The original roll out of Healthcare.gov is a counterpoint.

Looking at salaries, senior developers working for the government get paid about the same as entry level software engineers who get return offers at BigTech. Well actually senior developers in government only about 10%-20% more.

And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?

I know how much senior cloud consultants working at AWS make working in the WWPS. I was there as an l5. Amazon is a shitty place to work. But I doubt it’s any worse than the government right now. GCP and Microsoft (not just Azure) both also pay their consultants a lot more than government employees make.

I’m not saying the government isn’t needed. But the best and the brightest aren’t going to give up the amount of money they can make in the private sector - especially now that government jobs are far from a secure paycheck

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NeutralCrane 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The original roll out of Healthcare.gov is a counterpoint.

Healthcare.gov was primarily developed by private contractor firms, not government employees.

> And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?

Some people are motivated by factors other than pay, a concept that seems to be foreign to many FAANG corporate mercenaries.

	▲	raw_anon_1111 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Not true it was managed by the government https://www.businessofgovernment.org/sites/default/files/Vie... And you are going to tell me that some people would rather work for the government now where they are constantly insulted, had to desk with DOGE and every year there is a threat they might not get paid?

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blackjack_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You are arguing that everyone is as money driven as you are. Plenty of people who are more altruistic people take employment based on non money factors all the time.

Plenty of people will also earn their chunk of change as an l5 at Amazon or whatever, then transition to a lower paid job with more impact.

In fact, I know almost nobody who makes their employer decisions based on the pay factor alone.

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raw_anon_1111 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yes I’m sure your anecdotal bubble is more statistically valid than telling a 22 year old if they have a choice between working at BigTech making $160K+ a year or work in government and make $70K, they are going to choose to work for the government.

Myself personally, I worked on the other side of the consulting - government divide. I saw a lot more people jump on the consulting side than the government side. I never heard one person say “I would love to take a 40% cut in pay and go into the office and deal with government shut downs. Sign me up!

But why in the heck would anyone want to work for a government that constantly insults them, forcing RTO and making people move to South (where I am from).

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blackjack_ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Because they want to build cool things or tasteful things or things that actually help people.

I'm ex Lockheed, where I worked alongside the NASA software engineers building and testing and verifying software for human spaceflight in the ITL. 70 to 80 hour weeks happened quarterly, and people worked with it. Because an important thing is actually being built and deployed and billions of dollars and human lives depend on it. I jumped ship because things progressed slow AF, but there was no shortage of people who wanted to build cool things at reasonable salaries (yes low for software, but not low salaries generally).

This same thing is what has driven SpaceX and Blue Origin in the private sector. The same thing drives the whole nonprofit sector. The government is a similar employer, though in the past couple of years obviously not as good.

Big Tech self selects for money grubbing and willingness to chase it at expense of everything else in your life. Many others are happier at smaller companies with lower pay scales and healthier work/life balances, or where they get to work on interesting problems with huge scales and they are paid enough to not worry about money anymore (this is possible in most non VHCOL places).

	▲	raw_anon_1111 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The entire “BigTech doesn’t have work life balance” is copium and the DMV isn’t exactly a low cost of living area. How many departments outside of what NASA are doing anything exciting? Maybe in medicine the CDC.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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