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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Realistically, governments need to adjust to market pay to make a difference here.

I am a former public servant. I earn after 2 years of experience what they paid people with 6. And I don’t work for a FAANG or even a decently funded VC firm, but am guessing that I am now significantly underpaid (initially signed up for it for interesting work, but that went away so fixing that presently). And I live in Canada, where salaries are already compressed.

That working at a not well paying startup can rapidly outpace the government is a huge problem for digital infrastructure.

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The scheme isn't designed to compete with industry. This is more like an internship than a real job. People will do it because they believe it looks good on their resumes. They'll be working with the people who develop government digital infrastructure - those people are often paid quite well, because they're contractors and high level government workers.

The initial hires at the US Digital Service all came in at GS-15, level 10. At least, that is what I was offered. It was the only way they could be remotely competitive. I notice that this new program is using only new grads and boot camp graduates. One reason is that they are no longer able to get the special dispensations to offer the high GS ratings.

https://www.generalschedule.org/GS-15

According to this site, GS-15 10 is $143,598.00/year (I was curious and I figured others here would be too)

Nope[1], e.g. DC locality is capped by statute to $175.2k base at Step 7.

[1] https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

That number does not include locality adjustment.

Right, but this is still the problem. Even GS-15 L10 is barely competitive with starting new-grad salaries at FAANG, and USDS is trying to pull experienced people.

USDS has the whole short-term tour/prestige going for it, though, so they can plausibly get people to take a temporary pay cut as an act of public service.

I totally agree with you. The first wave of USDS hires were highly motivated to refactor/repair/replace the ACA infrastructure. Most came from much higher paying jobs in Silicon Valley. I doubt the same levels of motivation and excitement are still there, but I could be wrong. There was also a lot of political will and pressure that made those early USDS tasks remotely possible. Without that pressure, I imagine the vendors and the bureaucracy, which was barely tolerable a decade ago, would not be tolerated by most highly qualified candidates.

Many people in that first wave of USDSers are back in government, some with USDS, some at other agencies.

I think there's some of "this is shiny and new and putting the plane together as it flies" excitement that's different now (from what I saw in 2015 when with 18F), but USDS is better positioned thanks to long-developed trust to get more things done, IMO.

This isn’t a replacement for USDS though, it’s a companion program. And it appears USDS is still actively recruiting.

Correct! (I work at USDS, am commenting here just personally to shed light where I can).

Right, but that's still not very competitive. A senior engineer at the high paying places can be making 300k+. And those places usually have good benefits, too.

Granted, that's usually in expensive metros, but it's not like DC is cheap either.

Realistically, a lot of people on the left do not like "techies" and feel that devs at Google, FB, et al are horrendously overpaid relative to their contributions to society. So while the Democrats may be okay with the general principle of, "the government should be able to pay more to get the people they need", I think they'd balk at actually paying FAANG-level prices for engineers. Almost 200k for a new grad CS major? That's a hard sell to a party that focuses more -- or at least advertises itself more -- on the poor and working class.

You don't need FAANG hiring to easily exceed the compensation the GS scale can offer. The maximum at GS-15 step 10 is $143,598 plus a CoL adjustment that maxes out at +41% for absurd places like San Francisco.

Thankfully there are lots of very talented engineers who avoid working at FAANGs for a wide variety of reasons, including a desire for work with greater social impact.

The government doesn't directly compete with the private sector in any industry, and that is especially unlikely to happen in tech. Promotions/bonuses based on performance, large equity grants, frequent job hopping – all are the exact opposite of how the government works.

> I earn after 2 years of experience what they paid people with 6.

Is it wrong for me to think that those numbers shouldn't be super far apart?

Shouldn't there be a big junior to senior jump? As it stands, they are the same. 80K each.

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