Government site. There doesn't have to be a reason.

I hope they are paying you very well.

Government site. They aren't paying James well.

Added: if you think I'm joking or being unfair, just look at the compensation tables for just about any government outfit. They top out around a salary that is considered average for software folks in some places.

He didn't say he was government. Contractors can make out like bandits still ;)

I know that that is typical, but there are exceptions, and if you work for the right agency you can be paid well, so I don't want to make any assumptions.

If he's not paid well then I hope he realizes that by merely being aware of HN and GitHub puts him in the top 10% of developers and he can do a lot better than working at a place that restricts his ability to educate himself.

Oh, I'm a contractor and I'm paid decently, but the working conditions are terrible. I've been trying to find a job outside of defense/govt work for a long time, but either the pay isn't as good (the one or two times I managed to land an offer) or I'm not a "cultural fit." Not having a network outside of the govt bubble makes it hard.

Hi there, James. I'm a software engineer at Google. I've worked with many former government and defense contractors here whom I would consider some of the best engineers. Please send me your resume (or anyone else with a similar situation!); my email is in my profile. We have offices all over the US (but not Florida) so the bay area wouldn't be a requirement.

Well, I finally got tired of this place and went and got an offer from a local aerospace company, I suppose I ought to see how that goes :)

Man, I grew up in Brevard, and I wish I could work there, but unfortunately all the software jobs are for defense contractors. You'll probably have to work remote if you want to get out of the defense bubble.

He said government site, not government employee. Contractors are sometimes paid very well.

in a lot of places (if you are not a developer) everything non-work related is blocked. It's stupid, but i've seen this often with friends.

> everything non-work related is blocked. It's stupid

Why is it stupid?

1) Not work related typically really means “not whitelisted” so often sites that would be beneficial to the employee completing their jobs will also be inaccessible.

2) Since everyone has smartphones they will just access the same sites with their personal device which is more time-consuming.

Because, the ones who block stuff often don't keep up with what is work related. So in the end you have to write lots of e-mails until they notice that you are one of the few users that should be allowed to use the whole internet.

Eventually, one day they will find out that their blocking is too strict and that they should restrict the blocking to sites which actively try to attack the users computer...

So it is more of an execution problem, but as it fails quite often you could call it stupid to invest into such a feature.

I once had to fight with IT to unblock MSDN, and we were a Microsoft dev shop. Glad I do not work their anymore.

I have had issues before getting Channel 9 to be whitelisted because it was a "video site"

That sounds bad enough. Whitelisting sites on demand should be a simple matter.

Because trying to enumerate everything that could possibly be relevant to your work probably misses some valuable and relevant things.