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Comment by curiousDog | Hacker News Reader

Wonder how and where they recruit their top-talent. Pretty much every top scorer in my school went to Facebook/Google/Msft/Amzn. The mediocre ones went to Northrop Grumman/Raytheon/Rockwell and the like.

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The Company doesn't exactly encourage recruits to advertise their new position. You mostly see people just vanish for a while. Young recruitment is largely done through direct faculty recommendations at schools, so it's more of a "don't find us, we'll find you" proposition.

Yup. I had a friend who spent some time there. Easily the smartest kid in my major. Hired due to a direct referral from faculty. It gets scary, once you see how many math professors have security clearances.

> It gets scary, once you see how many math professors have security clearances.

Makes sense, though. The people who are the best at math are going to be the people who are the best at grokking and expanding upon the existing understanding of the math involved in cryptography.

Yeah, my mom majored in math and minored in Russian. She got the NSA offer in her last semester. But she wanted to teach, and thought the whole thing was more than a little spooky. And indeed, it was a faculty referral that prompted the interview offer.

Exactly, a good friend of mine in college was recommended for a job at the NSA by one of my professors in early 2001. He went to having a heavy online presence and being a constant in our social circles to completely disappearing. His personal site went dormant, he stopped showing up on irc, abruptly dumped his long time girlfriend. My roommate bumped into the guy at a grocery store in Virginia but other than that he doesn't exist to anyone who knew him for years or online.

I think the bridge between math and programming is relatively small, so if you have the most mathematicians in the world, you probably have some pretty good programmers too.[1]

But for contractor, there are job boards for people with clearances.[2] Although you get a pay boost of at least 10-15k, I'm sure the bureaucracy is awful.

I also wouldn't assume that all the top people go to biz. Some very talented people work in gov and academia. Not everyone is guided primarily by money & scores.

[1] http://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/Web/Jobs.html [2] http://www.clearedconnections.com/

For the same reason some MDs go to work for Médecins Sans Frontières instead of a top-paying job at a private hospital or partnership. A sense of duty. I grew up in a small town dominated by military/industrial companies. A lot of top talent moves there because they believe working for the government is what they should do.

The best programmer I know works for Northrop, because you can make >$100K and live in a rural or semirural area (near an AFB), you can have $1000/mo rent, vs living in SF making $150K and having massively higher expenses and have to be far away from "home".

Sure but isn't life a great deal more boring out there? It depends on a person's priorities.

My experience in school (and grad school) was similar, so I've been curious about the same thing. Perhaps, they only recruit folks from the industry after they've worked for a while and have specialized?

Maybe they recruit people while they are employed at FB/GG/Msft/Amz, you know, to help with national security while also receiving a second wage.

I imagine that you'll get downvoted to hell for saying that, but if I was the NSA I'd do exactly this. I'd also threaten you if you refused to comply.

I would already know exactly which employee to target based on your dubious interests gleaned from your internet searches.

And not a single one of them has spoken up about being coerced into compromising their employer (a big one, with lots of lawyers) by the government?

If someone has been approached by a powerful government agency that threatens them with embarrassing information concerning their private life, would they volunteer to share that coercion in public (and be believed)?

You'd have to have pretty big balls to fuck with a three letter agency like that.

It would be amazingly naive to think that the various alphabet agencies have not made it their business to penetrate a wide variety of business, government, and NGO organizations. If it makes you feel any better, the Russians have plants in FB/Google/Amazon too.

These recruiters find you, you dont find them. I doubt that any of your classmates would be so dumb as to tell everyone they got hired by a 3 letter agency. They probably are looking for more seasoned devs than the typical college grad.

Also you have to be an American citizen with parents who live in America. At least I know this is the case for civilians who want high security clearances.

I am guessing they get them young.Who sponsors MATHCOUNTS,AMC and other contests for highly gifted kids?Raytheon,Northrop Grumman.

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