I recently got offered a GS-11 (with promotion to GS-12 after a year) position and it's just not worth it. This wasn't for tech either; this was for a rather odd skill set.
Since that skill is odd but required by every single contractor that does classified work there's a whole lot of opportunity out there I wasn't aware of until recently. The lack of quality people doing it in the GS ranks now makes a whole lot more sense to me. Prior to me understanding that it was just an annoyance.
It looks like it may be a little above L3 salary today (moving in the right direction!), but still far below L3 TC, and a Google L3 job is not even remotely comparable to a GS-15 job.
IMO if the government had a separate band of GS pay for highly competitive job markets which paid 50-100k more, they would be a lot more successful.
Also, DC Metro is an extremely high CoL area (not SF levels but probably around Seattle levels). Normal GS-15 pay is $112k-146k and you'd trend towards the bottom of that in most areas.
So, $112k average at the peak of your career, with a required Ph.D. More realistically as a new hire you might be GS-12 (which only takes a master's) which is $68k-89k, so you make $68k in most areas. That's certainly not great as far as competitiveness with tech salaries, that's pretty close to the bottom of the market these days for a new hire working entirely remote, not even highly-desirable talent.
My take-home in the first full year at work was $147,500. The second was $178,500.
Feel free to adjust for inflation.
Well this sounds like a story.
Odd, but not that exciting. :)