Essentially yes. Lockheed already has jobs posted for higher pay than was on offer for that skillset and has asked me if I'd be interested in talking to them.

Since that skill is odd but required by every single contractor that does classified work there's a whole lot of opportunity out there I wasn't aware of until recently. The lack of quality people doing it in the GS ranks now makes a whole lot more sense to me. Prior to me understanding that it was just an annoyance.

GS-15 salaries top out at $176,300 in the DC metro area. (Most (all?) USDSers get exactly that salary.) That is certainly more than I made as a new grad at a FAANG!

You wouldn't get hired at GS-15 as a new hire. You might reach that after 20-30 years, and you'll need to get a Ph.D.

Also, DC Metro is an extremely high CoL area (not SF levels but probably around Seattle levels). Normal GS-15 pay is $112k-146k and you'd trend towards the bottom of that in most areas.

So, $112k average at the peak of your career, with a required Ph.D. More realistically as a new hire you might be GS-12 (which only takes a master's) which is $68k-89k, so you make $68k in most areas. That's certainly not great as far as competitiveness with tech salaries, that's pretty close to the bottom of the market these days for a new hire working entirely remote, not even highly-desirable talent.

You do not require a masters for a GS-12. Many entry-level engineering positions (hard or soft) have a target grade of GS-12, so if you do your job at all you'll be there in a few years. If you're even slightly serious you'd likely snag a GS-13 position within 5-10 years. If you're in a low-COL area, ~110k is reasonably competitive. Also keep in mind that you're working 40-hour weeks -- none of this exploitative 60+-hour week death march nonsense.

USDS may only get away with this because their roles are term-limited excepted service, but pretty much everyone comes in as a GS-15-10, regardless of education.

Also the Executive Office of the President can get away with a lot of things offering special incentives and pay rates and what not, but they can't go above the GS 15 step 10 cap for non SES/ES employees because that is statutory.

I was not a new grad, but I started as an L3 (which is what new grads are hired at) at Google, ten years ago, in WA.

My take-home in the first full year at work was $147,500. The second was $178,500.

Feel free to adjust for inflation.

I should have said starting TC, not salary. When I looked at it years ago, GS-15 salaries capped out at the average salary of a Google L3.

It looks like it may be a little above L3 salary today (moving in the right direction!), but still far below L3 TC, and a Google L3 job is not even remotely comparable to a GS-15 job.

IMO if the government had a separate band of GS pay for highly competitive job markets which paid 50-100k more, they would be a lot more successful.

It is for me too, but new grads at FAANGs today are getting 200k+ TC offers.