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raw_anon_1111yesterday at 8:00 PM3 repliesview on HN

The original roll out of Healthcare.gov is a counterpoint.

Looking at salaries, senior developers working for the government get paid about the same as entry level software engineers who get return offers at BigTech. Well actually senior developers in government only about 10%-20% more.

And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?

I know how much senior cloud consultants working at AWS make working in the WWPS. I was there as an l5. Amazon is a shitty place to work. But I doubt it’s any worse than the government right now. GCP and Microsoft (not just Azure) both also pay their consultants a lot more than government employees make.

I’m not saying the government isn’t needed. But the best and the brightest aren’t going to give up the amount of money they can make in the private sector - especially now that government jobs are far from a secure paycheck


Replies

NeutralCraneyesterday at 9:33 PM

> The original roll out of Healthcare.gov is a counterpoint.

Healthcare.gov was primarily developed by private contractor firms, not government employees.

> And even if you did work in pub sec, if you were good, why would you want to work for the government when you can get paid a lot more working in the private sector and consulting for the government?

Some people are motivated by factors other than pay, a concept that seems to be foreign to many FAANG corporate mercenaries.

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blackjack_yesterday at 8:29 PM

You are arguing that everyone is as money driven as you are. Plenty of people who are more altruistic people take employment based on non money factors all the time.

Plenty of people will also earn their chunk of change as an l5 at Amazon or whatever, then transition to a lower paid job with more impact.

In fact, I know almost nobody who makes their employer decisions based on the pay factor alone.

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