I suppose the downside of all that secrecy is balanced with the upside of having lots of competent and smart colleagues.

In my experience that is worth even more than a very high salary for your quality of life.

(That 1958 article morkalork dug up and presented below, seems historically interesting at least. Thanks for making an effort to show it.)

You might lose your mind a bit if you're surrounded by them 247 though.

>Although the town is trim and neat, With cozy houses on every street, Though saying so is indiscreet,

>I hate it.

From: https://web.archive.org/web/20201126185123/https://archive.m...

You'd hope so, but...

https://www.science.org/content/article/near-disaster-federa...

National labs have alot of smart people, but alot of paper pushers too

Do you think they would be paid more?

Nope. Government salaries are public information, and are reported all over the usual sites (levels.fyi, glassdoor, indeed, etc) More importantly though, the government doesn't give out stock options with a vesting schedule. Meanwhile, techs who were at Tesla and got a small grant when it was at $20 are likely pretty happy with the stock being at $170. (Tech's that got grants at $400, less so.)