Before DOGE it was USDS and they had lots of gs-15s. Especially back when they would just straight up match private sector salaries.
In my org (10000+), over the past 5+ years we’ve hired maybe 20-30 15s and 14s who are non-supervisory engineers. It’s not a ton but it’s more historically.
My point though is that people will take the jobs on government pay scale, but it’s organizationally very difficult to get the positions through HR.
