The federal government pay cap in 2019 was $166,500....
These folks are going to go to this university that is better than Stanford and MIT (let's assume this mammoth task happens) and then eschew working for big tech paychecks in favor of working for the government?
That is not entirely true, but the devil is in the details. As an example, the Federal government employs thousands of physicians at the VA and, depending on specialty, they are paid significantly more than this. Last time I checked, they capped out at $400k:
Anyway, the point is that the federal government can and does pay significantly more than the GS pay scale to people who are federal employees and enjoy federal pensions. Whether or not the feds will choose to pay that to those who work in technology remains to be seen.
I remember a couple departments (including the NSA) complaining about the federal cap when it came to some IT projects, so I'm not sure it is a sure deal to get past that cap.
The VA is a whole other land of bureaucracy that plays by its own rules.
The NSA and handfuls of other departments have figured out how to effectively use contractors (who are paid handsomely above that federal pay cap).
That's separate from the discussion of what these perverse incentives (eg. pay more to mercenaries than to lifelong government servants) do to morale, capabilities, and institutional knowledge. It gets far worse when the president casually says that we should just fire emergency specialists and suggest we can hire them back on short notice in the middle of an emergency.
Oh, I very much agree and they were most certainly capped at that organization. It's a major problem because and I very much agree with your original comment that there are better options now working for big tech.
I guess my point above is that feds can fix this if they truly wanted to. There's precedent for them hiring people for far more money than the regular GS rate when they need to. It would be impossible to hire a surgeon for $160k, but they need them, so they pay more. At the moment, the government doesn't feel they need to pay more, so they don't. I hope someday that will change and think it's important to educate and lobby the federal government to help them understand this and change their policy.
This isn't a decision that can be made within the executive branch (I think). Congress would have to pass laws that enable "bureaucrats to get paid more."
These folks are going to go to this university that is better than Stanford and MIT (let's assume this mammoth task happens) and then eschew working for big tech paychecks in favor of working for the government?