So here's what I think of defense. This might be just my company at my location, so let's preface with that. In fact, I've had to work at the other location that my program was headquartered in and it's 100% nicer than our location
The people here are a mix of very smart people and complete dumbasses And it's a bell curve distribution. I know most places are like that... But the midpoint skill level is much, much lower. For instance, I implemented 3 lines of code to do some bit shifting and masking. It took me over an hour to explain this to a principal software engineer with "a lot of embedded experience". Dude has 20 years on this job. AN HOUR. The junior engineer picked it up faster.
The way they hire is very silly. They aren't allowed to ask technical questions, it's in the rules. So you talk to a bunch of managers and that's it. The big issue is they don't interview you for a specific team/task, it's very broad. The way they hire people is hire first and then place you. I got put on to a program writing Java, which I didn't even know, with a strong firmware/embedded background. My boss even always said he knew I wasn't challenged. I then got put on to a better program two years later at least.
The office furniture is from 1936. When I go to other facilities everyone has standing desk and ergonomic chairs. We felt poor.
Working from home isn't a thing, especially if you work classified. There's no easy way around this but... How will they hire new college grads or retain people? I straight up told them I didn't like it.
The worst thing though is how they treat people on these programs. They make it very clear from day 1 that the biggest threat to national security is us. They treat us like garbage criminals whenever they can. So why work there?
There's no reason to work here unless you want to coast to retirement.
Vinen I made it out. You should be proud.
