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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

I mean the grad assistant is basically a post-doc position isn't it? Considering the stability and perks from a government job, I think that is not too far from market rate.

But go up and those 180k jobs would be easily 300-400K in the industry. I doubt anyone who can do that work would be interested in a measly 180K. Unless it comes with a visa...

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I think you'd be surprised. Plenty of people are interested in going into public service and especially policy related work. The high industry salaries can actually be a positive here, they allow workers to be FIRE'd in a decade or less. At that point they can switch to a lower stress/higher impact gov job and the salary being lower isn't a huge problem.

Statistically, this doesn't really happen though. The % of people who make enough to adopt a realistic FIRE strategy are not going into govt service in large numbers, not by a long shot. Even the more traditional retiring early crowd isn't going into public service

The govt has record vacancy at the local, state, and federal levels for jobs[0][1][2]

Even taking steps to lower barriers to entry, they can't fill them.

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/christianweller/2023/02/09/amid...

[1]: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/11/government-jobs-pandemic-re...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20231002185558/https://www.nytim...

I think the key here is that the job has to be intriguing enough. Working on shaping US AI policy is something that many people would sacrifice quite a bit to do. Pushing paper not so much. Most fed jobs are on the paper pushing side of things, which also makes the actually interesting jobs harder to fill due to the reputation for bureaucracy. Probably why they made this fancy recruiting site.

You won't be able to FIRE on $180k for 10 years (or less), not even close.

The thing about FIRE is you actually need way more money than regular retirement, because you have to plan for a 40+year retirement instead of a 15-20 year one. On top of that you need a higher margin to account for uncertainty.

HDThoreaun is saying that it's possible to work in the private sector for a decade and save/invest enough to FIRE, especially if in your "retirement" you're also pulling in $180k/y and getting government benefits.

There's "barista FIRE" (save enough and then go work as a barista, typically at starbucks because they had unusually good benefits, but I don't know if all that has changed after the unionization), but honestly working for the government seems like it could be even lower-stress than being a barista.

"a measly 180k" is a wild statement on an absolute scale, but i do see what you're saying relatively.

The sentiment today is the idea of the post doctoral position is also exploitation. Paying PhDs to do cutting edge work for $50k a year is a joke. In n out managers probably get more than that now.

As in it's a joke if they accept it?

Almost all those 300K+ industry jobs are willing to sponsor visas.

Most of these jobs on the other hand seem to be US citizens only. Some require a security clearance which a lot of AI experts would probably rather NOT have.

> I mean the grad assistant is basically a post-doc position isn't it? Considering the stability and perks from a government job, I think that is not too far from market rate.

At a DOE lab in my second year of PhD I was getting ~$50/hr. When I've interned at other places I've gotten to about $60/hr. That's still below the typical rate of $80-$100/hr for a new grad (we're just talking base salary, no comp or bonuses). Definitely not market rate.

For the $180k, that's a bit tougher. Since this is all cash. I'm not aware of anyone who pays $300k all cash to newly minted PhDs except for Netflix. Otherwise that number is competitive with typical base salaries. But like you say, with equity that number doubles and so isn't competitive that way. There are benefits to a gov job (way more relaxed) but you're turning down a lot of money, that's for sure. And of course, the salaries are only competitive for newly minted PhDS, not for anyone that's been in the field post PhD for 5+ years.

I don't think post docs get 300k-400k outside of major tech hubs. 180k is on the higher end of the software pay scale across most the USA.

Which generally aren't hired by the government (unfortunately).

Wage rates should be higher.

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