11 February 1999
Date: 11 Feb 1999 04:40:23 -0000
From: proff@iq.org
To: aucrypto@suburbia.net
Subject: AUCRYPTO: A job interview with the NSA
An interview with the NSA
from TBTF for 1999-02-01
__________________________________________
February 1, 1999
A long-time reader sent the following account of a recent job
interview at the US National Security Agency.
_________________________________________________________________
One striking thing about the interviews was that everybody I talked
with knew very well what was on my resume and even in my
transcripts - I've never had that happen before. The process is all
very humanely organized and well explained in advance. One
communicates with the head of the Math Hiring Committee, a
mathematician who has taken on hiring responsibilities for a
one-year term. There are 24 mathematicians on the hiring committee
(there are 600 at NSA altogether); the head runs their monthly
meetings and takes care of all sorts of details, but doesn't vote
on the hiring decisions.
On the day of the interviews, the candidate first meets a math
escort, a mathematician who takes the candidate from one interview
to the next (in my case, the interviews were all over Fort Meade
and at other office space closer to the airport, i.e., ten miles
from Fort Meade) and has the mission of answering questions off the
record. My escort was someone who has a minority status in common
with me and talked about that first. The math escort does not talk
with the hiring committee.
The first interview is with the mathematician who is head of the
training program, which lasts three years. The program starts with
a quick review of algebra and then launches into crypto stuff, and
it's full-time for months at a time, two hours of lecture and six
hours of study every day, in a big classroom with forty other newly
hired mathematicians, some just out of college, some PhD's. A
reliable source informs me that many of them have ego problems. In
the program head's office, there are three collections of photos of
mathematician trainees, one for each class, with each mathematician
posed in front of a flag, like the pictures you see of military
recruits except they're wearing math clothes and haircuts.
The remaining interviews are with two or three other mathematicians
- two if the candidate has chosen to give a one-hour talk.
Interview subjects were what it's like working at NSA, whether I
know what according to my transcript I should know, my thesis, and
in one case, discussion of a problem. Everybody talked about what a
great place NSA is to work - smart people to talk with, important
things to do, liberal policies and perqs on every kind of workplace
issue.
After the interviews and once all the candidate's letters of
reference are in, the lot of it goes to everyone on the hiring
committee and the candidate is discussed and voted on at the
committee's next monthly meeting. Notification of the committee's
decision is given immediately by e-mail.
Comparison with the scene in the movie Good Will Hunting: I didn't
see a room anything like the one in which the movie interview took
place. The offices and conference rooms I saw had regular overhead
lights and were more like shabbily genteel (my vocabulary comes
from novels), and everyone I saw, managers included, is sharing an
office - a small room with one or two other people or a warren with
dozens. My meetings were all one-on-one, and the interviewers
exhibited none of the smarmy arrogance of the interviewers in the
movie: they were mathematicians, not slick guys in suits. What they
did that was like the movie was talk about the opportunity to do
big, important, unique kinds of math, and every one of them was
molto enthusiastic about it. I was strongly impressed with
everybody's team spirit and dedication to the mission. The same
goes for other people, like personnel department facilitators, that
I met.
Spook factor: Before they decided whether to interview me, I had to
submit fingerprints and fill out a long form talking about
everything I've done and everywhere I've lived for the past ten
years, and getting through that required me to think plenty about
whether I wanted to go through it all. However, the full-bore
security vetting, including a polygraph exam and the FBI going
around to talk to people one has known, does not take place until
after the math people have offered a job. I was told that they are
changing the sequence of events, so maybe that means that one won't
have to do fingerprints and long form before the interviews.
At the entrances of all the buildings there are armed guards, some
of them military, and turnstiles into which one must insert a badge
with a mag stripe on it. At every office I entered, my presence was
announced either verbally ("Red badge!") or by a twirling light,
like on a police car, that stayed on as long as I was in the
neighborhood. The only decorations in the hallways, which are a
maze with room numbers but no other information, are posters of
traitors looking sorry in their jail cells - there's a new series
featuring the guy who did the legwork for John Walker. (Not
Walker's son, the other guy.)
In the cafeteria at Fort Meade, which was more than decent, about
one of every six people was in uniform, all branches, many of them
enlisted personnel.
There have been several articles published over the last few years
in the journal of the American Mathematical Society along the lines
of what's it like to work at NSA, whether on sabbatical or
permanently, and the gist of them is that the mathematicians there
are regular just-like-us people. Now Chinese people are conspicuous
in many math departments, but not at NSA, so that's a big
difference from "just-like-us"; that said, I was a student in a
math department with plenty of good collegial feeling (as opposed
to a miserable, back-biting math department) and I got the same
good feeling about the people I met at NSA.
See also at the NSA Web site:
Employment Opportunities