I agree with majority of the cons highlighted in the Glassdoor review "Not for devs. Tech-hesitant, change-resistant culture with limited learning opportunities". I want to focus on the scholar/farmer gap that I am constantly reminded on DSTA's social media platform.
--- Scholar/Farmer Gap---
Even though some scholars are obviously lacking in capability, all I can see are these same scholars getting promoted at a break-neck pace and being shoved into "visible" appointments to score more brownie points with the management.
Scholars receive higher quality opportunities from the management. It's almost a guaranteed that scholars proceed through the ranks way faster than any farmer can, even if the scholar is obviously not up to the task.
Just to rub it in to the farmers, DSTA repeats the scholar narrative over and over again on their social media platform. I've never seen another government agency's social media platform constantly shoving their scholar program down their audiences' throats so often.
All the up-front investment that DSTA spends on these scholars studying in prestigious overseas universities creates a "too expensive to fail" scenario. Scholars HAVE to be successful, even if they are incapable.
Over the past year, I've seen an overall uptick in the attrition of scholars, some of whom I'm good friends with. The truly capable scholars will leave for better opportunities with or without the path laid out for them in DSTA once their contract is up. The rest of the incapable scholars will be the ones that end up sticking around and eventually parachuted into middle/upper management positions.
If DSTA does not start recognising that there are many brilliant farmers, they will lose more and more capable folks. At the current trajectory, we will end up with "the blind leading the blind". The remaining incapable scholars will lead the unappreciated farmers that can't find better jobs outside of DSTA.
