Jump ship or stay?

Cyberscum

Got an awesome opportunity working with some great people in the security side of the house. Pay is about 20k more than I'm at now (85k).

...catch is that its in the civilian sector...

I have always been a federal employee (10 years) so I would be stepping into uncharted territory. The economy is what scares me. The company is very stable, but those might be my famous last words.

I like what I do, although its boring at times. This would be doing some very cool stuff though.

Should I stay a gov employee or jump ship? What would you do?

kiki162

JUMP NOW! I was in your shoes a little over a year ago. Sounds like your in need of some excitement in your life. Think of it like this, you can get into that new job, excel and make yourself marketable, so that you don't have to worry about if you have enough skills to find a new job in the future.

As long as your keep your head above water at the new job, you don't have anything to worry about EVEN something were to happen down the road. Another thing to thing about... do you like the $500 a year boost in your salary, or double or triple that?

joelsfood

Jump. Nothing in life is certain, but the private sector isn't inherently that much more unstable than public sector. Reminded of that every time one of our contracts was hurt by sequestration (including people we worked with on the federal side of whatever department contract was for)

MeanDrunkR2D2

As one who worked for a Gov contractor that was laid off due to the loss of a position in said contract, I'd jump. Huge pay bump and likely be much more exciting than boring lazy Gov work. It's amazing how fast people can work when they could get fired for being lazy.

gespenstern

I would jump easily. I have no idea how public sector folks make their ends meet with their salaries.

However, if you have a security clearance it would be wise to find a private sector job that allows maintaining it. Security clearance is something that prevents certain jobs from getting outsourced.

Also, private sector is more satisfactory at least for me as I don't enjoy how more than often public sector wastes money and resources and does some insane things for political reasons or because there's just nobody there to care about getting things right.

zxbane

I agree with the others above and I am a civil service employee. If you keep maintaining your security related skills, add additional skills, certifications and experience and you are able to maintain your clearance you should have absolutely no problem finding other positions if this one doesn't work out.

Cyberscum

Great points and thanks for the feedback.

One thing I am a little concerned about is the retirement. I am eligible for retirement based in my 10 years federal, but I would solely have to rely on a 401k type program from this point on.

The company that want me will pay for a few sans certs (3) including GSEC or GIAC and and one of my choice (possibly GWAPT or GPEN)....BUT I would owe them 1.5 years after that.

My current job is going to transition to AWS so they are looking at getting all of the admins AWS certs ((prob architect and dev ops (which I would love as well)).

Realistically I want to go with the job that would most be marketable in the future, but they seem to be relatively close.

The civilian job pays well but the fed job has a retirement and extremely low stress.

Cyberscum

Just got off the phone with them. Certs or a bonus, small company, can pick from net admin, sys admin or security. Pretty cool work with some classified and a ton of opportunity to gain knowledge in different sections. Seems very unlike what I am use too. Hmmmm

Codyy

Jump! I'm also civil service on the security side and disliking it more every day. Paid based on how long you've sat in a seat rather than your performance, full of incompetent people that come in and do absolutely nothing knowing it's practically impossible to get fired, not challenging/rewarding, no training opportunities, no budget to work with.

Like you though, the public sector is all I know and it's difficult to just give up the stability, possible retirement and clearance. Make the jump and come back in a couple of months with an awesome success story so I can follow suit.