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Comment by hackula1 | Hacker News Reader

I imagine anyone with a line on their resume that says "NSA - Software Developer - 2009:Present" is going to have a hard time finding a new job at many companies (although certainly not all).

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Breaking: most people, even most people in the tech community, don't look on the NSA with that level of contempt, if any at all.

This is unfortunate--in a just world everyone doing this would be imprisoned for many years and have all their ill-gotten gains stripped from them--but a real fact. And the typical NSA software developer is certainly highly qualified and very, very smart. Going purely by business concerns, if you have a need for someone with the skill set that'd come from working for the NSA, you can't afford to pass them up just because they worked with the NSA.

You can also be sure that, even if the NSA were disbanded fully and all its employees hated so much that they could not get domestic employment anywhere, many international actors would be extremely excited to pay top dollar for their talent. And by top dollar, we're not talking piddling six figure salaries.

Agreed. Skills would be irrelevant. A brain dump alone would be worth hundreds of millions. That is the scariest thing about all of this. Every time I hear someone bash on Snowden about how he was a dropout, etc, etc I just think "ok, so you gave this guy who you say is an irresponsible idiot the ability to blackmail anyone who has a google search history?"

When the NSA sends people out to infiltrate companies, they won't write "NSA" on their resume. For the rest of former NSA employees, a lot of them will have resumes that say: Palantir, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc.

Indeed. "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" is worth a read.

I suspect that anyone who has been a software developer at the NSA (or FBI) for five years has robust job security. Government employees have some extensive benefits, and these guys get to play with some serious hardware. If they like working there, I would be surprised if they were unable to keep doing so for a Long Time in the future.

Now, if they decided they wanted out, well ... good luck with that in the manner you describe. I suspect that it won't be too hard, though. They deal with "Big Data" problems at a scale that few do, so being an NSA engineer likely is bound to be a similarly prestigious resume line as working for Google. Aside from the working for an evil entity part, that is, but some employers will not care as much about that.

On the flip side of that, maybe you do want ex-NSA staff with the inside knowledge so you can protect yourself against their tactics. Isn't that the same reasoning for hiring ex-black hat hackers?

If someone is willing to divulge inside knowledge of his last employer you have to assume that in the future he will be willing to divulge your inside knowledge.

Agree. But it happens all the time. Why else do you think they have those long periods of gardening leave when you leave one employer for another, or those clauses in contracts saying you will not work for a competitor in the same field for X months when you leave? (Although, I seem to recall the last one being unlawful since they are essentially stopping you earning a living).

Sometimes employers are willing to take that risk.

Do you think Ed Snowden is now more or less employable now?

His options are certainly more limited now (considering most employers could not keep him safe). That being said, I imagine his existing options would be readily available and would all pay millions.

Very true. Trust is important -- hard to win, easy to lose. Once lost, it never comes back.

I am pretty sure they would be considered a traitor if someone told their new company how the NSA was doing things, just look at what they are calling Snowden.

Yes, absolutely, I agree with you. But just because you were ex-NSA does that mean you can no longer work in related work? What if you built their data centres, and you took a job at Google and tasked with building their new data centres. Do you just "forget" what you already know? I understand you may be under NDA to not discuss your previous work, but that doesn't meaning you can't make suggestions or plans without explicitly spelling it out, esp if your employer knew your background and you may not be able to speak about it openly.

I would expect Google and similarly enormous companies to have a process in place to keep rogue agents from inserting backdoors and malicious code.

You have to trust your developers. You can do audits, but the problem is intractably difficult. Developers have a TREMENDOUS amount of power. Trust is absolutely, utterly, irreconcilably fundamental to the job. If you cannot trust your developers, you are screwed every which way to Sunday. If your developers are compromised, you have to assume that your whole business is compromised.

While this another angle, I was referring to the fact that many people will see these engineers as immoral and spineless. I know that I would not hire the person who drew that smiley face or any of their accomplices.

And if you did hire that person, I would never trust you again with my business.

http://xkcd.com/898/

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