Government pays IT fairly well compared to 95% of all IT jobs. It’s not paying FAANG wages, but more time off, less overtime, and pensions make direct salary comparisons misleading.
Honestly if I was starting over as a fresh graduate I’d probably try and get a government job. Job security makes a huge difference in lifetime earnings and several of my early jobs sucked.
No it definitely does not. A GS-15, whose job duties would be equivalent to a CTO or principal engineer in private sector, makes _at least_ 3x less than the going rate. You are correct in that gov benefits are incredible.
In Arlington VA you’ll cap out at 33.26% over the GS-15 step 10 so 160k * 1.33 = 212k and someone with 40 years of service is looking at a 212 * 0.011 * 40 = 93k per year pension at 62 which then gets inflation adjustments. There’s people making 3x that but not that many of them.
>> Government pays IT fairly well compared to 95% of all IT jobs. It’s not paying FAANG wages, but more time off, less overtime, and pensions make direct salary comparisons misleading.
> No it definitely does not. A GS-15, whose job duties would be equivalent to a CTO or principal engineer in private sector, makes _at least_ 3x less than the going rate. You are correct in that gov benefits are incredible.
What's the government pay for a senior engineer, and what's your number for an equivalent private sector salary?
I agree with your first paragraph, not your second. A major downside to govt. tech is their overly conservative approach to adopting new technology, and generally low standard to overall speed of execution and productivity. You'll probably be safe if you stay in the same agency or related cluster, but I have found that people trying to break into the private sector or jump to a different jurisdiction with a totally different tech stack were either woefully under developed in terms of their skill set outside of the 20 year old proprietary stuff they were used to using, or were 0.1x developers compared to their private sector colleagues.
When you're young, you have the time and energy to toil hard for long hours and learn lots of new things. I would not waste that resource on a government job unless I were ready to make a career long commitment to it.
> tech is their overly conservative approach to adopting new technology, and generally low standard to overall speed of execution and productivity
Or, another reading would be that they're avoiding the hype cycle the private sector constantly falls into, and you won't be overworked/eventually stressed out because of the constant pressure from shareholders/executives/founders who want you to put 150% of your energy with no work/life balance into their "vision of supercharged spreadsheets" or something similar.
I personally wouldn't waste my youth on just slaving away at companies for money, but also spend time exploring the world and yourself while you're young enough to have the energy (and hopefully time) to do so.
My private sector jobs have largely used outdated or proprietary technologies. First job had me maintaining a ~30 year old Object Pascal project in the early 2000’s. They were still using AppleTalk instead of TCP/IP locally.
IMO keeping up is more about what you do in your free time rather than trying to actually work with whatever the new hotness is. So having free time is critical not just whatever technology you’re using at work. However, work for NASA for 40 years and what the industry does is irrelevant.
Honestly if I was starting over as a fresh graduate I’d probably try and get a government job. Job security makes a huge difference in lifetime earnings and several of my early jobs sucked.