I was responding to someone's claim about new grads (read the comment I responded to), not about US Tech Force. The person I responded to claimed that it was common for new grads (circa 2010) to jump in at GS-14/15. That was not common.
Ahh! My bad! Yea you're absolutely right - aside from PMFs who came out of grad programs you aren't see a new grad starting beyond GS7/8 in most cases.
It's also why a large portion of Gov employees end up jumping ship to professional services firms like BAH, Deloitte, Accenture, etc.
It could be a bias in the roles I was looking at - but coming in with physics undergrad for computer science roles, that was the standard set of roles in the Boston area for defense roles. Granted, these were mostly with private contractors who mirrored the GS pay scale along with their supporting government offices.
