Once I leave government service this year, I plan on being employed by a contractor. I have topped out as high as I can go and have been this way for five years. I will continue to do my same exact job as a contractor, but for more money. The reason I will get hired is because I am the only person with a specific set of skills that no one else has. If I could not get hired as a contractor, there would be no one to do the job and the amount of cost and damage to certain ships in the fleet would cost billions to replace and take up to 10 years to retrofit. That is if they could replace the equipment, which they can't because it doesn't exist yet. I do not have a bureaucratic job, I do not put out contacts, nor do I deal in money or funding. I am simply the only technical resource in the world that can do what I do. Theoretically, a replacement could be found, but if I do not train them, it will take them 3-10 years to be proficient and 20 years to reach my level, if they were very gifted. I am not bragging, I simply have the right set of skills and attributes to be the best at what I do. Blanket ideas need to be carefully weighed and measured to determine the best course of action. There are always exceptions to every general rule. We have to be careful in dictating rules without taking into account the long term and short term effects, both positive and negative. There are others like me in their specific areas of proficiency, they are hard to come by and extremely difficult to replace. It actually seems like our community is getting smaller and smaller because people are retiring or dying and the new generation is simply not performing as well, nor are they growing in skill like they should be. It is getting very scary because of the lack of potential. Even the PHD's don't seem to be the same caliber.