That's what contractors are for. Snowden was making something like $150k for a fairly basic sysadmin role, and I'd imagine he was nowhere near the top of the contractor pay scale. That is a whole separate issue though, with contracting companies acting as middlemen taking a fat cut, often just for knowing the right people. Not to mention the issue of having a revolving door between the private and government parts of the military industrial complex, like with the SecDef being a former Raytheon board member (and before that, a general).
If the Snowden personal W-2 gross was 150k, booz was almost certainly charging the nsa $285k for him. Pretty standard federal contacting markup for a "body shop" agency.
And just like every other case in US government contracting, the american people overpay for pretty standard functionality because half of the citizens think it's unconscionable for the government to do anything.
