Tempting, but the boss at the time was too savvy for that kind of sneakiness.

It's a bonus bag, there's at least fifty in there. With a little time, practice and the incandescent bulb in your desklamp, you can morph them into barely adequate approximations of necessary tools.

It could always be worse. You could be required to build an app with nothing but Access and macros. It's like opening that nice red toolbox and finding only a bag of sporks.

On average it seems to me that Gov't IT is about 5-10 years behind current practice, depending on the Department. An interesting tidbit I heard on NPR about the hack in question, is that it occurred a few days after the government shutdown. When the entire 300+ person IT department was sitting at home.

I have experienced the same thing recently. The one question to ask yourself is, how realistic were the demands of management? It's one thing to get yourself mired in the swamp of getting people motivated and moving in the right direction. Been there. Keep learning, you'll get there. It is quite another when the management team is berating you because your team can't run the 100 meter sprint in four seconds. If this is the case, run. Run fast and run far. Trust me, there are better pitches to play on.

Good hunting.

PH#, it's pronounced: Pee Ache Ow! I cut myself!

To me, it sounds like the Scrum role, Product(s) Owner. Owners get paid a lot, right?