It sucks by design compared to current markets and our job functional areas. Back in the 70s it was absolutely awesome pay in a region that wasn’t terribly expensive, but when the top n% of intelligence community engineers could easily go to a Big Tech company paying twice or three times as much it’s factors like ideology, mismatch of skills, or family that keep people in these jobs. In many other areas of government jobs, private sector pay is abysmal and the government jobs attract the best and brightest.

In my indirect experience with Lockheed, their pay wasn’t that much better than being federal (they’re still a huge federal contractor and aren’t exactly boutique). It seems like a lot when you’re used to $80-90k as a senior engineer though for years to bump into $110k on a whim (this is without being particularly special or niche, the over-funded “cyber” contracts get anyone that can read and write shellcode $140k+ which is a ton of people at NSA).

The much bigger problem hitting defense as a whole is that smaller contractors that specialized in being nimble and elite are basically being driven out of business due to federal contracting trend shifts post-sequester. Myself and many others have permanently left the IC out of exasperation with contractors now getting oftentimes less than their federal counterparts and a severe drought of technologically interesting contracts that make business sense.

> So you work for Lockheed or whatever and get most of the attributes of government employment.

Right, and the profits flow to a couple people who essentially own the contract. It’s essentially modern day aristocracy, except the contracts are more valuable to farm out to peasants than land is.

> Federal pay sucks by design. If you want to work for .gov, you want state/local government

State and local government employees are paid well? Where? Which ones?

Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits, and don’t require that you live in the DC crazy corridor. Local governments depend on the locality — big counties and cities pay ok.

It all depends on what is valuable to you.

> Many state governments pay much better than the Federal government and offer better benefits

Not to my knowledge. Which ones for what jobs, do you happen to know?

Public school systems tend to pay well for people who majored in early elementary education, music, kinesiology, etc. But this isn't the same demographic that would work at NSA.

My mom has a master's in education, and after 30 years across two public school systems, she's finally broken $40k salary. Where do you live that public school systems pay well?

In Cincinnati, not a particularly HCOL place, with 30 years and a master's she would have made $77k.

https://www.nctq.org/districtPolicy/contractDatabase/distric...

Is that really "paid well"? 30 years and a masters degree earns you $77K? Could you imagine that offer in SV?

Cost of living is much higher in San Francisco/Sunnyvale vs Cincinnati. I'm saying $77K in an area where you could get a 3 bedroom/2 bath house for under $200K is pretty good, especially if you don't have the skills to compete in the tech realm, which is about the only way you're going to end up paid well in SV.

Presumably England, where 'public' schools are what would be termed 'private' or fee paying schools in the USA ;)