Monday, January 17, 2011

Why is Elbonia working on black phosphorus?


I made a comment the other day about the difficulty in understanding US government job postings, especially in the defense area. I talked with a knowledgeable person; here is part of our conversation:


CJ: I understand what the Defense Intelligence Agency does (I think) -- why do they need scientists? What is the chance that a Ph.D. chemist might get one of these positions?

Having some familiarity with DIA, I’m going to assume that one of the 15 slots in this posting is to cover the chemical “threat”.  That said, I’ll make the educated guess that a Ph.D. chemist coming right out of a post-doc position would have a 1 in 10 chance of being selected relative to a BS or MS person. Why is this?  DIA is a military intelligence organization and as such, it likes…no, demands, that individuals subsume their opinions for the good of the team. While DIA would hire a PhD-level senior scientist from within the DOD or Intelligence community for a senior-level slot, my educated sense is that this isn’t what DIA is after.

DIA and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies need scientists to assist in interpretation of intelligence reporting, e.g.,  Why is Elbonia working on black phosphorus?  What are the strategic goals of Narnia’s Defense Science and Technology Agency?  What is the probability that Atlantis’ program to develop non-RE alternatives to Rare Earths (RE) will be successful? Based on kilo-lab production capabilities reported two year ago, what is this likelihood that Lilliputia will develop a world-scale production process for its revolutionary new explosive, selenous boomboom?


CJ: If you search under "chemist" on USAJOBS.gov, you'll get a lot of posting for "chemist (acquisition)" for the Department of the Navy. What are these postings about?

The answer is in one of those Navy postings: "The Duncan Hunter National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) FY 2009 provides that the Secretary of Defense can designate acquisition positions within the Department of Defense as shortage positions and recruit and appoint highly qualified persons to those positions."

What this means is the following:  The US Government is increasingly having difficulty in finding and retaining experienced personnel to manage acquisitions. Government acquisition regulations and processes are insanely complex and the pay that formal acquisition people get isn’t all that great. The huge number of experienced acquisition people retiring hasn’t been matched by new hires…therefore…what Duncan Hunter says is that the Department of Defense (maybe other agencies too) can hire you as a scientist and assign you to do acquisition grunt work. The downside is that PhD training in chemistry isn’t going to be remotely relevant to whatever it is that you’re responsible for with your acquisition duties; the upside is that if you’re in need of a job, acquisition is a place that you can look forward to immense job security.


CJ here again. An interesting bit of information, especially for those of us who might be contemplating working for the federal government. Best wishes to all the federal job seekers and many thanks to our knowledgeable insider.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the info CJ! If you know anybody in the CIA or FBI who can give tips on getting in there that would be great too.

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  2. Over the past year on CareerBuilder.com, the DIA has been continuously running a job announcement for an intelligence officer position (or possibly positions) in the Wash. DC metro area. They never stop running the announcement. It comes up when you do a search on 'chemist', though the actual announcement covers many disciplines.
    I've assumed that they are collecting resumes, as opposed to actually having open positions for chemists that they are trying to fill.
    The announcement says the minimum educational requirement is a BS, though it also states that advanced degrees are acceptable. Do the hiring managers at the DIA think that a Ph.D. would not want to do an intelligence job? That seems rather short-sighted, particularly since so many chemists have Ph.D.'s.

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  3. As a Ph.D. synthetic organic chemist who came out of the manufacturing side of the pharmaceutical industry (15 years) and who has spent the ensiung 25 years working under contract to the US Government's intelligence and law enforcement agencies, rest assured such agencies don't collect resumes. Since the Church Committee's days, there are fairly strict provisions against building such collections of personal information on US citizens and with few egregious exceptions, federal employees and agencies take this seriously.

    Part of the issue WRT hiring Ph.D. scientists are a Ph.D.'s expectations, both in terms of salaries and the level of expertise needed to do the job. Much of intelligence analysis is pretty boring (I can't emphasize this point too much) and managers will frequently shuffle analysts from one area of analysis to another. You might be disappointed to work the Elbonian black phosphorus problem for 3 years and then be assigned to handle money laundering in Narnia. BS people tend to accept such reassignments more graciously than Ph.D. chemists. DIA intelligence products largely are written for soldiers and DOD civilians, not other Ph.D. scientists. Ditto for CIA, except their products are written largely for policy makers, again, not other Ph.D. scientists.

    If you're truly interested in CIA or FBI, check out their web sites, After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, both agencies were flooded with applications and thousands of people have been hired. There's a way into these organizations; you've got to get creative in your search.

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20