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Comment by vajrabum | Hacker News Reader

I'd venture to say that aren't any significant federal government contractors that don't employ former federal workers. Like it or no this is the norm and it isn't all the revolving door. Selling to the federal government is significantly different than selling to other customers.

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A big part of this is the need for workers with security clearance to service your government contracts. Its far far easier to hire people who have clearance rather than hire somebody and then pay for them to go through the process, and the DoD has the majority of people with security clerance.

Indeed. Take into account the security clearance matter, and the fact that these two organizations work closely together 24/7, and this just makes sense. With whom would AWS have a closer relationship than with the DoD or DHS?

I formerly worked in AWS on a team that had occasional minor need to deploy and make changes to the GovCloud. I was the only US Citizen on my team and was required for every single deployment.

Did this give you incredible leverage for performance reviews, raises, etc?

none at all; this task was just literally a "hit the button".

I can only imagine turning off the lights and sending people home in those moments where you have a late night family emergency.

pretty much all of the times I was needed were scheduled, so there was rarely surprises.

Yup. Not only do you have to be a US Citizen, but you also have to be on US soil. So if you're on vacation internationally? Can't make that change.

AWS takes that stuff very seriously.

Can you tell me what country I have to be in to cancel my services and stop being billed?

Iran

Suuuuure. Whoops and there goes a vpn tunnel with a residential endpoint.

That’s not particularly surprising. I spent a lot of time on an army base in mid aughts as an undergrad for a similar reason, decommissioning an astrophysics project.

And I bet that Amazon pays a lot better for SC (DV) cleared workers than the DOD does.

Likely, but Amazon isn't known for its high salaries, is it? Also govt jobs typically have good benefits so a 1:1 salary comparison may not make sense.

What's high? They are competitive with other FAANG. Source: I worked at both Amazon and Facebook. Amazon also offers a bonus for having a clearance.

What’s the bonus?

IIRC $15,000 / year

It also helps if you have people who are just familiar with the things the government is trying to do, too, so they don't just get blank stares when they start discussing IAVAs and STIGs.

It does a lot. I have someone in the family,who went from working for the government regulator to going into the private sector and literally exchanging emails with ex colleagues a few days later. Knows the system, what's doable and what's not and so on.

That's fair enough and indeed quite plausible. I guess the same kind of argument would apply to the likes of Huawei them, too?

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