Federal civil service is all on the same scale, and it tops out below what new grad engineers typically make at defense contractors, to say nothing of FAANG.
There are (legitimate) ways to get paid more in government service. Years ago, I sold a Ferrari to a guy who worked on nuclear weapons at Los Alamos. His boss drove a Lamborghini.
I've never understood how this fit in with the whole GS scale thing, but the reasoning was straightforward: if we don't pay them well, somebody else might.
The employees of the DOE labs aren't civil servants on the GS scale. They're paid more like defense contractors. The base salaries at a DOE lab can be comparable to FAANG base salaries if you ignore RSU part of the compensation you also get at a FAANG (which can be a significant portion of the overall salary).
Can you explain? I thought they were compressed pay “bands” still limited ton the GS pay scale? E.g., DB pay band still tops out at the equivalent of GS15
the federal government is not the employer of anyone I've ever met from a Department of Energy Lab. LBNL you work for the University of California. LLNL and LANL used to be the same, but UC lost the contract to run LLNL and LANL in 2006. Bectel and UC formed a partnership that still has LLNL but got fired from LANL.
National Labs (and sites, e.g. Y-12) are either DOE or NNSA facilities. The government uses a government owned, contractor operated M&O (management and operations) contract to run the labs. M&O contractors are usually public/private consortiums or one of a few private contractors (see:Bechtel). M&O contractors are responsible for staff and operations, and are paid a fee based on a percentage (based o performance) of business the lab did over that FY. National Lab (and site) employees are employees of the M&O contractor, not the federal government.
Ah, ok I don’t think agencies like national labs are true “civil servant” employers but quasi civil servants and essentially contractors. I was referring to DoD labs
True, but the CoL translates quite a bit. For example, I was offered a position that looked not-so-great on paper but once you looked at cost-of-living was competitive (comparable to $400-$500k/yr in SV) plus had other things I valued like little commute etc.
It sounds like you are using a CoL in ratios, not in terms of real dollar adjustments (salary minus costs). If you buy things online, or save to move to another area, cost of living adjustments as a ratio don’t make as much sense. Unless the area is extremely cheap, you have lots more costs than me for things like childcare and housing, and you were paid above the GS payscale, that is. Back of the envelope calculations for me seem to show you can comfortably save over 200k, or more than an entire GS salary at 500k in the Bay Area a year in real dollar terms. I don’t know how to weight for pension value or stability but that’s a lot.
That being said, it’s hard to put a number on an area and commute you like.
The numbers I used were direct costs across a number of categories. Much of the discrepancy is housing costs. Others like transportation and healthcare factor in, but are not nearly as big. Pension is a bit more difficult to compare because defined benefit pensions are hard to compare to direct stock or 401k due to volatility of the latter, but a rough rule of thumb is they are worth roughly 8%-10% of equivalent annual salary. They also depend widely on when you join the govt.
But your total projected CoL was really over 300k in the Bay Area though? You can spend 120k on a mortgage, 80k on taxes, 20k on food, 10k on commuting, 30k on miscellaneous additional costs and 40k on childcare and still have 200k left over on a 500k salary.
It’s nearly $100k more a year just for a median home mortgage, so I don’t think it was ludicrous. Local and state income taxes are essentially triple as well. I don’t think $80k will cover property, Federal, State, and local taxes at that level. Those taxes exacerbate the pre-tax income necessary to cover that median mortgage.
Again, I’m sure I could get by just fine on under $300k in SV. But it’s still not comparable in terms of being as comfortable. For example, if I really wanted to pay off that median home in five years it’s possible elsewhere; I don’t think that’s a reasonable option in SV.
