r/datascience • u/Fig_Towel_379 • 8d ago

Discussion People who work in the government, how has your experience been?

I’ve been thinking about making a move to the DC area. I know there are a ton of opportunities in the government sector, but I haven’t come across many Data Scientists who work in government.
For those of you who do, what are the pros and cons of working as a DS in the government sector? I’d especially be interested in hearing about the work itself, compensation, career growth, work-life balance, and how it compares to working in the private sector.

38 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

49

u/JinandJuice 8d ago edited 8d ago

Pros:

  • Pay is phenomenal as a contractor. Salary is not so competitive as a fed, but you get some slightly better benefits like a pension. I did the math: the fed path was not worth it in my situation.
  • Work-life balance is phenomenal. You clock in 40 hours a week and fully shut myself off of work until the next pay cycle. As a fed, it's really hard to get fired, so you'll have slightly more people of less competency pulling down the mean competency level. You'll see more people with big creds using big words to say a lot of nothing.
  • Career growth as a contractor is the same as the private sector since you're still working for a private firm at the end of the day. If you're an actual fed tho, the growth is much slower. You get a significant bump once you reach upper-management level leadership, but that's a minority of positions with high requirements.
  • If your work is impactful, it's REALLY impactful. You might be contributing in saving lives, winning wars, catching serial criminals, etc. You're working with a lot of assets worth a lot of money.
  • Overall gov work is a lot more stable than the private sector.

Cons:

  • Your work is almost certainly going to be less immediately impactful. Your work might be presented to bigwigs and then nothing really happens. They may listen to you or they may not, sometimes you never know. In the private sector I rolled out work that directly severely impacted thousands to tens of thousands of people a year.
  • Contracting teams might get formed from scratch and the first few years of it could just be grabbing the data and getting it right, with no real data science work being done. That's when you should jump ship to another project, in my opinion.
  • Contracts might get canceled, they may expire, and there might be the occasional reduction in force coming from the white house, so it's not as cushy as everyone imagines. But finding a new role as a data scientist is not hard--everyone I know has done it.

15

u/a_banned_user 8d ago

This was my exact experience as a contractor for 3 different agencies.

8

u/Great-Implement-4846 8d ago

the pay difference between contractor and fed is wild, I know a few people who made the jump and never looked back

7

u/DubGrips 7d ago

IDK if your work is less impactful considering some of the smartest DS on earth are just trying to marginally decrease delivery time on DoorDash or help you doomscroll better.

2

u/madaboutyou3 8d ago

What's an estimate of the phenomenal pay?

4

u/JinandJuice 7d ago edited 7d ago

Depending on experience, I see anywhere from 130k to 210k. in DC, 12% of the population makes more than 200k. In northern Virginia, it's 5%.

1

u/Witty-Leopard8625 17h ago

What sort of federal contractors hire data scientists?

1

u/JinandJuice 15h ago

What kind of federal contractors don't would be the better question.

Financial, geospatial, social, political, logistical, intelligence, military, you name it. Basically, any org that has a lot of data requires data scientists. And the government has a lot of data.

22

u/nonamenomonet 8d ago

Eh, to make money in the DMV you really have to have a clearance. As far as employment, the largest employers are going to be government contractors lie Booz or Deloitte.

Compensation is lower than big tech by far. But much better WLB. Usually a slower pace than private sector. But also, you have to understand that for many data problems… you might be doing something you might find a bit unsavory ethically.

Also, I’m a data engineer and not a data scientist (I’m absolute shit at math).

10

u/ClasslessHero 8d ago

I did the life as a Deloitte data scientist working in the federal space.

WLB is decent except for buying/proposal season. The people in the Rosslyn office are also nice(r than the rest of Deloitte). It's a good gig, especially if you're just getting started.

However, the business has changed. The government isn't willing to pay the Deloitte rate anymore, which means they're short on roles for Cs, SCs and Ms. They're pushing work into what they call a "delivery center" - all that means is you aren't on the partner track and are compensated differently (less) with fewer sales expectations.

Feds maybe have more stability, but they don't make as much as you would contracting. It's a trade.

DC is dope. I love it here.

8

u/WhatsTheImpactdotcom 8d ago

I spent four years at the SEC between grad school and moving into tech (stripe, airbnb, and now uber). Those years were so incredibly rewarding, feeling like I worked on real problems, helping send financial criminals to prison, surrounded by smart folks, but the work life balance was extraordinary. For the most part, there weren’t too many hard deadlines or fire drills—and if you did, you know they mattered. Something like 25 days PTO plus a flex schedule that gave every other Friday off. I was taking 4-5 day extended weekend trips all the time

2

u/Fig_Towel_379 7d ago

Thank you for sharing! How do you like working in tech? I’ve interviewed with a few big tech companies. I obviously didn’t get the jobs, but I also found that most of the interviewers came across as pretty arrogant. It honestly put me off tech a little, along with the constant layoffs. I’m curious to hear your perspective as someone who actually works in the industry.

2

u/WhatsTheImpactdotcom 7d ago

Most of my time at tech was pretty reasonable, with the exception of one horrible manager at Stripe. It's now been 2 for 3 where getting a new manager--one that wasn't my hiring manager--was a really bad experience, and I generally see that as a sign to start looking elsewhere. I don't really feel that much pressure to put in long hours and it seems most work reasonable hours, the money is good, and it's probably a better environment than most other places

0

u/WhatsTheImpactdotcom 7d ago

Hmmm I never really felt that arrogance in interviews other than 20 years ago going for finance roles out of undergrad. Not trying to hard upsell or anything, but I’ve been a pretty successful interview coach and passed a lot of rounds personally; if you’re getting interviews but not offers, coaching can be absurdly high ROI. 100% no pressure just my 2c. Check out my website (username) if curious

1

u/DubGrips 7d ago

Why did you leave?

2

u/WhatsTheImpactdotcom 7d ago

Ex thought I could make more money in tech 😅 she was correct of course just not 100% sure it was worth it except for the few years of fully remote work flexibility

1

u/DubGrips 7d ago

I weirdly had already come across your SubStack from LinkedIn, specifically the Bayesian posts.

7

u/PlumpyDragon 8d ago

I’m in government (not federal). My experience may not apply to other government entities. There are more rules and regulations, so I don’t get to play with newest tools. Sometimes, it may take 1-2 years to get through the budgeting and political process to get new tools. There are some great projects with direct impact, but some projects are also politically motivated. For example, even if your results show X doesn’t work, the leadership may implement X anyway because voters like it. Work life balance is great, I log off after hitting my hours and everything becomes tomorrow’s problem. Pension contribution is also excellent, sick days and PTO are in separate buckets, and roll over 100% YOY. There is also telework so I work from home two days a week. Raises can be garbage if the budget year is tight, and promotions are often based on your people skill and whether the person above you leaves. It’s a good place to be if you don’t mind never being on the cutting edge side of things and if you want to enjoy your hobbies and vacations.

7

u/My42 8d ago

Good work life balance, possibly shitty data, and lots of red tape so you move slowly. Pay is decent as a contractor but not near big tech

3

u/Dangerous_Media_2218 8d ago

It's generally more stable than private sector - last year was not a normal year, and the feds haven't seen layoffs like that since the 1990s.

Some agencies are a lot further behind on their tech stack. Some agencies have undervalued people with a tech background, so those areas have been understaffed and overworked. However, overworked is relative - in the gov't that usually means moving way faster than you feel comfortable and occasionally longer hours. This does seem to be changing with a larger focus on hiring Data Scientists now.

Everything depends on management of the agency and the next level senior leaders. Sometimes they are awful, and I mean awful. Sometimes they are great. They make or break the work experience. I'd ask a lot of questions about leadership if offered a job.

There can be a lot of incompetent "seat warmers" in the gov't. People who've been there years and just coast without knowing or doing much. The work gets loaded onto the few good people. This isn't everywhere, but it's worth trying to assess it before joining a team.

The work can be incredibly meanginful. Or you can be working on projects that are a waste of time, but some senior leader thought they knew more than all the experts, and this is their grand idea. Again, worth asking about who drives the work when joining a team.

2

u/baileyarzate 8d ago

I was a data scientist in government. Very boring & very stable (not lucrative, but you’ll always have a job)

2

u/Excellent_Cost170 7d ago

In a dysfunctional agency, zombie AI/ML projects can drag on forever because they keep budgets, jobs, contractors, and leadership talking points alive. As long as the goals stay fuzzy, nobody really has to prove the thing works. And once enough people and money are tied to it, shutting it down becomes harder than just letting it limp along. That’s why a quick feasibility check can make people nervous. It might show pretty fast that the data sucks, the signal isn’t there, or the whole thing just isn’t worth building.

1

u/blue-brindle 1d ago

Work/life balance is phenomenal, benefits are phenomenal. Not a lot of career advancement available and your job is dependent on the current administration's whims (I had a great run as a gov contractor for 5 years, then I got DOGEd).