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Comment by navait | Hacker News Reader

The IRS was recruiting for interns at my university recently, who could eventually become full time workers. However, I found that at best I could enter as a GS-9, and those were positions with 5 years of expirience. The best salary I could get from that was $53,000 in NYC. Even the lowest offers my friends were getting were $60k in a low-cost area.

If the government was able to fund it's IT operations at market rates, or pay outside the GS we'd all be much better off. I don't know about the federal level but my state relies on outside contractors to make web applcations, who mostly do a half-assed job and disappear when maintenance becomes a problem.

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The government doesn't do anything at market rates. They employ below market rates, and contract external companies above market rates. This is (unfortunately) by design.

Why do you say "by design"? Whose design?

A certain group of politicians want to replace all government functions with private contractors, and most of those are captured by various lobbying groups representing said contractors.

For what its worth, government jobs are also a bit more secure and generally provide pensions and other benefits.

Whether those benefits are worth a decreased salary depends on the individual.

Unfortunately, the pensions are largely gone the way of life 401(k)s, and with the furloughs that have been coming due to Congressional instability, those things are not really that true anymore.

The GS salaries aren't the complete picture once you factor in benefits and the pension. Traditionally, gov't salaries have been below market rate with the understanding that you and your family would be looked after. But with the current administration and legislation I wouldn't depend on that agreement remaining in place for longer.

If you're young and job hopping I wouldn't look at a gov't job just yet. 35 with a family of 4? I would seriously consider it.

It used to be that they hired at GS-7, but accelerated you to GS-12 in 2.5 years. GS-9 at 6-months and then 11, 12 after a year each.

Within 10 years you'll get a capped GS-14 spot (105k-136k) and by 15 years, you'll have 5 weeks vacation, 13 holidays, alternative work schedule, 13 days of forever accruing sick time (think family medical leave for having kids). Oh, and you can't be fired unless you do something really stupid -- so clock in and out 9-5.

Oh and you get COLA increases even if you don't get step or grade raises.

I only lasted a year, but I have friends that are still there. The fact that you can't get fired also applies to the colleagues you'll be working with...

> If the government was able to fund it's IT operations at market rates, or pay outside the GS we'd all be much better off.

I can't speak to market rates but the Federal government does indeed have alternate pay schedules that they can use (in theory) for IT expertise. E.g. scientists and researches have their own specific pay grades for their work, "hourly" workers have FWS pay instead of GS, etc.

You're right that the government workers are generally underpaid in my experience though. I struggle with the same thing here in DC, except that I'm trying to fill GS-5 positions to do work which involves knowing lots of policies, manual interpretation of individualized orders, and having to do all of that in a "customer service" environment.

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