Just to be clear, GS-15 is the absolute highest pay grade for regular federal em... (2024)

Ok, just to be clear, a GS-13 is comparable to a masters and a GS-14 is comparable to a PhD IF you are using education as your sole means of qualifying for the position. I was hired as a GS-11, promoted to GS-12 after one year, GS-13 after another, received two qualified step increases the year after, plus a regular step increase. So in a matter of three years, I was effectively promoted six times. Once you are on a career ladder there are no education requirements.

In terms of GS-15, their pay goes up to 170k, so its not like GS-15 step 1 is the end of the road. Federal employees have also been receiving above-inflation pay raises and COLA adjustments the last few years.

So why would a good engineer work for the government? Honestly, if pay is your only metric you use to choose your place of employment, then I would not expect them to. However, as I have mentioned, there are plenty of people in the world who choose their place of employment based on many factors other than compensation.

Is government work frustrating? Sure. I'm sure the same can be said of for the engineer developing a CRUD application and has a sh*tty senior engineer overseeing them. Government work can also be incredibly rewarding and unfortunately, the majority of the time you only hear about the government failures instead of its successes. The federal government issues in excess of 500 billion in contracts per year...I assure you, there are successes in there and I have seen some federal agencies that have implemented acquisition processes and development practices that are competitive with some SV companies.

Not everyone is driven by money, but I think its fair to say that most people would take a job in industry where you can make 2-3x over a government job. I think this is born out in your own admission that it is very rare for government to hire engineers. Above inflation / COLA pay raises are table stakes for good engineers. If a good engineer in industry has only managed to get COLA pay raises over the last 5 years, they should quit.

I've not claimed that government can't do anything right, and I strongly believe in government. I do however believe that current public policy is designed to cause government to fail. Lots of contracts in that yearly $500 billion are successful, but things like the F-35 program, the Littoral Combat Ship, the Space Launch System, Healthcare.gov, the f*ck ups in this article, and more are big enough that they eat pretty significantly into that $500 billion budget. The government has some serious issues procuring engineering work. Some pork politics certainly contribute, but lack of technical expertise at federal agencies is, I think, a significant factor.

I don’t agree with you that it is safe to say if people could make 2-3x more money they would take the opportunity. It is equivalent to saying people who become teachers, who make far less than most professions of similar educational requirements, would jump at an opportunity to make 2-3x the pay or are somehow incapable of performing comparable functions. It’s just not true.

I should probably clarify that there are some federal agencies that hire engineers as federal employees. For example, NSA, NASA, JPL, etc. To your point, they do have better success when it comes to engineering. However, they are also agencies that have a primary mission/function which requires it. For other agencies, it’s not all that easy for them to justify career engineering employees when the roles are tertiary functions. It’s not to say they don’t have them, but it is to say that they have far less of that expertise. That is why entities such as 18F and USDS exist though, to help fill that role.

While it seems like you are not keen on giving it a try, I highly encourage you to give government work a shot even if only on a temporary basis with somewhere like USDS or 18F. Only way to help make positive changes to the way government does business is through people with the drive and talent to do so. There is plenty of opportunity to influence those types of changes, even at lower ends of the employment hierarchy.

Appreciate the conversation and you offering your perspective!