Is there another GCHQ challenge? | Hacker News Reader

Is there another GCHQ challenge?

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25 pointsjgrahamc12 comments

Potentially off-topic, but am I the only one who finds it absurd that GCHQ are offering a miserly £25k salary for people who manage to work their way through this puzzle and arrive at the job description?

This would seem to imply that the people at the sharp end of my country's cyber defence are fairly junior (because it's trivially easy to earn more than £25k in the UK if you have even moderate skills).

For someone joining the GCHQ grad scheme it isn't all about money. They'll hand-hold you through decent security clearance, you'll get to learn the ropes and a good grounding in national security.

I believe these things are more difficult for graduates wanting to start in a private company for or in the same field.

A lot of the graduate roles are part of what in the UK is called the 'fast track' civil service scheme. Graduates start on a standard level salary (£25k), but progress much faster than people not on the fast-track scheme.

Yep, that too. I didn't mention the fast-track as I wasn't sure if it was still open.

Given how trivially easy it will have been for 90% of the applicants to get to the application page (following a link like the ones in the article), I'm not sure the results are as serious as the PR generated.

However, from what I understand GCHQ offers fairly competitive salaries and benefits for the people who they want, but these are essentially entry "graduate" roles that are being advertised, and £25k is pretty good for a graduate in the current economy.

I'm afraid this is sadly true. A great many government / civil service posts pay salaries well below the equivalent 'private sector' role.

Evidence from the US would suggest that it's better than the other alternative of paying them more. (Equality is too thin a target to realistically hit.) Especially in the form of generous pension promises that can't possibly be kept.

A bit more on pay in as a government employee in Britain.

http://www.civilservant.org.uk/pay.shtml

For fun, here's the GS calculator for the U.S.

http://www.fedsmith.com/pay_rates/

A GS-13 step 7 in SF makes $116240.

But a more entry-level GS-7 step 1 in D.C. makes $42209

The other possible clue is that they seem to have added "The challenge continues" to the home page sometime in the last few days e.g. see http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/01/gchq-computer-ha... for how it looked on or before 1st Dec.

I note that they'd added "The challenge continues" to the http://canyoucrackit.co.uk/ website. I'm sure that wasn't there before...

For those wondering: the complete and detailed solution can be found on http://www.craig-wood.com/nick/articles/how-i-solved-the-gch...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/06/hidden_gchq_code_bre...

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