Hacker News Reader

Comment by giaour | Hacker News Reader

GS-15 salaries top out at $176,300 in the DC metro area. (Most (all?) USDSers get exactly that salary.) That is certainly more than I made as a new grad at a FAANG!

View on HN

You wouldn't get hired at GS-15 as a new hire. You might reach that after 20-30 years, and you'll need to get a Ph.D.

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.

USDS may only get away with this because their roles are term-limited excepted service, but pretty much everyone comes in as a GS-15-10, regardless of education.

Also the Executive Office of the President can get away with a lot of things offering special incentives and pay rates and what not, but they can't go above the GS 15 step 10 cap for non SES/ES employees because that is statutory.

You do not require a masters for a GS-12. Many entry-level engineering positions (hard or soft) have a target grade of GS-12, so if you do your job at all you'll be there in a few years. If you're even slightly serious you'd likely snag a GS-13 position within 5-10 years. If you're in a low-COL area, ~110k is reasonably competitive. Also keep in mind that you're working 40-hour weeks -- none of this exploitative 60+-hour week death march nonsense.

I was not a new grad, but I started as an L3 (which is what new grads are hired at) at Google, ten years ago, in WA.

My take-home in the first full year at work was $147,500. The second was $178,500.

Feel free to adjust for inflation.

I should have said starting TC, not salary. When I looked at it years ago, GS-15 salaries capped out at the average salary of a Google L3.

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.

It is for me too, but new grads at FAANGs today are getting 200k+ TC offers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com