And that's before considering things like the probably higher-than-usual rate of neurodiverse workers in software, for whom military cultural issues would often go from merely unpleasant all the way up to fundamentally incompatible.

The military's difficulties with the hacker mindset and common neurodiverse mindsets goes deeper than "culture". The military wants/needs to be able to give orders and expect them to be followed. An _active rejection_ of orders, conformity, standardisation, and externally-driven imposed change are all very common within those communities at a level that is closer to biology than culture; it's not something that could straightforwardly be coached out of either side.

To be a comfortable place for a lot of us to work, the military would need to understand that "because I felt like it" is both a complete explanation and a valid justification for either a 100,000 line software project or a two day nap.

I mostly agree. However, some nuerodivergent individuals could benefit from the structure and routine. The only real problem is when wrong or political orders take place since there's not any real recourse. There's not much recourse in the civilian side, but at least quitting is a potential option.

> I'm not sure there's any reasonable amount of money that would make me want to go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks.

This sounds like it’s more a problem of boot camp, not so much the cyber department.

> go to a boot camp and get hazed by a bunch of jocks

Marine Corps recruit training and Air Force BMT are world’s apart.

Does one or the other of them not involve being hazed, in an occasionally fatal fashion, by a bunch of jocks?

I don't remember what it's called, but there's essentially a whitecollar version of "bootcamp" for the doctors and lawyers. Cyber is one of the job types that has lowered physical requirements and likely fall into the alternative bootcamp/OCS versions.

I agree, but one oft neglected part of these things is the assumption that military and private companies are the same when we know they aren't.

The pay is one issue, but the social aspects are the much bigger issue.

In bureaucracy where jobs are almost impossible to be fired from for lack of adequate performance there is always an entrenched notion that anyone performing better is making everyone else look bad, and this results in sideband bullying, silencing, and various other forms of coercion which meet a definition of torture.

This is why Academia, and Government have such a hard time finding and keeping qualified people. Structurally, those in charge are the ones promoting negative production value, they may say otherwise but people lie all the time and its only rational to take people by their actions over what words they speak.

There is no amount of money that someone will justify selling/losing their sanity in exchange for money. Money isn't worth anything if you can't spend it.

If you sieve the entry with arbitrary requirements, while also making the job intolerable... of course you aren't going to attract talent.

Its not mainly a matter of money, or for that a matter of culture. Its a matter of structure, and structural failures that incentivize these deficits, they are the same deficits found in central planning.

If you can't relieve people for doing a bad job, you only ever attract parasites which crowd out your productive members, and eventually the reputation gets around and no one even bothers to apply or go down that path if they can avoid it. Couple that with systems which are designed to propagate evils without the individuals alerting to the fact, and who would risk their soul for a job?

The wisest understand that the job you choose can warp and defines you. If you segment and compartmentalize information you'll never know when you commit attrocities, and you'll be equally responsible regardless of that knowing.

Overall, Government job? Academic Job? nope moving on. Sanity, and religious beliefs are valued well above anything so base as money; but there are those types too.

There are different levels of "bootcamp". They have all sorts of exceptions for certain types of roles, including cyber. I don't remember the name, but there's basically a white collar version for the doctors and lawyers. But I mostly agree with the rest of your points.