Governments are the richest entities, which lets them hire the smartest people.
Beyond a certain dollar amount, it seems that smart people typically start caring about other stuff like what they’re working towards, how smart their co-workers are, etc. I’d expect that many/most top software engineers would prefer to work at Google doing good for the world making $150K than the US government doing bad for the world making $200K.
This is a good point, but I’m not sure how much of that is driven by “doing good for the world” and how much by “working at Google”; so governments might try to use private contractors. Also, it’s not entirely obvious that the average Google project improves the world more than the average government program (that requires top programmers).
Beyond a certain dollar amount, it seems that smart people typically start caring about other stuff like what they’re working towards, how smart their co-workers are, etc. I’d expect that many/most top software engineers would prefer to work at Google doing good for the world making $150K than the US government doing bad for the world making $200K.
This is a good point, but I’m not sure how much of that is driven by “doing good for the world” and how much by “working at Google”; so governments might try to use private contractors. Also, it’s not entirely obvious that the average Google project improves the world more than the average government program (that requires top programmers).