NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging morale, unpopular reorg

Re:NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging ... by GlenTheMachine on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @10:50PM (#16058198)

I am a civil servant. There are special pay scales for scientists and engineers, but they are still capped by law at the top end at the same level as the GS scale. In the DC area last year that was $166,000.

I am not aware of any exceptions to the law, unless you mean the Special Executive Service. You can - eventually - make it into the Special Executive Service (SES), which pays somewhat higher (around $200k per year, depending on specifics). But that typically takes 20+ years of service and is reserved to less than 1% of the total workforce of a lab or agency. It is extremely rare for someone to be hired directly into the SES, unless that person is a presidential appointee.

Which means that under ordinary circumstances, my lab cannot offer a Nobel Laureate more than $200,000 per year.

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Re:NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging ... by ENOTTY on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @10:59PM (#16058246)

That simply isn't true. Via fedsdatacenter.com, the highest paid employee of a federal government agency earns $403,849. Note that this dataset excludes sensitive government agencies. https://i.imgur.com/bgFxOkh.png

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Re:NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging ... by GlenTheMachine on Tuesday January 02, 2018 @11:21PM (#16058357)

Here is the executive order, signed by President Obama, governing the pay for all federal employees, including the GS and SES scales. It tops out at $207,000 per year.

I'm not saying that there is no civil servant anywhere who makes more than that. But such positions are extremely rare. The Vice President only makes $240,000.

https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...

If you read the fine print, the executive order allows agency-level directors of the Department of Veterans' Affairs who are physicians to be paid market rates. That is probably who these people are.

This exemption doesn't appear to apply to any other agency or profession.

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Re:NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging ... by rgbrenner on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @12:53AM (#16058817)

TVA, a federally owned corp, had its salaries uncapped by congress in 2004. If not for that law, they would be subject to the cap also.

Also, that $995k for the CEO is just the base salary.. his full comp package is about $6.5m

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Re:NSA’s top talent is leaving because of low pay, flagging ... by itronitron on Wednesday January 03, 2018 @12:38AM (#16058740)

Considering the amount of care and feeding that a Nobel Laureate would require to support their research program that seems appropriate.

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