[Novalug] salary -> cost of living was Re: NSA Job -- How many of you have clearances?

Beartooth beartooth@Beartooth.Info
Tue Sep 15 12:15:46 EDT 2009


On Tue, 15 Sep 2009, ethan@757.org wrote:

> A: Degrees don't mean shit. If the employer is hell bent on one, then you
> will probably end up working next to people who bought pretty degrees but
> suck. Sure some might be motivated, but question the employers goals in
> degree hunting. Probably trying to protect their own investment in a
> degree over finding qualified people.

 	Maybe. More probably, most of the winnowing of job 
applications has to be done by clericals who don't know squat 
about the actual work. So the people who do (who don't have time 
to do the winnowing) give the clericals checklists.


> E: Someday I guess working for the gov't will be the only way 
> to get a retirement, a decent wage and health care. So perhaps 
> it's good to stay clean so you're eligable for a clearance.

 	Frederick "the Great" got his byname by inventing modern 
bureaucracy. Inheriting a small poor country on the edge of 
nowhere (the Mark Brandenburg), he couldn't afford munificent 
salaries; instead, he offered low ones with lifetime security -- 
something no one wanting to bribe his people could top. Compare 
things like tax-farming under Louis XIV of France.

 	Once he had the bureaucracy (and only then), he was able 
to create what became the Prussian Army ...

 	To this day, even where you are, that is the gummint 
deal. Only now it is amplified by things like health insurance. 
No group in the country can touch gummint-workers for size, and 
the people who dicker with the insurers are full-time insurance 
experts who do nothing else.

 	That deal appeals to kinds of people. The less numerous 
comprises the really dedicated, doing work that is what they want 
to spend their lives on, without the distraction of worrying 
about sickness, their old age, or the like. There are such 
people.

 	Of the more numerous kind, the dull a/o timid, the less 
said the better.

 	The trick is to find one of the pockets of dedicated 
ones, and work there.

> Sometimes I think it'd be better to somehow save up enough 
> money to buy property and stuff, then somehow live off gov't 
> handouts, while making money under the table. Screw working. 
> Waste your life away making execs rich.

 	Lots of luck.

-- 
Beartooth Staffwright, Sclerotic Squirreler Studying Linux
On the Internet, you can never tell who is a dog --
supposing you care -- but you can tell who has a mind.




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