides excellent job security and good benefits, but the salary is not competitive for a software person.
The main problem is that the GS system essentially assumes that all PhDs and all Master's degrees are equally valuable, but the private market does not agree.
Recognize that the GS scale starts with people who have no formal education at all.
Additional degrees do not move you off the GS scale.
Reaching the equivalent of executive level can mean moving beyond GS to the senior executive service (SES).
That's the case in Australia, anyway.
I don't know of any tech companies offering defined benefit plans and health insurance after you retire.
I've never understood how this fit in with the whole GS scale thing, but the reasoning was straightforward: if we don't pay them well, somebody else might.
That being said, it’s hard to put a number on an area and commute you like.
Again, I’m sure I could get by just fine on under $300k in SV. But it’s still not comparable in terms of being as comfortable. For example, if I really wanted to pay off that median home in five years it’s possible elsewhere; I don’t think that’s a reasonable option in SV.
And don't forget one of the biggest benefits of all... actually making something useful rather than spending your most important years working on how to get people to click a button or stare longer at their screens to enrich your employer.
I think a lot of us find the CIA more amoral and destructive than adtech by the way.
I understand that view, and I think history will show just how terribly wrong it is.
The machinations of the CIA don't even begin to compare to the long-term ills that social-media and screen addiction are going to cause all over the world over the next few decades.
I mean, Youtube and its recommendation algorithms alone have via radicalisation set the USA on a path to destruction from within. Throw in Twitter with their mob bubbles and it's beyond redemption.
Yeah, the only way to make something useful is to work for the government agency that has a wikipedia article about their human rights violations [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the...
The point is that you don't take the risk. You have a job. You get a salary. This usually means that you have no risk and no upside. The idea here is that you have some upside, but still take no risk.
IDK if this works in practice, but the principle is that.
I guess I just find it really strange for them to say you'd own the technology you create.
Last I’ve read on HN, most founders are not making “SV salary” because they’re expecting the golden ticket. Here, it appears you get an equivalent salary + job security with a capped upside.
I imagine if you're talented enough to work at CIA labs you could land a much more lucrative and guaranteed FAANG compensation package instead.
I don't think people in this thread understand: The starting salary range for a "Technical Developer" is $60k-$150k according to their website. I imagine it's similar for CIA labs. That won't get any FAANG or Palantir developers out of bed in the morning unless they think being in the CIA super cool or something.
https://www.quora.com/How-does-Palantir-attract-talent-if-it...
Regardless, I'm much more familiar with FAANG compensation and my comments are still accurate for those.
People always combine this point with workers being able to be fired or to have skills outdated. Those are different factors, where an individual should always look & project forward to place themselves in future better positions.
A program where employees could apply for. Ideas that were selected were given funding, and either spun out into separate companies, or spun internally to an existing division.
To me, that creates an aligned incentive for both the company, and the individual.
To your specific point, you beat the odds, you will not only get profit sharing, but likely ascend the ladder quickly, opening up doors to the US government that you would never get if you went at it privately from the outside.
And if you are founder and/or individual inventor, your risk profile is totally different than a salaried employee. The least of which is the sheer legal cost to push thru a patent on your own dime.
With government jobs, you make less cash but get other compensation. In a professional role, between retiree healthcare and pension alone, the present value of your benefits can be worth $3-4M.
You can do better with big tech companies, but generally speaking you have higher risks.
This is more than most employees at companies get for patents. 15% is normal in academia. In almost all companies, the employee gets a bonus (which could be less than $1000), and that's it. It's very rare for a company to give an employee a percentage of the profits off a patent.
It appeals to sharp minds that wouldn't tolerate the risks and logistics of being an entrepreneur in a startup. Especially if they want to guarantee food and a comfortable life for their family while they're working on their project.
What ensures this? No one.
Last I checked the Pentagon 'lost' billions. Various agencies aren't rigorous with the taxpayer's money, also their time horizons seem skewed (very little R&D to reduce various costs internally).
Nor are they a fair actor. How could a single inventor petition the govt to pay up? Don't say a lawsuit because 'national security' supersedes any petition.
Nonetheless, my main point is none of the above. My main point is why would a worker/inventor have any right over a technology? Their job is funded by taxpayers. In business, the same is true. 'Work for hire' is the concept/term. I get that they are trying to modify this to returning some money to the people but...if 150k is the limit, will this be a new minimum wage? Or does this limit account for inflation? Honestly, highly skilled workers (mostly) know their value to the market. I think it's a poor use of taxpayers money to give a % of an invention. Fire the bosses, be more nimble, there are plenty of alternatives to this degradation entering the equation.
“This is helping maintain US dominance, particularly from a technological perspective,” says Meyerriecks. “That’s really critical for national and economic security. It also democratizes the technology by making it available to the planet in a way that allows the level of the water to rise for all.”
Such a skeevy way to paint this picture -- it's not about global democratization to rise the water level, we know from history that the cia cares about the ability to impose controls through more powerful, more distributed tech.
My understanding is that the CIA has and does pursue those arrangements via In-Q-Tel (their venture capital arm), DARPA grants (technically DoD, but I have to assume they collaborate), and one-off relationships with labs (e.g. the Lincoln Lab, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory). Is the new thing just that they're soliciting applications? Why and from who?
There are only so many academic institutions and I imagine they are easy enough to one-off approach (unless they're trying to target individual researchers...), startups should be well covered by VC, big tech cos have never seemed to have a problem pursuing govt contracts (see all the recent news about MSFT, Amzn, and Google doing business with them), so what's materially different? That anyone can apply? The nature of the arrangements?
At least that is the joke.
[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/meet-...
Yeah I thought the US only had LEGAL torture centers!!
Different niche needs for which the funding is specifically tailored, that's all.
Not because they're the CIA or anything, but because most browsers send referrers. It's really easy to figure out where a traffic spike is coming from.