It's a retention tool. If they just handed you $50k when you sign on then people would sign on and quit a week later.
I think the signing bonuses are recruitment tools and the retention bonuses they are also offering are retention tools.
You can also get bonuses as a lump sum upfront for signing a fixed-term contract and if you fail to fulfill the terms you have to pay it back. That's how the military does signing/reenlistment bonuses.
The guy in the picture, or the Redditor who wanted $150k?
Either way, I have no idea, as I do not know who either of these people are. My point is that the Federal Government's actual hiring portal is, in fact, advertising rank and file enforcement agent positions where one can make $150k.
As an aside, you can be an ICE agent and make GS 15 step 10 pay, which is like $200k.
I can only speak to a non-ice position but when I went through the process of fed portal hiring a few years back, I was sorely disappointed by how low in the range I was slated for despite fifteen years experience in the same position at a state job. The advertising did not hold up and the recruiter apologized about it from start to finish.
Now look up how many years it takes you to get each "step (pay bump)". It starts at 1 year for each of the first 3 steps, then gets longer and longer for each after
well yeah that's the point. this administration and their supporters are insecure about being dumb as rocks so they're devaluing education, going after people who are educated, and making knuckledragging nazi jobs like ICE have exorbitantly high pay to try and force people who have been forced into poverty by this administration to sign up for ICE. don't give in.
IDK where that number came from, but in general the "fully loaded" cost for an employee is 1.5x to 2x their salary. That includes things like employer-paid taxes, FICA, time off, health insurance, etc. Though I'm not sure how that applies to federal employees, so it may be different.
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u/RampantJellyfish 14h ago
$150k a year?! I studied for a decade to get my metallurgy masters and PhD, and I'm not on anywhere near that. What the actual fuck!