somnolentsam

There is a big pay disparity, but the main thing is that engineers and other technical types have gone from having a big say in how problems get solved to being the problem itself. No amount of pay is going to retain people in those circumstances, except possibly those you don't want to retain.

As far as money is concerned, NSA is way overfunded - it just spends money on the wrong things and wastes lots of resources due to inefficiency.