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Comment by balls187 | Hacker News Reader

> ...with all the defense sector benefits, some very exclusive.

Could you elaborate on that?

Not affiliated with them, this is just what I found on Google, but here are their benefits [1]. They don't seem that great honestly. New hires need to work for 3 years before they can get more than 13 days of PTO, and you only get 20+ days after working there for 15 YEARS.

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).

[1]: https://www.cia.gov/careers/benefits.html?tab=list-7

The referenced page seems say you get an additional 13 days of sick time per year, carried over in an unlimited amount. So that would be 26 days per year from the start.

I believe that’s just “annual leave” and doesn’t count “sick leave” (which doubles the baseline PTO) and the federal holidays (10 days per year I believe)

Clearance for one.

If you think that's a perk you don't belong doing that work. It's not the james bond life you think it is and the people who think of it that way are insufferable.

Try living in a windowless box for 8 hours a day and having no resume.

Every once in a while you do collect some fun stories.

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.

I remember in orientation for my first internship the HR lady disparaging Chinese Communist party and the phrase "happy ending" may have made an appearance during that part of the presentation. It was absolutely perfect for the demographics of the audience (a bunch of college kids) but man did it ruin every BigCo orientation since. I think she missed he calling as a comedian or some sort of entertainment professional.

I had one orientation where the presenter showed images of the men and women who had jumped out of the WTC during 9/11

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."

The most gruesome briefing I remember from the military was the dermatologist prior to fortnight leave.

Everyone who deals with company confidential information (hopefully!) understands the 'pause' you experience when having a conversation about related topics with someone outside the company. ("hm, what am I allowed to say here?"). Now imagine it where you have to have the same question even with many people inside your company, and if you f* it up, you can go to jail. And unlike most corporate information, some or most of it will remain classified through the end of your life, and your obligation to keep it confidential never ends.

It's a burden.

A position with a defense contractor that requires a special-access clearance can pay very well. The problem is that you very often need to have the clearance to get the job. Getting a special-access clearance for an employee can take six months or more, and there may be some costs involved. Also, there would be that time waiting for the clearance before you could start working on a special-access project. Many (most?) defense contractors would rather pay extra to get someone who already has the clearance.

This was my understanding. You basically get the gov't to pay for your clearance (which I hear can take a long time). Once you separate, your clearance can get your jobs in the private sector that people without clearance can't.[1]

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.

[1]https://www.clearancejobs.com/

I was told that an active clearance with SSBI can add $30-50k (or something, this was years ago) to your salary. These days that doesn't seem like anything super special given tech salaries in major metros. But it probably goes a real long way in Huntsville, AL or wherever.

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

And on top of that you can't read HN at work from your air-gapped locked-down PC!

and you have to leave your mobile phone at the door!

Is that part really so bad, though?

In addition to things people have already commented on, the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance also comes with requirements such as: being mindful and reporting things like contact with foreign nationals, reporting plans for and completed foreign travel, generally being able to account for your whereabouts during those travels to the day.

(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)

I think you meant the inverse. If you value optionality to work on government projects that require clearance wouldn’t one view already having said clearance as a perk?

If you don’t want to do that work you would not view it as a perk.

I'm not trying to nitpick or anything, but to my ears calling a clearance a "perk" speaks to misconceptions about the reality of working in that ecosystem. But job mobility is a real thing, so yeah that's a good point to talk about.

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.

It ropes you into that ecosystem and that ecosystem only. Most consumer/web tech companies won't understand a resume that's just "I did a thing, can't talk about it".

Tell that to employees at Lockheed, Boeing, Honeywell, Booz Allen... the list of private enterprises or people engaged in government work requiring clearance is large and varied.

They're part of that ecosystem as well. In my experience they're all miserable places to work though, LM in particular.

Have you never hired an ex-Apple employee?

Apple employees/people from other NDA obsessed firms have nothing on the cleared workers. Yea they can be cagey but their products eventually ship and they can talk about them. When you're in defense, once your project ships it stays on orbit for a decade or two.

The federal government pays a comfortable six figures (if I were offered this kind of job without being told the salary, I would value that opportunity estimating the salary to be $150,000). Plus you retire really early (I'm not certain whether CIA lets you retire after 20 years, but many fed roles do, with full salary), plus you have access to really hard to find information (valuable from the point of view of sheer curiosity). Not to mention, if in the course of your research you make enemies out of say hackers in Russia (totally plausible if you're researching computer security) they'll think twice before messing with you because you're part of the team (some liken it to being a "made man").

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.

Getting your SF-86 leaked by OPM does not, in fact, make you feel cool, like part of the team, or a "made man".

Federal civil service does not let you retire with full salary. With 20 years of service (plus minimum age requirement) you'll get about 25% of the average salary of your top three years.

> The federal government pays a comfortable six figures

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.

This is immediately falsifiable with public documents from OPM:

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+

To be fair, GS-12 isn't that common in some agencies. Because of hiring wickets, you'll see a lot more GS-11 or 13.

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.

Contrary to the comment below, you don’t need to be in an expensive area to make that amount. I know quite a few making that amount without graduate education and in areas where the average cost-of-living is a small fraction of Silicon Valley

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