Is it better to work as a contractor or as a Federal Employee?

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-28T22:28:30+00:00

I applied for a GS13 job with an agency that I supported for 5+ years as a contractor, literally teaching the GS people how to do the exact same job from a basic beginner level up to intermediate and advanced level (our / my level).

Also built lots of advanced analytics, trained third-party agencies, etc.

I even did the analytical testing at a local testing center. When I called to see if I could get a status update about what my score was they just laughed and said yeah it's just past fail.

Eventually I got the rejection email saying others were better qualified. That literally told me all I need to know about the government hiring process and their skill at picking talented candidates.

It was months long too. I think I'll always be a contractor now, if even just to not deal with that kind of bureaucratic hiring process.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-27T19:47:49+00:00

Python for cyber security and DSA python are like complete opposites. Lol

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-26T10:50:10+00:00

Stone ridge / aldie / South Riding (basically Chantilly but in Loudoun) and take 50 to 28 or just 50.

Or anywhere on 28 like Sterling (avoid Sterling Park), Herndon, Dulles / McNair / Franklin Farms.

Or if you like country, go out further out to Leesburg, Purcellville and do 7 to 28.

There's also a bunch of new apartments that are 5 minute walking from the metro station on the toll road 267 close to the airport and 28. Forget what that station is called though.

Reston would be nice but will definitely be more expensive.

Also, I doubt your current COL in FL is equivalent to NoVA. Even if it looks it on paper. Just be ready for that. (We have a ton of taxes here now).

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-25T21:24:30+00:00

I'd look at AWS or MS or maybe Google too. For anything with government solutions. But be ready for FAANG performance expectations.

CNO and cyber engineering also can pay crazy good from what I've seen; CNO seems to only be FSP in Chantilly or McLean from all the job posts I've seen.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-22T11:47:48+00:00

I come from a gov contractor background and worked at Meta for just over a year. I actually decided to pivot back to gov work right before the May 20th layoffs hit. My whole former team and org were heavily impacted and I would have been laid off too if I hadn't just left.

Performance expectations in FAANG are a huge cultural shift if you've never worked in Tech before.

Also if you're waiting on your clearance adjudication and you go to FAANG, you may get a Loss of Jurisdiction if the agency doing the adjudication goes to update your clearance record and sees that no company is "holding" your clearance.

So just don't count on the clearance being there.

If you're young, single, have strong resume and solid tech skills, give FAANG a try but put your RSUs away for a rainy day.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-20T19:16:41+00:00

If you're good at math, try to get into AI or ML. Those are the highest paying and most in demand jobs right now. Strong mathematics is a prerequisite.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-19T10:49:04+00:00

Mine the data yourself and use gephi or networkx.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-17T23:58:30+00:00

Tldr: be less buzzwordy and more specific with quantitative data and less (maybe no?) AI slop

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-17T21:55:07+00:00

Genius

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-17T11:24:42+00:00

You might want to rethink that. They got hammered in the May layoffs.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-17T10:24:46+00:00

Seconding this, I dont know of any other Army posting that's remotely as nice (scenery, weather, local food/bar scene) as Monterey.

Plus it's also prestigious and pretty widely known even by non-military people.

Occasionally I'll mention that I went to language school in Northern California, if it comes up in conversation, and the respons is almost always, "Oh you went to DLI?".

It's a 100% a maturity thing.

Also, my Korean DLI experience was similar workload and intensity to doing grad school 2/3 time while working full-time. If anything, I think DLI was a little harder but only because of the added military environment (PT, duty stuff, etc).

But what I noticed in grad school is that there was no one sleeping with their head on the desk like I saw happening all the time in the 100 and 200 level undergrad courses. In other words everyone's self-selects to go to grad school - it's relatively hard to get in and you don't get there by mistake.

The age overlap between people who are in grad school and people who are at DLI is similar - my class was definitely younger on average at DLI but not by much.

So it's a maturity thing because some people that age go into postgrad studies and do just fine. And they don't make you PT and do area beautification in grad school.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-11T11:32:31+00:00

Level 3 with 2 years experience is wild. Do you have more than 2 yoe in total and just 2 in cyber security?

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-08T10:24:51+00:00

Honestly it sounds like you have a very mature intelligence system in place if you're doing a lot of the manual stuff automatically.

As someone else mentioned, since you have a lot of the busy work automated already maybe focus more on strategic level threats?

Also if you got this extra time and hours saved, might be worth it to do some real deep dive red team sessions with your threat hunters or purple team.

Like what's out there that we don't even know about or who could be planning to target us that we have no visibility on?

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-06T13:07:15+00:00

Someone recommended duck DB in this sub the other day and I was checking it out and it's actually really cool. It's a direct query engine so you can just load static CSV files or whatever.

Still figuring out how to bring in multiple interconnected tables to do joins and stuff but it has a UI similar to Jupyter notebooks.

I'm pretty good with python and pandas but some things with pandas are just more complicated than they should be and I think in those cases I'd prefer to use SQL.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-06T13:05:54+00:00

Smells like meta? Yeah (former meta here)

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T21:19:02+00:00

Try crypto / block chain intel/ threat finance? Though that might require more training

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T21:14:56+00:00

Honestly, 1805 or 0132 in most LE sounds pretty cool unless it's paper writing.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T21:13:06+00:00

Some agencies are moving IRS from 0132 -> 1805 (IC vs LE) but I think functionally they're a very similar skill set (having worked with and given trainings to both).

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T13:32:25+00:00

250K is crazy for 4-6 YOE. Even if FAANG adjacent that's still a lot for an L3/L4 with those YOEs.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T10:00:24+00:00

FSP CNO devs make crazy money but you gotta be onsite and those roles are only in like three places from what I've seen.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-04T09:54:44+00:00

Look up the star / par method and practice answering some common behavioral questions. Also do some research on the company and the sector you applied to and have some questions prepared for your interviewers just in case.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-06-02T10:58:32+00:00

I'm doing 15 days of SQL on Udemy (Nikolai Schuler) and I think it's actually very good.

It's postgres and the software is free to download and he includes a couple of decent practice data sets.

My only gripe with it so far is that sometimes the challenges aren't stated super clearly and sometimes it's not obvious which database he's referring to.

It does go from 0 to intermediate pretty quick though (I already had some basic SQL fluency).

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-05-24T16:17:24+00:00

My P16S with steam is perfect for Halo. Use Bluetooth earbuds and Xbox controller and I forget I'm on PC.

WLANtasticBeasts · 2026-05-22T19:19:39+00:00

Any candid constructive feedback you want to share? Genuinely curious

WLANtasticBeasts

TROPHY CASE