While the total compensation may be less then your total income now, I can tell you its 100% possible to live in the DC area on that salary, without a significant drop in quality of life. That includes if you have a family. The Metro lines go out into the Virginia and Maryland suburbs and you can find nice places to live with some of the nations top school districts.
Additionally while you will take a temporary hit to income, you will be working on projects that have real impact on the lives of every american in the country. You will be empowered to make changes and do what is right at the highest level of the government. You will be heartbroken at the amount of need, and the amount of pain that is caused by things you can fix. You will be exposed to all the failures of the government, and you will be right at the center of some of its greatest successes. At the end of your tour of duty you will be sad that there wasn't more you could do, but you will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have served and to have made the country better. You will probably leave not even looking for the most money at your next job, but just trying to figure out how you can continue to have purpose anywhere near the same level you just experienced.
Everytime the job posting comes up I pop up Zillow and try to do the math, but quite literally a comparable house to mine is $700k-$800k where mine is only $300k-$400k in TX near Dallas. I don't believe I would be able to support and provide anyway near the same quality of life for my family, especially without jeopardizing future savings I am currently able to make now.
You say after the tour of duty like you aren't able to stay employed, is this true?
If I was single and had no dependents, I think I would have already applied, because money wouldn't matter nearly as much.
I feel it is extremely unfortunate USDS doesn't offer remote work because they could pull talent across the nation given the lower pay and higher CoL.
I know this would be a much more rewarding position than working for another mortgage company or consultancy..
The DC area is pretty suburbanized. It's not uncommon for people who work in DC to have hour-long commutes - when I lived there, I met people who commuted to DC from as far out as Frederick and Mt Airy - but the MARC is (in my experience) reliable and some of the suburbs aren't bad. Zillow has $300k-$400k houses in Germantown.
So you can't stay employed with the USDS after your tour of duty, after a maximum of four years you have to leave ( and that is a good thing ). However if you are able to be hired by the USDS you won't have a hard time finding a job in the DC area after your tour of duty is over. The tech scene there is very strong and they pay well even for the high cost of living. When I had to factor in my dependents the thing that put me over the top is I thought it would be better to show them by example the kind of life I wanted them to live, rather then just provide them money.
For two reasons, first the work wears on you. It can lead to being cynical and it can be flat out unhealthy to continue to work at that level of government for a long period of time. The stress and pressure can be overwhelming. Secondly its good to get back out into the commercial field and have first hand experience with the state of the art. It means when you are talking to people about what it comes from a deep knowledge of what has been done and what was successful. Taking a break every half decade to refresh those skills is valuable.
Also that time limit really lights a fire under you to get stuff done. The people who are trying to use government services don't have years to wait for things to get better, their lives depend on things getting better today.
Not OP but from my experience with government workers in the UK, who routinely work the same job from leaving school until retirement, their time spent there seems to be inversely proportional to the quality and quantity of their work. If I need something done right I'll try and find some starry-eyed graduate or recent ex private-sector worker to ask. I suppose public work has a habit of being both fulfilling and frustrating, and when that frustration>fulfilment, productivity drops.
I hate to crush this romanticism in the crib, but this comment is overemphasizing the impact a lone engineer working on a government project will have, which will just disillusion and frustrate applicants once they start the job.
The parent's concerns about quality of life with pay topping out at 160k is real and shouldn't be waved away with "it's worth it". Doubly so if you have kids. Take a look at this recent living wage page: http://livingwage.mit.edu/. Can you make it work? Sure. But going into this with eyes wide open is better than looking at this with rose-tinted glasses.
Its impossible for me to overemphasize the impact the USDS can have, the question is never "will somoene let us do this" its always do we have the resources to do what needs to be done. What will crush you is the burden of service, and knowing the only thing limiting the impact you have is the amount of work you can physically put into it.
In terms of pay, I have kids and was a single income during my tour of duty. Its a better life then most Americans will live, so while your quality of life will not be as high as it may be on a private sector job, you won't be lacking anything you need.
> this comment is overemphasizing the impact a lone engineer working on a government project will have, which will just disillusion and frustrate applicants once they start the job.
Very reasonable assumption! However, that's not the USDS model. The work can certainly be frustrating but people aren't dropped in alone. We maximize the impact of our work.
Additionally while you will take a temporary hit to income, you will be working on projects that have real impact on the lives of every american in the country. You will be empowered to make changes and do what is right at the highest level of the government. You will be heartbroken at the amount of need, and the amount of pain that is caused by things you can fix. You will be exposed to all the failures of the government, and you will be right at the center of some of its greatest successes. At the end of your tour of duty you will be sad that there wasn't more you could do, but you will be forever grateful for the opportunity to have served and to have made the country better. You will probably leave not even looking for the most money at your next job, but just trying to figure out how you can continue to have purpose anywhere near the same level you just experienced.
If you are on the fence do it.