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Dot-Commers vs. Government Contractors
StrangeBeer writes: "When the dot-Com movement went bust, it sent thousands of former employees running for cover (or the unemployment line, whichever was closer). One place they didn't go was the way of the Government Contractor who, incidentally, is doing just fine right now with or without a recession. Various reasons are given for this and one I'd like to point out is that the government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft. The vast majority of these kinds of employees are coming from other kinds of federal work (military, civil service, etc.) and not defunct dot-Com companies."
Truthfully its a pretty good idea. Yes you wont get paid as much as usual but you do get a lot of benifits working for the government. And very good job stability considering they are in desperate need of good IT people with knowledge and experience. Also you know they wont pull an Enron on you. Just a few of my thoughts...
As a former military person, I would like to debunk a myth a lot of techies seem to have. Not everyone who worked in the military is under qualified.
In fact, a ton of inovations have come from those supposed undertrained military folks. Getting a security clearance is easy.
Sent from your iPad.
All of us at work were just thinking the same thing. Do any of you /.'ers know if there is some sort of contractual or finacial reason for this?
second society
I'm sure government contractors are wishing they made the missile (and charged for it) that shot down the "high flying" startups. Then again, they do have the third world to bomb now.
Also, it is no fun working for the government. Career prospects are poor, the people you work with are second or third rate with a job-for-life mentality, and technological change much slowers. No one who has worked for a startup, even one that failed, can stand that kind of stagnent atmosphere.
These sites have been ravaged in the past by 15 year olds from Canada. I'm glad the people who made them aren't working for the feds!
All the atrocities in the recorded human history have been carried out by the agents of whatever government has been in power at the time.
I will not wear your flag. I will not serve an entity based on segregating people based on where they were born.
...they can always shake down the citizens for more money or pile on some more deficits rather than fold. If people would come and throw you in jail and take all your money if you didn't buy a BeBox, Be would have done a lot better. Wouldn't have been right, but they'd have done a lot better.
.. and I love it. I started when I was 18, before I got my security clearance I was frying fish at a long john silvers. Since I started working in this building I've moved on to a different contractor and my salary has more than doubled. I did this without any experience when I started. I've gotten so much training and experience from here, great benefits and my days off can't be beat. (4 days a week). For anyone considering gov't contractor work... go for it! Much more stable than a dot-com since the united states isn't going away anytime soon.
I work for a DoD contractor, and there's a war on. Woo! hoo! I'm gonna buy a house!
When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.
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open source, they may in due time have a fresh cult of talented people working for them :-P
... it is "The Government" which even to a programming geek is "Not Sexy".
But still
Its almost like you get visions of a 30 year old desk, wooden chair, a XT computer, monochrome monitor, yellow lined notepads, in a room painted light yellow or baby blue. You get thoughts wondering if a pocket protector is mandatory.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
its all about money, dot-commers are used to those high pays, which not much money out there in here
Computer Help
It was kind of sad, though, because she all but admitted it was because she couldn't hack real programming work. She frabricated a great deal of false statements on her resume and came close to out-right lying in her interview. But she was more than happy to get the job with a contractor, because she figures the combination of slow-moving projects and general red tape involved in firing someone would give her tremendous job security.
That alone made me scared of government contractors. But they can't all be incompetent slackers, can they? They can't, right? *sigh*
My sigs always suck.
dot-coms are so 2000, I put all my money in dot-orgs now ...
Any geek worth his salt has read Neal Stephenson's description of "Fedland" in Snow Crash.
Any geek who's ever seen the work processes in place in the real government (either through knowing someone who works there, or by morbid curiosity and reading policy/procedure manuals that describe to government workers how to process forms filled out by the public, for instance) has realized that Neal Stephenson's imaginary "Fedland" wasn't an exaggeration.
Stephenson's Demented Imagination: Fedland
Random Excerpt From The Real Thing: Meat, Poultry, Egg Produce Labeling Review Process"
I know what i'd want in order to accept a government contract techie job:
1. a gun
2. cool black suit with black sunglasses
3. a really intimidating badge which says United States Network Administration Special Forces Covert Operative.
seriously, if nothing else these jobs offer stability... but there's no feeling of the gamble, no thoughts of going 1.0, no watching stock rise and fall... i dunno, maybe it'll appeal to me in twenty years or something. i hope not though.
lysergically yours
Most of the former dotcom techies I know that are employed are gov't contractors. Maybe upper management/sales/marketing dweebs don't fit into gov't contracting, but tech types adapt and survive rather well from what I've seen.
Sure, things like reasonable development cycles, following set procedures, working normal hours, and documentation seem odd at first, but once you learn to accept those oddities it's a fairly easy transition.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
WTF does it matter if you've spent the last few years working for the government, a big corporation, or a dot-com-then-dot-bomb? What matters is if you're a good programmer, with the skills to analyze, plan for, and solve a specific programming problem.
Or are we really talking about managerial types, who are essentially the same (they're all suits, regardless of the color of the suit) but who love to make up fake differences for themselves and segregate into the "fast-moving, innovative" dot-bombers vs. the "disciplined, dependable" gov't and big-corp types? In which case, why should real techies care? Management will always be management, and they'll always have their turf wars and suit-speak, but meantime, those of with real technical skills will always be the ones who get the job done. It's not the corporate structure that matters. It's the quality of the code.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I work for a large government contractor (GD), and I must say that the comment about hiring non-qualified people is a little off base. I worked for them for 3 summers as an intern, then got hired on full time when I got out of school (my division was still with motorola at that time). The hiring process here is actually fairly strict. They don't hire people who don't know what they're doing, because that just results in a lack of work by that person.
I didn't have clearance when I started (my paperwork is going thru at the moment), but I know my stuff and that made it much easier to get the job.
"In case of emergency, break glass. Scream. Bleed to death."
The market favors the employer right now.
I saw the DoD comment, we will not change for the dot.comers, they will change to our culture. This is not only government; this is most companies out there. A couple years ago companies had to handle their employees with care because you could get another job by lunch. Now, well, I'd put a pained smile on my face and say sure - I can do that in VB for you. Reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon - You mean Unix programmer. Oh, just say never mind when the nurse shows up. Today, you would not get the option...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Maybe former dot-commers are not in Government-contractor firms (not yet) because the following points:
-Government-related positions run through a long and tedious line of HR, supervisors, interviews, political screening, more supervisors, more screening, yet more interviews... and all cluttered by unending bureaucracy. And now more than ever, after 9-11. So it takes some time (up to 2 years, IIRC from ComputerWorld or InfoWorld or something similar) from sending a resume to get hired.
-Many Government-related positions want only American citizens. Let's face it. Many IT workers are from outside the USA. So H1-B holders do not qualify. Then, permanent residents, legal aliens ans do on, also do not qualify. And, maybe, recent American-passport holders will not qualify by "security reasons".
-What is the ratio of Women in Government-contractor firms? How many managers do you see in Government Contractor firms? They all look to me like dinosaurs from the 60s. Yes, women only allowed as clerks.
So all this disqualify and dis-encourage most of former dot-commers: brilliant people that just cannot wait 2 years to get a job, people that has a good chance of being born elsewhere outside the US, and about 40% chance of being a women!
Hope those 2 years come-by fast, so I can get hired by Uncle Sam.
Of course this is my opinion as I see it.
Plese, what do you think?
The real reason gov't contractors are doing so well is actually because of cuts in government spending. Huge government agencies had to show that they were tightening their belts by laying off workers.
The logic gets really strange at this point. The agency heads then replace this lost labor by contracting out (hence contractors getting plenty of work). This actually costs more in some cases. Once you cut out all the government grunts, you can cut much of the personnel and admin departments as well, which looks great on the books. But you're also now paying money to a business trying to make a profit, so you end up paying more.
In some cases, the winners here are the employees they laid off - well, the bright ones at least. They often come back as contractors, now getting 50% more in salary. (They do give up the extraordinary amount of leave the government gives you, but many of them couldn't use all that leave anyway.)
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
Out of curiosity, how would one go about getting Security Clearance? I think I could use one of those.
CIA, FBI, ATF, and RIAA .. and feel robbed if a "normal" person is allowd to commit them.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
A 21 year old kid who has legitimately been responsible for someone elses life is far more experienced than the valedectorian at your local code monkey U.
--
You sure got a purty mouth...
I went from working for a large webhosting company on the east coast (long hours, much stress, underpaid, long commute) to a government contractor (reasonable hours, less stress, paid significantly more, 15 minutes from home). I have to say that I love it. I get to do the job I always wanted to do (UNIX/Linux system administrator), there are good benefits, and I am building up a lot of marketable experience. You just have to find the place that feels best for you.
how do you go about getting this security clearance? I'm going to be a college graduate come spring time and I'm facing a very poor job market. I would gladly take a job working for the government at first. Can I get security clearance now so when I graduate I will be all that more attractive to government hiring?
I posted to
A lot of these posts talk about how bad working for the gov't can be (Old technology, lack of innovation, rigid and structured environment, etc.). Maybe if enough people with a strong drive for success and innovation enter the government workforce we might actually be able to change the government for the better. Increase speed of technology adoption, increase technical knowledge, speed up the bearucratic proccesses (well maybe), etc... Maybe I'm being too much of an optimist but it's just and idea.
I know I turned down a gov't offer after graduating due the huge pay difference but I would much rather have an ok paying job than no job at all (Thankfully I still have my job).
-- Find the Truth...
retirement benefits suck ...
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Well, two years ago the world of technology was heading for the frontier in the dotcom boom. And the frontier mentallity abounded ("I don't care what it costs, I want a man on site now"). Many people spent lots of money stupidly in their race to be first to market. This was the era of "management by shouting at people very loudly". And the dirty secret: most of the people working in the dotcom gold rush, techies and otherwise, weren't actually very good - it was all held together by a small core of people who *were* good at their jobs.
So now the frontier has been reached, the land claimed etc., and those who've staked out their plots are having to cultivate them. And loads of people involved in this goldrush have fallen off, others have grown up. Those involved in contracting in both the private and government sectors are mostly the same people as a couple of years ago, but all of a sudden it's become "the place to be" because there's a steady living to be made there.
What's news worthy about that?
Dunstan.
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
Who wants to work with a bunch of drones anyway? Not me... that's the whole reason I gave up on my original career path... as a mechanical engineer, probably working in the defense industry. It wasn't the subject matter that bored me, it was the people I worked with. My colleagues now are writers, artists, musicians, activists, filmmakers, chefs, and charity workers in addition to being software engineers. It's a much richer existence than hanging out with guys who do nothing but collect a paycheck and play with model trains.
That, of course, is a blanket generalization. I'm sure there are many competent technical types who would do just fine getting a security clearance, and enjoy working for The Man(tm) just fine. But on the whole... I dunno.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Military aside, I generally sneer in the direction of federal employees. One of the biggest problems I've seen is that the Gov hires complete morons to do a semi-complex job, gives them a watered-down training on how to do the job, and then wonders why the job/project is costing 500% of what was budgeted. Oh yeah, and the government also has a shady history of purchasing very expensive toilet set covers, and the like. I don't forsee intelligent spending on the part of the government in the near future, employee payroll included.
Transistors and Beer!!
I'm currently finishing a CS degree after 4 years as an Air Force programmer. If I remember my debrief right, my TS expires after 2 years of inactivity. Turns out that's 3 days after Graduation! And I donno if I want to go back into that or not...
Of course, you have to avoid drugs, and the best jobs require a security clearance.
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I work for a a well known State Government contractor. The above article isn't very accurate at all. Many of my fellow coworkers have been laid off. I'm just lucky I am still employed and working as a contractor for the smallest state in the union. RI has some serious budget problems and 9-11 they claim has made it worse since they lost 4 weeks of tourist revenue, it had a trickle effect, losing tax revenue. This means less money for projects! The state workers that were promoted after October 11, 2001 were asked to fall
back to their former position and pay. Since money was cut from projects I have friends that are no longer employed. I'm involved with several high level state agencies, I 'm glad I know unix/network/systems and get along with the people here, I think that's why I am still employed. I also know if the budget get's real bad this July, I will be looking for another employer. The politicians won't care how well I tuned thier systems. They just want to balance the budget. I'll be gone.
So, Don't believe what you read.
I'm a contractor for a well known .gov agency. They do not want FTE personnel. It's easier to get rid of a contractor who does not give the desired results. My boss is a GS-15 Technical and reports to a GS-13 manager. The 45 year old GS-13 resents making less than the 28 year old GS-13 techie working for him. The GS-15 job is a term position. He has to renew every 2 years. This keeps the gov from getting stuck with high paid non management staff.
.com opportunities and got burned. 2 of them came back to my company and 1 is still out of work (Seems there is no great desire for Novell Admins right now).
3 of my coworkers left for
I was hired out of college with a CS degree by a company doing mostly gov't contracts. I was put on a project at the DoD, and at the time I wasn't that excited about it. All the things you hear about it being mostly older people is true (except for the occasional intern now and then, some of which are cute babes!). I just count my blessings that I didn't jump ship the few times when I could have in the past few years to a dot com. All the ones I had considered are now having trouble, while I'm sitting pretty in a stable, post-9/11 defense contract. Yeah, a lot of the people are boneheads, but it just gives me something to laugh at on the inside. I could write an SNL skit about how stupid some of these people are.
BTW, I hope nobody takes offense at my reference to 9/11; I am not glad it happened and I sympathise with those affected, but I'm just stating that it just happens that my job is even more secure now.
my dad worked on a bunch of fun government stuff back when he worked at boeing/we lived there all through the late 80's-mid 90's. he even had a "5 year pin", and was working twords his 10 year when they laid him off. apparently, (i was about 10 at the time) working for even 3 years there continiously is quite a feat, knowing their lay off habits. anyways, he told me once about having to get a "secret" clearance. it mostly involved in sitting in a chair in a room with about 5 other guys, and not supposed to be talking to them, for about 5 months while they did background checks. they got paid for this, i don't kow why, but he managed to get alot of reading done durring this period. having a secret clearance helped alot with getting jobs involving fiber routing in seatte's downtown district (which got him a front page article in networking world), and working at frank russell. whee. i'm not sure how one goes about getting a security clearance, or even a top secret one, but my guess is that if you know people who know people who know about the good jobs, a decent security clearance is as helpful as the degree you own.
moox. for a new generation.
I moved to Washington, D.C. on September 21st. I had been planning to move for a month, as my old startup company was sliding into oblivian, and a friend had an open room in his house that I could move into.
Before I made the decision, I checked out the job market- it seemed pretty good. I lined up a few interviews, got ready to move, had a garage sale, etc. Then September 11th happened.
When I moved to D.C. every private company had a hiring freeze. I went to the interviews I had lined up; nothing came of them. I spent MONTHS searching for contractor jobs, but was invariably told the same thing that the poster said: they'd rather train someone from scratch how to do the job, then hire me and try to get me security clearance.
Admittedly, my skills are of a mid-range level. Were I sufficiently Wizardly in my knowledge, someone would probably have taken the plunge and hired me. But maybe not. Most places refused to accept a resume or even speak with me, without an appropriate clearance.
I have since found a good job, so it all worked out for me. But I know a lot of other people here who are in the same boat. It's really frustrating since you look at the listings and see the exact same job you knew you'd be perfect for six months ago- and it's still unfilled.
I was offered two positions three years ago. One was from a large government contractor, the other from a startup. Both offers were for the same amount of money. Both were within a reasonable commute distance. The large government contractor had the need for a security clearance. This I had no problems with, I even filled out 27 plus pages of forms to get that process started. The other company offered stock options which may or may not have paid off.
I opted to go with my current company instead of the large government contractor and boy am I glad. A year after I joined I was saying to my co-workers.... "wow, here we are, stock is worth a bundle, and at the large government contractor I could still be waiting for my security clearance.
Despite all that has happened in the markets. I'm still very glad that I made the choice that I did.
The main reason I made the choice though was NOT money (same base salary) was NOT stock options (they are nice though) but was rather culture. I frankly didn't want to wear a suit to work. I still don't.
I'm happy in the fast paced commercial environment. And guess what? We are selling software to the Federal Government as well as Global 2000 and Fortune 500 companies AND to the large government contractor that I didn't take the job from.
And right now I'm wearing Jeans and a T-Shirt.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
I thought about jumping into the .com arena during the heyday, but I held back for some vague reasons. Sure, I only got my ok raises every year rather than huge bonuses and such, but I still have my job and have increased my income 50% in 4 years. I liked my job, I liked my coworkers, and I liked where I lived- why should I have jumped for the possible big gains? Turns out I was right, at least for my circumstances.
.comers won't go to government positions:
Some possible reasons why
1) Less flexibility in hours and attitude.
2) Lots of military types in upper management.
3) Sensible business plans where everyone does NOT get $2000 chairs.
4) You actually have to work rather than just hype vapor.
5) You actually have to produce something, or provide a service, rather than just market yourself.
6) Generally need to have multiple skills in a variety of areas, rather than be _The Wizard_ in only one area.
7) MCSEs don't count as degrees in this line of work.
There's probably more, but this was just off the top of my head, and this is just my take from what I've seen of friends, coworkers, and acquaintances.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
There's no need to bag on government employees as a whole, the same stupid paperwork and heirarchy also exists in the private sector. To paraphrase Melibae in book 6 of Spenser's faerie queen, "each person has to find their own path."
I think the main reason that 'techies' don't want to work for Gov't Contractors is the strict development environment. Think of this in terms of an open source project. Generally there is no strict QA, no extensive version control, no set requirements, etc.
Now this, the general OSS development model, doesn't represent all techies, but I think many programmers, esp. the dot-commers, don't want to deal with all this crap. It's not that they can't deal with it, it is just that they don't want to.
The software development programs are many year long projects that have continual reviews: Design reviews, code reviews, SEI CMM(Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model) or some other model reviews, documentation reviews, etc. These projects have *MASSIVE* code basses, and track *ALL* changes made. No one programmer can just decide to re-write a large portion of code. There are entire sections devoted to testing the software. Some employees do that, and only that. No bug fixing, no looking at the source, just testing.
Also time accounting is exact. You can't just decide to leave 15 minutes early and not report it. You must record all time worked, if you leave 15 minutes early, you must report it, then report again when you make up that time.
Sound fun? Some enjoy this model of work/development(me), but it is not for everyone, i.e.someone who is used to the dot-com lifestyle.
--xPhase
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
Could anyone who's read snow crash code for the government? Not me... this has got to be the best portrayal of what happens when you combine software development with bureaucracy. Nobody sane ends up working for the government, or should it be nobody working for the government ends up sane?
This post should have taken you 6.5 Seconds to read, not including this notice. This notice should have taken you 1.8 Seconds to read.
Out of curiosity, how do you go about getting some sort of goverment security clearance, even the most basic kind? Can a individual fill out a form and start the process, or does it have to be started by a US Goverment Agency during a job interview process?
<GINSU>But wait, there's more!</GINSU>
You would also get the GI Bill, which will pay for grad school. Have a student loan? The military will pay it off for you. VA Loan when you want to buy a house.
And 6 years isn't that long, if you think about it. Not out of a career that's likely to span 40 years or more.
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One of the biggest problems I've seen is that the Gov hires complete morons to do a semi-complex job, gives them a watered-down training on how to do the job, and then wonders why the job/project is costing 500% of what was budgeted
And this is different from most large corporations how?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
...and was hired 6 months ago (just as the economy started to sour). We (it's a fairly large company and we do 50% biz for the gov't) are doing rather well and continue to interview new graduates/experienced employees. Some of the guys I work with worked here previously, but came back after their .com/startup
went belly up.
"No matter where you go, there you are..." - Buckaroo Bonzai
I got a secret clearance during my stint at a defense research laboratory. It was pretty painless so I can't understand a company making a big deal of it unless they are in the habit of hiring non-US citizens or recent immigrants. Basically it involved filling out forms and fingerprinting + a photo. The biggest pain in the butt was trying to remember all my old addresses and people who could vouch for all those periods.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You idiot! Somebody already mentioned Snow crash way up there!
I joined a government contractor because it was a job I couldn't refuse (international travel--who could resist?). Well, I'm now off the road and working for a much more sedate project. I remember eyeing those pie-in-the-sky salaries of the pre-bust days with envy. Well, things have changed a lot since then. I appreciate the stability--it's a reliable paycheck--but know it would be very easy to become complacent. Even though I don't think I'm gaining much in the skills department, my company does have excellent education benefits that I do take advantage of. I personally don't feel that now is the time for me to make any major career moves, but the glacier pace of the work and the fact that we tend not to be on (or even near) the cutting edge will eventually be reason enough for me to move into the commercial world.
Unfortunately I left the Air Force at a very bad time, I figured that with my skills, and my Top Secret clearance that I would have no trouble finding a new job.
Same thing with my father he retired from the Air Force, with a Masters, and a clearance, and it took him almost six months to get a job back with the government.
Government jobs are not the easiest to get, and a clearance does not guarantee employment.
I've got Top Secret clearance for my local military base from when I was a contractor. Almost no one works on base (this seems to be the standard according to most discussions I've had with the enlisted persons). So when someone says they "work for the DoD" in reality it means: I come in early (so I can find parking), I have 50 conversations with my co-workers, I then go to lunch, then we work for 30 minutes to an hour, then we leave at 3:30pm or so to avoid rush-hour. There is a reason that our government needs so much cash to do anything, lazy/stupid people. Unfortunately most businesses are not far off. (See: "How to cook the books by Andersen")
When I worked on a recent government contract, everyone I ran into just assumed that I would want to work there for the rest of my life. They also just assumed that I wanted a security clearence. I don't. I'd much rather be in an environment where I'm free to share what I know with whoever I want to share it with, and where every last anal probe of my private life is not imspected with a fine tooth comb to get some "elite" type of clearence that is likely to pigon-hole my career anyhow.
I saw my dad slave away for the government for 30 years+ of bullshit and politics, and seeing billions wasted without tangable real-world results. I cant stand the thought of it.
People there don't understand - this is not a normal market institution. You can be more efficient, effective, and competent - but that will get you nowhere in government because they are accountable to political forces and not market forces. The only one meere advantage that they have is that in some minute areas they are non-propriatory. Well dammit, with linux out on the business world now - and the comodity PC, that is not even a real advantage anymore.
They are wrong, it is not the government that drives the market, they are the followers, free enterprize is the leaders because they are accountable to real economics.
As a NASA Contractor, I see the philosophy clash between the Get it Done'ers and the slower blinder's on folks daily. I must say though that as contracts start up, come to term and get rebid the status quo is that a new contractor will maintain the cream of the crop from the incumbent contract staff. This creates a very stable employment environment.
Combine that stability with the growing government staffing budget (nearly 14% increase this year), one begins to see a very sweet, stable job market available. Most of the time, we never do any more than is required. That means 8am to 5pm, with perhaps some off hours maintenance on occassion...and that time is easily comp'd. You won't find 8-12% raises each year, stock options, or pinball and billiard tables at the office, but you won't be asked to devote your life to your company either.
There isn't a day that goes by where my wife doesn't send me a job posting that she thinks would pay more or get me into something I'd like to do more, but the reality is that each time I have to blow her off becuase there aren't very many positions out there which offer the flexibility, stability and competitive salary that this contract job offers, that won't require a 50-60 hour week.
Most dot-commers did nothing to create any real value. Many of them scammed venture capitalists into giving them tons of money to do essentially nothing. Most government contracting is the same. The only difference is that with the dot-com era only the VCs lost their money. With government contracting, my tax dollars get to pay for this crap. A VC can lose all the money in the fund, the government can just keep collecting taxes (all 2 trillion dollars of them).
Wow, peppered turkey really sounds good. I had pastrami -- tasted great, but isn't sitting real well...
I started out in the gubmint sector, got a big security clearance, had permanent job security, etc. But I left, because it sucked (for me). Now I work at a dot-com filled with guys who ought to be working for gubmint contractors, because they like to work 9-to-5, if something needs doing, it can probably wait until tomorrow, close enough for gubmint work. That sucks too.
Before You Take That Gubmint Job:
Having read all that, if you're still interested in that gubmint job, great, because the country really needs technically-astute people doing the tough, sometimes boring work of making that kind of stuff. If you're really into it, there's nothing quite so satisfying.
The downside of having left gubmint work is that some days it is really hard to make myself believe that it matters a rat's ass that it's now easier for people to buy cheese graters online. On the other hand, in my gubmint job, I could see the direct application of my work, because it was in the field putting Ivan's ass in a wringer.
Her job is specifically to cover the DC area's technology industry, which is saturated with people who work for government contractors or the federal government itself. In that sense, it's quite different from other areas of the country.
Traditionally, the DC area experiences an economic boom when the country goes to war (thousands of jobs are created, houses are built, etc.), so there may be jobs created there that don't exist where you live. Just something to bear in mind.
government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft
What bullshit. Government managers want somebody with 10 years of Java experience to come and work for $35,000/year. Then, once you get in, they remove all incentive for you to advance by promising cushy benefits, annual COLAs, and best of all, job security. Here at NIH, it took almost two years for a grossly incompetent worker to be fired, simply becuase of the bureaucratic crap they had to wade through. There are techs here who let their NT 4 MCSE certifications lapse because our institute is primarily a Novell shop (although we use Exchange, we have no full-time Exchange admin); when I asked if they were planning to go for the upgrade to Win2K, they said "why bother? I don't need it" That's the kind of attitude they have here.
Then there's the condescending view all government employees have of contractors. That Dilbert cartoon a few months ago where the contractor is asked to bring his own air? It's not a joke.
I hate it here. As soon as I pass my Oracle certification tests, I'm out of here, and the federal government can kiss my fucking ass.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
We lost a guy from the 9th floor of my building - Khang Nguyen. It was scary here too - a friend of mine didn't know if her husband (who works in the Pentagon) was alive or not. Luckily for him, he was in the bathroom when the plane hit. His office was demolished. He lost friends.
As for me, I only remember seeing Khang once, but it's strange to think that the guy that I saw downstairs in the elevator is deceased.
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
It's about 40-50 pages and takes several hours to fill out. The freaking LSAT was easier.
You do need a sponsor.
Working for the government is for fucking morons.
I'm curious -- what actually disqualifies you for a security clearance? What do they actually care about?
Obviously there are different levels of clearance (restricted/secret/top secret etc) but I'm sure somebody here knows a little bit about this.
I heard once that what really matters is not whether you've done anything dubious in your past, most of the time, but whether you admit it BEFORE they find out for themselves. Any truth in this?
Hmm. As a "special covert operative" the badge stays in the top drawer of your dresser at home, while you are many many miles away, perhaps with having lunch with people who call you by a different name, and would kill you if they knew... You may not have a gun, and you most certainly will not wear a cool black suit with black sunglasses. You may not even get to finish your couscous before losing consciousness.
.com/high tech "permanent" work. If you are married, it might actually last. If you have a child, you're not automatically perceived as "undercomitted" (unless you have the operative job above). Your health insurance might actually be worth something, and you might actually retire only once, instead of retiring at 35 only to discover that your paper millions are... paper.
Seriously, government work does not always suck. Projects may move at aglacial pace, but they are frequently unstoppable. Compare that to the feeling of never getting to version 1.0. Compare that to having some of your best work thrown out because of some venture capitalist's "refocusing" whim. In gov't work, you occasionally get to work on something really, really cool for years and years. I'll take the chance of that rare opportunity over the constant rushing sound of bungie-CFOs flying by and flitting venture capitalists wringing their hands over excessive foosball usage any day.
Government contracting offers a lot of advantages over
And there's one other huge advantage: no sales droids.
Jon
I think not...(*poof*)
I've seen companies, market leaders even( *cough* seagate *cough*), that had incredible bureaucracy. Have to go through five layers of it to get a $50 expenditure approved.
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Working for the government is a double-edge sword where I work. I'm also a contractor working at a government facility.
At first, I did it our of desperation, since I got out of the Army last August, and there were serious hiring freezes in effect. "Infantry Platoon Leader" doesn't garner accolades with normal businesses.
Government work was a no-brainer for me, I had the clearance already, all I had to do is basically show up. Yes, I have to wear slacks and shirts with collars on them, but all in all, not to bad a situation, considering where the economy is.
My problem is lack of challenge. Everything is pretty backwards here. Users are expected to backup and install their own software, and print/sharing is basically all we have, but that doesn't matter, because God knows where the hell everything is anyway. Desktops and Laptops that come with Win2k are immediately downgraded to Windows 98 first edition, because it takes a LONG TIME to get anything approved. Every piece of software and hardware that we buy has to go through 3 comittees before approval. (Yep, even that printer cable).
We're running some sort of hybrid Novel 3.x network with some hastily thrown together login scripts, 10 Exchange servers that go down all the time (I believe it's 5.5 they are running), and some Computer Associates stuff that has yet to do anything. Some people even use Ghost to install client software, but only certain people are 'authorized', so all in all, the Dell Desktops (not allowed to buy anything else) are the default install, complete with AOL icons and everything. The typical 'security bulletin' is "Everyone go to Windows Update."
Of course, the mail system is clogged by the 'normal' US Army 300MB Powerpoint presentation that needs to be forwarded to multiple people, multiple times, at least three times a day. That's always great over our antiquated network.
What I don't know is if this is a typical situation in corporate America. I know other government agencies are more advanced, but its definately not us. I would like to know, because I'm pretty darn sure that Outlook shared calendars and Powerpoint "collaboration" using file sharing is considered enterprise level.
If that's the ONE great thing about working for the government, there's never a shortage of stuff to do.
Its about impossible to break in the govenment job industry, unless you are a minority, a been shot in war, or otherwise, are "blessed" in some way. My Girlfriend's mother works for the post office and can't even apply for the Postmaster job in my little podunk town cause its on different levels of govenment service jobs. So even after you get in your railroaded around, and its about impossible to advance.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
(A first comment before I get distracted: There is a difference between working for a government contractor, which is a civilian company whose major customer is the government, and working for the government, where you are directly employed by a government agency. Reading other posts, I'm not sure people have been carefully distinguishing between the two...)
My friend and I graduated from college at the same time and both hired into the same major defense contractor within a week of each other, though in totally different areas. (His area of expertise was photonics; I ended up in a systems/software engineering role.) I have had a positive experience so far -- I work with bright people who are very technically skilled, although the development environment (Solaris 2.X; source code written in C) is far from any of the "buzzwords" like Java, C++, Linux, etc. that people love to put on their resumes. The pace of the work has been brisk -- I work in surveillance and reconnaissance systems, and as you might expect, we have gotten even busier after recent events. If anything, we have more work to do than people to do it -- we could stand to hire several more staff.
On the other hand, my friend hated his time at the company and found it to be utterly stagnant. Compounding his dissatisfaction with the projects was his frustration with the security clearance process -- the project that he was hired for required an SCI, which would have taken well over a year to obtain, and no one had discussed security clearances when he was hired. He left to join a startup company which did well at the time (1999), but has been cutting back staff and struggling to survive recently. I asked him if he'd consider coming back here if things didn't work out, but his preferences are strongly for the small company environment with the flexible work arrangements and informal structure. One thing he never could get over was the idea that work was work here. In his college lab, his co-workers were also his social group, and I think he expected that he'd meet a bunch of young engineers and have an instant peer group. I've certainly met some wonderful friends here, but it's far from a collegiate atmosphere.
Government contractors, like any other big company, are really a bunch of small companies under the same banner. If you end up in a good group, it might feel very much like a "dot-com" with the pace and challenge of the work. On the other hand, if you end up in a program which has been around for ten years and is in a maintenance phase, it might very well resemble all of the stodgy nightmares you had about "government work." The requirements are quite different -- the technology you develop today won't see action for a few years, and will be expected to function for a decade or more, typically. And above all -- like every other business -- you must understand your customer. Utility, reliability, maintainability, and ease of use are critical considerations, and your end user (at least for defense products) will be 19-year-olds who can't call you for tech support.
It's important work, and we could use more technical expertise to help us accomplish our goals. But any "dot-commer" considering the switch should carefully consider how well they can adapt to an entirely different culture before sending that resume.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
i used to be a gov'ment contractor. then i went the dotcom way. after that went away, i got a software job in private industry.
so, having done both, i can say that i will never ever go back to government software. i can tolerate dull work, but the fact that all the engineers around me were so beaten down, unmotivated, and unambitious was seriously depressing. the documentation was pretty painful too (but let's not get into that).
can you image working in an office where your boss (literally) kicks you out of the building at 5pm because you're not authorized to charge your time to any project after that (you will have exceeded your weekly hour charges)? can you imagine having "the mainframe" (actually just an sgi o2) have timesharing software on it that computes the cpu hours consumed and charges them to your project (don't play any mp3's!)? can you imagine coming up with a really cool-simple-efficient-practical-elegant solution to a problem and having it rejected because it wasn't documented years ago?
the dot commers (i was one) developed software and had a great time (i personally made alot of money, despite being layed off several times). the government workers can collect their dependable checks forever, but they will never enjoy their work.
I couldn't have said it better.
The slogan for a govt worker should be:
We want your least educated and lowest class citizens to work for us! Govt Employee, you could do better but why try.
lol...
...for that last part: hiring people with no experience. I'm sorry, but if doesn't take that long to train somebody, you might as well hire a trained monkey to do your job. I didn't spend most of my life in computers just to have some computer illiterate dumbass get hired, just because he has "clearance".
Now, I argee with good documentation, coding standards, and other ideas which most of the OSS community follows. I think most business should follow this. Am I being reasonable, or just liberal (as usual)?
Zodiac Survey
Corporations are in the game to make money. If costs consistently exceed 4 or 5 times what was projected, the company either fires those responsible, or files for bankruptcy. The government has the luxury of unlimited revenue, and low accountability. Further, when the gov. runs out of money, they just print more. As a consequence, the incompetent decision makers retain jobs for 20 or 30 years with nothing to fear. Government workers don't get fired for doing a shitty job. Coroporate workers will be terminated if they underperform. It doesn't take a genious to figure out that the private sector has far more talent and potential.
Transistors and Beer!!
The category "Government contractor" is just as broad a generalization as the category "information technology worker". Government contractors vary wildly in size and bureaucracy level, mostly related to the branch of the Government they work for.
Little contractors who work for researchy bureaus like NASA, NOAA, NIH, have IT jobs that feel a lot like CS graduate school. with firmer deadlines. Big contractors who work for the IRS or Social Security have IT jobs whose atmosphere rivals IBM in the old, pre-Microsoft days.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
So I left the Valley and now I'm a defense contractor in the southeast. Nice job. Doesn't pay as well, but I don't have continual nightmares about overdue projects and the sort of chronic stress that's imposed from all sides in the entrepreneurial environment.
The article makes way too much of this sort of hostility between the two camps. I haven't seen any of that. What I have seen is a good amount of respect for the technology skills that I am bringing to the table, all of which were picked up in the commercial world.
Even though we deal with legacy system integrations issues, it's not a technology backwater here ... they avoid Fortran here ... they like Java here ... just like everyone else. And HLA is basically CORBA as designed by Duke Nukem ... lots of cool weapons to fire.
There isn't any of this vengeful kick-them-when-they're-down attitude that the article portrays. Perhaps this is because there isn't a whole lot of substance to this article, so the author felt obliged to manufacture some.
I also think the perception of defense contracters as technology underacheivers is unfounded. We seem to have the same percentage of motivated, smart people here that we did in the dot-com arena.
We also have the same number of doltish poltroons, of course. The non-performers here, though, are here more for the security and laid-back pace. They aren't the collection of half-skilled flakes, con-artists, and hangers-on, all pulled by the lure of easy money, that dot-coms usually accumulate to ride on the coattails of the star developers.
And it is very strange working on a project that has a delivery date 5 years out. In the commercial world, this thing would be on a (highly unrealistic) 6 month track, and would probably end in a complete cluster-fuck because we'd be throwing shit out there before we even understand the problem.
And as a bonus, I can read /. now ...
There's a difference between working for the government and being a contractor for the government.
What I've seen is that contractors
- (-)are treated ever so slightly 2nd class
- (-)have slightly less job security
- (+)their companies (themselves if they're lucky) get paid more than being employees of the government
- (-)pension and benefits are less than straight government
Just what I've seen."Provided by the management for your protection."
A security clearance is not as trivial as some make it.
Let's look at some choice questions on DD Form 398-2:
13. Foreign Travel / Connections
Under oath, provide a detailed list of every foreign country you ever visited, including Mexico or Canada. Of course if you live write next to the border of our NAFTA neighbors, you can summarize trips of less than one day's duration without providing all details.
19. Credit History
In addition to the usual public records tuff (bankruptcy, etc.) you must list any time you were significantly delinquent on debt, even if the creditor did not take any legal action against you.
20. Drug/Alcohol Use and Mental Health
Be prepared to list EVERY time you indulged in an illegal substance, purchased such items, misused a prescription drug. Provide dates, places, etc. for EACH instance.
Also, state under oath whether you've ever been counseled by a mental health professional, and be prepared to give details (the shrink's name, dates, nature of the "problem" etc.).
21. Organizations
"List all organizations in which you hold or have held membership since you were 16". You must provide the name of the organization, address, type of organization, and dates of membership.
For a secret clearance, I'm told you provide this all in writing under oath. For top secret, I've been told you are subject to polygraph examination regarding these points.
I do not have a clearance myself, but folks I know with high level clearances are very careful about their activities, who they associate with, etc. It seems a very guarded life.
In any event, this is far beyond what private employers require (or can even legally ask), which at most is a criminal records, public records, and maybe credit check.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
So there *still* are places where you can expect lifetime employment.
Unfortunately, they're places where people react only to the presence/absence of food, air, and water. And no, that's not a troll. I used to be a U.S. Government employee (USAF commissioned officer, six years).
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I an one counter example. Moved from dot com
to government work. What the HR people tell
me is that they lost many good programmers to the
dot com companies and now they are seeing a return
Yes it is true they like and in many cases will only concider someone with a security clearance but why take a big chance. If the new emplyee is
rejected for a clearance you would have to lay him off. Lots of people are in fact rejected.
I worked as a government contractor for **years** and I must say that commercial applications development has it beat by orders of magnitude!! This is especailly true when dealing with security organizations like the Defense Intelligence Agency or the CIA. For one thing, I refuse to sit for a lie dector test. More than that, their security regulations are archane and written by people whose computer experience ended with punch cards. Stuff like "How to Wipe Magnetic Core" but no mention of a personal computer. I worked three years in a SCIF where it was forbidden under pain of dismissal and prison to carry magnetic media in or out but where all the computers were hooked up to the internet with full WWW capabilities!! You figure...
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
The defnse sector is a good business to be in right now. To wit: the sector has an endemic problem, where large amounts of management is dominated by older employees who will, of course, eventually have to retire. This naturally leads one to wonder where the next generation of DoD managers will come from.
As this tail expires over the next half decade, I see a demand rise, yep. Opportunity abounds.
C//
I worked for both a dot-com and gov-con and they both spent a lot of money producing very little.
At the dot-com VC capital burnt quickly while the business managment did a lot of hand-waving and the technical management never set any direction. They fizzled down to a typical web projects company, their high technology product irrelevant.
At the gov-con, the government put priority on the project and the contractor literally shifted into the most inefficient mode possible in order to rack up the billable hours (my personal conclusion, of course). The project was finally stopped by the government.
I didn't like either. Btw, the government money (OUR money) spent on the dev-con utterly dwarfed the multi-million dollar VC investments in the dot-com.
I think that different branches of the government have different hiring priorities, and it's hard to generalize about "the government" as a single institution.
I don't have any military background, as either a contractor or soldier, but I believe the posts about the military preferring experience over domain-specific training. However, I do have experience with civil administration (more than I should have, really) and my experience has been that education is very highly valued. I expect that most of the PhD's in Philosophy who aren't teaching or flipping burgers work for the government. I've certainly heard that the State Department is that way...the great salt lick of social science PhD's who don't go on to teach.
Having said that, I'll go ahead and generalize about the government vs. the private sector--there's a huge difference in views on equal opportunity. I not-to-recently moved in the opposite direction--from government & education to the private sector--and it sure looks like all white folks all the time to me. When I point this out to management, they give me a very thinly veiled "but they'll steal the office supplies!" speech, and insist that they need to go check their voice mail. Maybe it's just the particular company I work for, or the Midwest, but it feels like there are very different ideas about EOE.
al Qaeda is the prime suspect group for the 9/11 attack. The Taliban "government" provided al Qaeda shelter.
Go back to sleep.
Oliver's army is here to stay Oliver's army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else But here today
This is a test post. Do you like it?
I won't say which gov't contractor, but it's a very large one.
Is that corporations CAN get rid of their people. It takes an act of God (not to mention congress) to get rid of civil servants. Contractors are not as locked in, but depending on the contract it can be difficult to release them too.
Most corporate employment is "at will" these days: you can leave for any reason, they can let you go for any (or no) reason.
Move to DC and apply for a Systems Administrator position for a Congressional office. They really need competent computer people. In a lot of offices, the systems administrator gets handed off to the receptionist. HIR's been pushing offices to get a dedicated staff member for tech stuff but things change slowly on Capitol Hill. The pay will be nothing like what the private sector offers, of course(24-26K/year) but the benefits are good and you'll make connections that can get you a better paying job outside of gov't. (ie: lobbying firm)
What a bunch of elitists you all are.
~jeff
Correction, I think possesion of some of the comsec and other high end top secret clearances is classified.
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Working for a DoD (or DARPA or AFOSR or ARO or ONR) contractor is totally different from working directly for the government.
First of all, the gov't can wait (and hurry along) your clearance, whereas the contractor doesn't have the time or the resources for that. So the clearance is the price of admission, and you'll need to find a company that will sponsor that.
Second of all, they offer rates of pay that, while not competetive with the private sector, it's not the peanuts you get as a civil serpent either. Third, in a small "weapons boutique" there's often minimal bureaucracy. Even top management at these places often came up from Engineering, not sales or finance or HR or marketing or sleeping-with-the-boss. In fact sales and marketing in these places are often also dominated by people with an engineering background and considerable experience -- because even understanding the customer's requirements, reading and responding to RFP's -- I'd like to see some of these boom dot bomber suits do it! Fourth, the technology is light years ahead of anything you've ever seen in the boom dot bust.
And no we probably won't upgrade our documentation machines (WinBlows) because some pimply little slashdotter thinks they should--we're busy designing VME bus devices, writing custom device drivers and image processing applications for ahem real computers,
Oddly enough, military contractors can be the best places for women to work as programmers -- since the social atmosphere is so crusty and conservative, they wouldn't dream of playing some of the stupid grab-ass games that dot bomb suits seem to think is appropriate in the workplace (maybe they get their ideas of what women do at work from their mothers ?)
Also, because it involves typing at a keyboard, programming still has the aura of being "women's work" in the minds of management. So we can just get on with it, rather than having our right to be doing our jobs questioned at every turn.
Working directly for a government agency might be a bit like the scene in SnowCrash , as might be working for a very large FFRDC, but in my experience, small military technology contractors are GREAT to work for.
1) Actually working as a !government contractor!is not as stable as one may think. For example, Motorola is a massive gov. contractor and they underwent massive layoffs.
2) Working for the !government!, one definitely has a job-for-life/9-4 mentality. Not much innovation occurs except at the national labs, which incidently are university run.
3) Top Secret don't mean anything. There's a lot more clearance levels above TS. I know, I've got one before.
Just wanted to bring up that there is a difference between working for the government and working for government contractors.
I'm so sick of everyone bashing .com workers. The media is so quick to label everything .com a failure. The reality that many of us .com'ers know is that the .com bubble burst because of terrible business plans and greedy venture capitalists. It was *rarely* because engineers weren't able to get the job done.
.com's don't document their work is just wrong. Every .com I worked for (and there were 5) highly valued detailed functional and technical specs. We had coding standards which included fully commenting code. The difference was, we didn't have two years to complete the product. It was always ASAP. As a result, we did view our work less as striving toward a finished product and more toward meeting a deadline and then revisiting it again to add in the features that product planning decided were necessary.
.com phenomenon. Ideas like respecting your workers and trying to create an environment where they can achieve as much as possible. From someone who saw them first hand, these ideas worked. Some amazing things were accomplished by tech workers at .coms...they just didn't have any business application.
.coms, talk about the marketing people who spent millions on advertisements before the company saw revenues, let alone profits. Don't blame it on the engineering teams...we did our job.
People have the mistaken idea that just because workers were given more freedom, that the quality of their work suffered. The idea that people working for
It is truly a shame that so many great ideas are being discarded by labeling them part of the
So, if you have to slam the
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Government Contractors _always_ do well in times of war. The government can't legally operate its own bomb-making factories, so the government, and by extention the military, needs to pay someone to build those bombs for them. This is why its called the 'military-industrial complex', because the military needs industry to manufacture its weapons.
You have to realize, anytime the government increases military spending, about 80-95% of that money is going to go to contractors for various services rendered.
So when Bush II decides to increase government spending and declare War on Terrorism, you could actually hear a 'cha-ching' sound in the halls of big DC-area gov't contractors. Because even if there is a recession, the government is about to dump money into all the services that entails.
This was different during the Clinton administration, where contractors were still doing well but not experiencing the run-away growth of the dot-commers.
Because of this, gov't contractors have a major advantage over dot-commers in terms of stability and funding, at least now.
Seems to me this thread is locked into an either/or mentality. But think about this: if you had a nice stable government/government contractor position with good benefits, that was relatively mundane with fixed hours, and you supplemented that by moonlighting on a project you were really, really interested in (Open Source, hint, hint) you'd have the best of both worlds.
It may even be possible to hire in at less than full time, depends on the position whether or not you would get benefits.
Please consult The Turd Report first.
This sounds like a torture chamber for the bofh ;o)
I don't know how it is on the federal level, but I think most government is probably the same.
I taught computers for 3 years at local government for a major city. If you aren't already cynical, you'll get there. There ARE a lot of good people. But there are also a LOT of incompetant management making every backroom deal you can think of (and some you can't) so they can eventually jump ship to a private consulting firm and make money getting contracts from the city. When I read the first Dilbert book, I was SURE he had worked in the government sector.
You make very little money and while the upper brass gets their raises, some how they can't find it in the budget for any of the little guys. Or they'll give it to you (so they can publish it in the paper that city workers get a raise) but it's only good for 1 year and they just take it back the next. Yes that really happened under one mayor.
I also had to laugh about them training you. Oh sure, they'll train you, but then they'll exect you to do the high qualified work at the same salary. I had programmers who got paid a heck of a lot more than me asking ME programming questions because they didn't know OOP.
When I left, some expressed concerns about the lack of job security in the real world. The truth is, if someone wants to get rid of you bad enough they'll find a way or make your life so miserable that you quit. Unfortunately, the people who stay there usually do so because they're so down they don't think they can survive without the security blanket. And a lot of them couldn't.
I left for a (non-dot com) company and doubled my salary. I'm still working there 5 years later.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
what portion of your soul would you have to sell to get security clearances. dice, hotjobs and what not all have many positions for people w/ prior security clearance but I dunno what is really involved in getting it.
anyone know?
ej
Sold drugs?
Been fired with cause?
Have a history of heavy drinking or documented mental illness?
Welched on repaying your student loans or your taxes?
Been to prison?
These are some of the more obvious things that _can_ result in denial of a clearance. Really, though, it depends on the level of clearance you need to get.
In my case, a Secret clearance, basically they want to make sure you are in fact alive, a U.S. citizen, have no criminal record, and a decent credit history. Other things on the application they will delve further into on an as-needed basis: drug use, foreign residency and travel, etc.
For that level of clearance, it may only take a couple of weeks or so to process if you don't have any problems in your application. They want you to go back 7 years in most cases, in terms of listing where you lived/worked/went to school, with no time gaps at all.
On all these forms, you have to honest and complete - your clearance will be reviewed at least every five years.
Higher clearances, such as Top Secret (TS), Secure Compartmentalized Information (SCI), and the various Code Letter and Code Word level clearances, entail a much more in-depth process, and often go much further back in terms of time (10, 20, or more years).
For these, you _will_ be polygraphed, they will talk to your neighbors, college roommates, professors, etc.
Have fun!
here's some important information regarding government jobs:
if you get hired by a government agency, don't go blasting in there knocking out every task in sight. you'll piss off the other employees who enjoy 'being lazy' for a living.
most people who have government jobs try to do as little as possible, while making the books look like they do to much.
i lost work working for a government branch this way. i was fired for being too motivated.
I test software for the Space Station. We have a goal of 1 defect per 20,000 lines of code that
goes out the door. What's a comparable goal in the commercial world?
We have twice as many people testing the code
as we have writing the code.
If MS Word crashes in a commercial office, no
big deal. If the code that I test crashes,
it can kill the crew or destroy the Space Station.
The point is that government projects often
involve critical systems, where screw-ups will
kill people (or worse). So the whole software
development process is geared to getting it
right. That means analysing the task, writing
the software requirements, writing the code,
testing exhaustively to prove you met the
requirements, and each step of the way cross-
checking your work with the other guys.
The requirements guy sends his document to the
coder and tester to make sure he doesn't write
requirements that can't be coded or tested.
Likewise, as a tester I pass my test procedure
back to the requirements guy and coder to
make sure I covered the requirements and I
understood how the code is supposed to work.
This takes a lot of work and time, but you know
what, we put up around 35 MBytes of embedded flight
software up there (not counting the astronaut
laptops). The hardware that software
controls was never all put together except
on orbit. And it worked. Sure, there were
bugs in the code. But by and large it
worked the first time.
Daniel
Would you be willing to "brief me" about your TS activities after you graduate?
I'll pay you good...
I can attest to that. From 1995-2000, I worked for a company that was a custom-software house that went after government contracts. My first 4 years were on a mobile computing and dispatch system for the RCMP. Government work. Then my next year was working on a Tactical Mission Trainer for the CF Air Navigation School. Defence Work.
.com custom-software house. For a year, until the US .com crash caught up with us. There I worked on speech recognition systems and cellular portal software frameworks. This was clearly a corporate job and different in nature to the government work - faster cycle of delivery, less ISO, less overhead in management, more pruning of anything that blocked hitting deadlines and budgets.
.com developing massively multi-user immersive 3D virtual worlds. This is product development and bears little in common with contract software work. And an 11 person firm bears nothing in common with a 200 person firm or a fifty person firm (well, not much).
Then I decided that the company had been bought out and went from 200->1800 and that was too big for me. So I went to a 50 person
Then, it was off to an even smaller
So it is easily possible to move between these markets if you had an open mind, a broad based skillset, and an attitude of "I can do it, whatever it is!". Three years ago I couldn't discuss details of my work and held a Top Secret Restricted Access clearance. Now I tell everyone what I do and teach at the local tech college for fun!
Moral/Lesson: With a broad based skillset, and adaptable mind, and useful experience (you sometimes have to understand what parts of what you learned can be generically useful), you can make the transition between private sector and government work. I could probably go back. You just have to adjust your thinking accordingly and you keep getting a paycheck, which is a nice plus!
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Bin Laden works for the freemasoniac, alien, 3rd lvl imperial-rate, secret conspiracy, UN word government. Like Elton John, Bill Gates and the Queen. Strange that you don't know this.
Ha - probably you work for the world goverment, too, and want to confuse our minds and tell us lies and make us hear voices in our heads !
So you're right, government-paid research and work doesn't have the immediate effect that commercial work does. Thank god, because nothing would change or improve if the world followed the "MUST HAVE SOMETHING USEFUL NOW!" mentality.
You have my sympathies when your 44% pay increase per year reaches its end and starts to retract to your eventual layoff. Lets just hope it does that before you get into your elder years..
-
State Government worker moves on to another position (with Feds)
10 REM Start of process
Documenting what they did takes 2 months, entering it into the system takes another month, It's advertised for a month, another month goes by for interviews, oral exams, second interview takes some time.
We weeded it down to three people: One who we didn't want, one who was looking to bounce from this job immediately to management, and the third who would have been a GREAT person on the job...but we couldn't meet on price. (Mid-$70k with mediocre health benefits and a killer retirement plan; 80% of the average of your top three years if you hang around long enough)
He passed on the deal, so what do we have to do?
20 GOTO 10
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
but ever though about becoming a MLE - microsoft license enforcer ?
That depends on who "qualified" is, and what role he plays in the organization.
Oh... you meant that they weren't "under-qualified".
or is this article kinda full of shit?
like saying "Business for hookers is down; and not many out-of-work hookers are getting married and having kids".
different skill sets
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
be hot property by the fed employees doing the hiring. There are
hints that it may be a culture thing, but I think that it's probably a
reasonable set of decisions based on technical merits.
The reality is that you have to undertake a completely different style
of coding than that of most dot-com organisations in order for your
software to meet the requirements of this area.
Most mass market commercial software is produced using extremely poor
software engineering processes for the simple reason that this is what
you would do if you didn't know any better, and it doesn't come back
to hurt you in the market. You can make a crappy product, but if you
get "first mover advantage" and wrap up a nice bit of market power
over that industry segment, your poor software choices are not going
to be enough to allow secondary entrants the chance to catch up.
Network effects, zero marginal cost of production, etc. etc. Case in
point: Microsoft could request that all of their employees spend the
next month walking around the offices quacking like ducks, and still
pull out and retain their monopoly. In how many other industries
could that possibly be true?
With military style software, there are defined processes that are put
in place because the people running the show are used to having to
create quality software. If you don't, someone comes back to you and
says "That rocket blew up." The one-off, mission critical nature of
most of the projects ensures that the entire staff is willing, and
more importantly, must be able to engage in high level software
engineering practices.
The dot-com folks are not going to be able to get jobs easily in the
fed/military sector for the simple reason that these people know
better. The dot-commers have had no growth as software engineers and
have bad habits that need to be untrained before the good habits can
be trained. Those who had received positive sanctions for their
previous style of work will have arrogance issues to work out as well.
Think, for an example, about how much work had to be done both on the
code and on the personnel to turn Netscape around into something that
could be reasonably worked on by independent teams across the net.
I guess that you could call some of this culture, but it's important
to understand the full scope of what's going on, hopefully so that we
can see a way to improving the output of the commercial software
sector once the problem is generally recognized.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Fifty for the contest winners on their couches with remotes...
I jumped out of govland to do the dot.com thing a couple of years ago. It was a great experience.
After the dot.bombed, I did some time as a govt contractor. Fun work, if you get it without a clearance. I found most of the folks I was working with (other contractors) to be pretty good... no worse then the bottom of the barrel folks we hired at the dot.com because of labor shortage.
I've just recently jumped back into govland. In general, the other civil servants I'm working with (for an entire week) have been very interested in my dot.bomb experience and seem to respect it.
Unless you've done time in govland, as a contractor and in a dot.com environment, I don't know that you can be qualified to say much.
Mileage will vary ALOT
To be honest: I don't see the parallel...
The first is an example of wasting resources detailing new regulation which looks like it was written by a male secretary who only uses TeX and drinks Jolt cola, and has serious problems identifying the priorities in life.
The second is a government docket from the USDA detailing in what seems to be the streamlining of the inspection and labeling system. The context is unfamiliar for most of us (food inspection + labeling), and he may not have don't the greatest job trying to be clear and concise.
However, He makes an honest attempt to be precise, probably because it is a docket.
Oh yeah, one of these affects the quality of our food supply.
Here's some more examples to what seems to look like stupid and complicated excerpts. (Atleast by your standard...)
Subsection 1201(b)(1) is similar to subsection 1201(a)(2), except that subsection 1201(a)(2) covers those who traffic in technology that can circumvent "a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under" Title 17, whereas subsection 1201(b)(1) covers those who traffic in technology that can circumvent "protection afforded by a technological measure that effectively protects a right of a copyright owner under" Title 17. Id. 1201(a)(2), (b)(1) (emphases added). In other words, although both subsections prohibit trafficking in a circumvention technology, the focus of subsection 1201(a)(2) is circumvention of technologies designed to prevent access to a work, and the focus of subsection 1201(b)(1) is circumvention of technologies designed to permit access to a work but prevent copying of the work or some other act that infringes a copyright. See S. Rep. No. 105-190, at 11-12 (1998). Subsection 1201(a)(1) differs from both of these anti-trafficking subsections in that it targets the use of a circumvention technology, not the trafficking in such a technology.
Source
Wow... That looks stupid and frivilous too!!! Why can't they just make these things simple.
How about this example:
The WRR qdisc distributes bandwidth between its classes using the weighted round robin scheme. That is, like the CBQ qdisc it contains classes into which arbitrary qdiscs can be plugged. All classes which have sufficient demand will get bandwidth proportional to the weights associated with the classes. The weights can be set manually using the tc program. But they can also be made automatically decreasing for classes transferring much data.
The qdisc has a built-in classifier which assigns packets coming from or sent to different machines to different classes. Either the MAC or IP and either source or destination addresses can be used. The MAC address can only be used when the Linux box is acting as an ethernet bridge, however. The classes are automatically assigned to machines based on the packets seen.
The Source
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
I did the same thing. I went to work as a security admin for the US Navy (Pearl Harbor) after my dot-com went bust. It's very boring work, and there is little chance of getting any technical upgrades, but the pay checks are always on time . . . That's more than I can say for the dot-bomb. The only thing that concerns me is the whole NMCI thing (Navy Marine Corps Intranet). NMCI is going all over the world and ripping out the current infrastructure and totally replacing it. Our network is all 155MBit Fibre ATM, and their specs for NMCI state that we have to throw all of that away and replace it with fast ethernet (DUH!!). Sometimes I get really annoyed with the way the Gov't wastes money!!!
Wherever you go, there I am...
Okay, this whole thing is a joke. If anyone tries to make a comparison to dot-com employees and engineers working for a gov't contractor, they should be drawn and quartered. There's a big diff between getting some joke certification and a network engineer and having a REAL degree in Electrical Engineering, and there's a big diff between designing some lame website and designing chips for classified satellites...
These overblown, underqualified IT Weenies are worthless. They should be taking out my trash and unclogging my toilet.
IT, IS, and MIS people suck. They're overblown tech school dropouts who are finally realizing their worth in this econo
... to have an anus at both ends of your Alimentary Canal?
I've been a government contractor for 5 years now, and I can say we:
Get paid moderately $40.00-$60.00/hour
work slowly, projects take 2-6 times longer than in private companies
Are less knowledgable (I've been doing this for five years and I still know squat+1)
Are apathetic (do a good job get the same pay, do a bad job, get the same pay)
Generally I would say a government contractor is a mediocre position. The bosses aren't horrible (ala uninformed stressed out private industry managers). The technology is generally old, and the job is not too demanding. This mediocre position does however create mediocrity.
Getting a security clearance is easy.
What you will find more and more often these days is that govt jobs are demanding a security clearance for *all* computer positions regardless of whether the position is security sensitive or not. A big factor in this trend is that now there are enough middle and upper level management types in these govt organizations who did come from military backgrounds and who do have security clearances that they wish to, and are succeeding at, re-inventing their entire organizations to have a military mindset, and wish to populate their organizations exclusively with "thier own kind" of people, and deliberately excluding anyone who is not coming from the military from ever getting a chance at getting hired. This is just one more step in the transmogrification of this country into a police state.
The benefits are outstanding: interesting work, job for life, cushy retirement, two months vacation a year (18 days, plus every other Friday off if you work a 9x80 schedule, which it's stupid not to do).
Exactly one year ago, I quit and went back to private industry, where I had spent most of my working life. Am I nuts? Well, yes, but apart from that, here are some of my reasons:
So it's now a year later. My job is no longer guaranteed (but I've survived two layoffs so far). I don't get Fridays off. My stock options are worthless.
Any regrets? Nope! I'm still ecstatic, enjoying the work, the people, and the sense that if I'm still employed, it's because I am still somewhat competent. It's a wonderful feeling.
Underqualified?
Hah. While it's true they will let you in without having one of those magical certificates which say, "I just wasted half a million on listening to people who have been out of touch with the industry for fourty years bitch about the way I indent my code.", most government people aren't underqualified.
Sure, pay is sometimes better on the outside, but I'd prefer having a job in three months to an extra 10k a year now.
Technology doesn't change?
(Sorry for the pause, I was busy laughing my ass off.)
Jeebus. Some people.
Dot-bombs all over the place blew *billions* of $$$. If that's not waste, what is it?
Just because you're not familiar with SAIC's customer base and get all your information about it from Pravda-on-the-Potomac's trashing of the DOD, don't assume that SAIC does nothing.
*Oracle* developers work "quickly, efficiently, and professionally"!?!? The same ones that created "unbreakable" code. That's a real hoot.
I think Larry Ellison saw one too many Bruce Willis film while boffing those Stanford freshman chicks....
I've been out of the field for over a year now. I can handle all facets of web design: graphics, code production, info archtitecture, useability testing, and product strategy. I've done it all since '95. I don't mind hard work (even like documentation) and would love a regular job where I am respected. Heck, I've even done contract work for the government before.
Oh wait! I'm not in a location that does a lot of gov't contracting (minnesota) and I have no money to move. People look at my resume and see no tech employer for a year and think I am behind the times. Nevermind all the volunteer and non-profit work I've been doing the past 4 years.
So got some ideas on how to break in to this lucrative career fold?
I cannot speak to the whole industry, but I can speak about my own observations here.
Gov't contractors have a bad reputation for being incredibly anal about the workplace. I worked a couple of internships for Electronic Data Systems awhile back, and just a couple of years ago they circulated a memo that was viewed as revolutionary: ladies paintsuits were now allowed. On the other hand, at my current workplace, at another gov't contractor, I dress business casual (dockers and polo or button down shirt) most days, and occasionally wear t-shirt and jeans when I feel like it.
While some gov't contractors may be viewed as anal, large portions of the gov't itself have really loosened up. I went up to a gov't site one time to give a class. Wanting to make a good impression, I wore a suit and tie. I actually got laughed at by the gov't workers, who largely wore t-shirt and jeans. Back in the dot-com boom, many gov't workplaces loosened their workplace standards in order to compete with the dot-com world.
I can definitely confirm the article submitter's statement that clearances are genrally more important than an adequate skillset. I was a bit of an exception to the rule, but there are a lot of coworkers around me who were hired for a clearance first and skillset second, and they end up coming to me quite a lot for help with various things. Right now, gov't contracting is a very closed group as a result of clearances; you cannot get a job easily without a clearance, and cleared employees tend to be passed around between gov't and the various contractors. If there is one single thing that could open up this closed little world, it would be a complete review and replacement of the various background investigation and clearance processing bodies, but I'm not holding my breath. Waiting multiple years for a clearance that will only last five years before it must be renewed again is STUPID. The result is having a bunch of cleared but unqualified people, which is simply ineffective.
Speaking of the clearance process, I should mention that smoking dope definitely leaves you much less hirable. You're just going to have to decide which you'd rather sacrifice: employment potential or drug use.
The actual work itself really depends. Some projects are disgustingly bad and boring. Some are incredibly exciting, trying to solve problems that no one has ever solved before. There is usually less freedom in things. The individual tools and components for a job are almost never decided upon by the people who have to implement the solutions. The work of engineering involves dealing with constraints. However, it's definitely frustrating when most of those constraints are contrived and arbitrary.
It requires a certain tolerance for bullshit, but it is often rewarding work. The gov't does some very important, often very dangerous things, and it is nice to have some involvement there. If you've got a good manager who can shield you from most of the bullshit (thank God I do), it can be pretty rewarding.
Outmoded technology? Well, so does every large organization. Like the phone company. But there's a lot of new stuff, too.
Rules and standards. Of course. Our shit has to work.
Now put on your uniform and tend to the folks waiting in line at the drive-thru.
I spent my first year out of college at a large defense contractor on a project where everyone had a top secret clearance. We worked in a featureless shiny black cube of a building with no windows. The thing that sums the whole experience up for me is this: On the huge monitor of an expensive new RS/6000 workstation, someone had circled something on the screen. In a permanent blue marker. Which would be there forever. Aaaaarrgh.
You've heard the jokes about blondes putting whiteout on the screen? Try defense contractors writing on the screen with a marker.
Yes, I did see a lot of people there who did very little, just sat at their desks, collected their pay, and hoped not to get laid off. They knew that the money that had been spent to get their security clearances meant job security. If the contractor fired them, the government client would get mad about the time and money wasted in obtaining their clearance, not to mention the undesirable departure of one of the top secret anointed into the scary, unmonitored public world.
The work was a ridiculous farce of government waste as well: mostly writing endless bureaucratic requirements documents. It was very difficult to get anyone to explain what it was we were supposed to be doing. Why? It was a secret! I am still not sure what the big picture was.
There was an office filled with dozens of people waiting to get their clearances. They got full pay to sit there for months with NOTHING to do.
No doubt there are many people who like the idea of making a decent salary in a stable job with extremely low demands... but anyone who wants to accomplish something in their work would be driven insane by the boredom.
I left as soon as my contractually mandated year was up. I have never seen such SNAFUs in the commercial corporate world.
I am a government network security administrator. Not contract, but a permanent hire and have been for 5 years now.
:-)
- No gun, in fact I can't even carry one into the building even though I hold a concealed-carry license. Besides all the handguns I own are way too large to casually carry around anyway
- No black suit or sunglasses, I wear a casual button-down shirt, and belive it or not, I usually get to wear blue denim jeans to work. I even got to keep my ponytail. I do have to wear a suit and tie about 5 times a year for meetings with elected officials, the press, and other bigshots, etc.
- No badge, just a couple photo ID cards and an electronic card key.
- I often do get to do spy-like work, which is a cheap thrill.
The stability is excellent, the pay is just ok, I only make a little over $60K/yr in a position that would get me easily $100K/yr in private industry if the economy wasn't tanked right now. The benefits are pretty good, they match my contributions to my retirement plan at a 2:1 dollar ratio and I can contribute up to 8% of my annual gross into the plan, meaning they add in up to 16% annually (the govt equivalent of a 401K plan, but with the big fund money invested only into guaranteed things like CD's, bonds, etc, not as much interest earned on it but at least it's safely invested)
No, basic DOD security clearances (Confidential, Secret, Top Secret) are not classified. In fact, your clearance level is printed on your badge where I work: Having a clearance level wouldn't do much good if you couldn't tell anyone what it was. Imagine this dialog - A: This area's restricted. Are you cleared to come in? B: I can't tell you unless you're cleared to know. What's you clearance level? A: I can't tell you unles ... what's yours? and so on.
However, you're not encouraged to attract a lot of attention to them, either. Making a show of having a clearance could attract the attention of the wrong sort of people (i.e. people who want access to things you have access to).
They're paying me twice what they make to do a job they're not smart enough to do themselves.
When I was a hiring manager at AOL (which is based in the D.C. area), I was never impressed with candidates that were currently with government contractors and/or had little non-government experience - as esm wrote, those that had worked there "too long".
The reason was exactly BECAUSE of the discipline and formality of the government environment. Many of the programmers that excel there could never excel in an atmosphere of "Go add embedded image capability to e-mail and let QA know when it's ready to test." They needed formal design meetings and complete, pre-written UI specs to really do their best work; in the dot-com environment, those details are often decided, or at least coordinated, by the same programmer writing the code. And I was never sure how comfortable they'd be, coming to a place with Nerf-gun fights in the halls, where most of the best work happens AFTER 6pm. Also, at the time, UNIX and C/C++ experience was limited in the military; I'm sure that is changing today.
There are always exceptions, of course, and some of my best hires were ex-contractors. Some even brought their discipline to the team and helped DO more formal designs; they were guys who would think about every edge case. But I was generally more impressed with someone who worked on a 411 system or other high-rate transaction processing systems than with someone who'd done signal processing - systems engineering over computer science.
Jay the ex-Mail Guy
There are a lot of qualified people going from the military arena to the public arena.
That said, I think this all depends on your level of expertise and how you see your career developing.
Personally, I spent two years doing dotcom work on a freelance basis. Once I had enough experience, I went back to under-contract corporate work - because high-end corporate environments are where the cool stuff is to be found (unless you're a kernel hacker). The dotcom bubble went bust, but I was out of it before then. These days I do governmental and financial work. There is a lot of stuff to be done there and they need pragmatic techies who aren't afraid of corporate work. I do design, business process, technical evaluation and procedural work. Maybe not very l33t, but I enjoy it a lot.
The main thing to keep in mind is that you're working with people - the technology is an aside.
Just my 2c.
I think it's a myth that government contractors are doing so great. I happen to personally know the managers of several companies.
One is a genuine government contractor, which designs, produces and repairs all sorts of weird computer systems for government and military. About 5 or 6 years ago, business was booming for them, and they moved from a 20,000 square foot building to one twice as large, hired many employees, purchased all sorts of equipment... you name it. So much money was rolling in, they didn't know what to do with it. Now, they can barely pay the bills, and they might have to shut down.
The other two are aerospace design and manufacturing companies. One has been slowly shutting down for the past 3 years, and the other is just starting to get back on track.
If these folks aren't government contractors, I don't know who is.
As a former military member, i can say that we are relatively well trained by the military schools to perform a variety of tasks such as fiber optics building/repair, hardware repair/installation, and even Unix system administration. http://www.disa.mil is the big man on the totem pole for the military networks. remember we have our own internet that no one without a security clearance ever sees.
Also, getting a government security clearance can only be initiated by the company/command you work for as a contractor. a Top Secret is worth at least $50,000 to them, and if you already have one from military experience, you save them much money, and a great deal of time. it can take up to 2 years to get one, and yes, only US citizens need apply. just how it goes. security does not equal discrimination in this case.
I am actually trying to get some open sores software in here - apache, some open sores content management. The budget is too tight to waste on the crap all the vendors are pitching.
That's not ill will between the dot-com side and the government side. That's ill will between Network Solutions and the entire rest of the world. No?
I am an avid reader of the Post, but these types of generalizations I find ridculous. The Post should be ashamed of itself for breeding paranoia. During the DotCom boom, I grew weary of tech employment articles adulating the new "high tech" millionaires. They dripped of hyperbole and jeaolousy, and failed to mention the hard work and petty back biting that most developers experienced.
Ouch. today I had a telephone interview with a defense contractor. They were planning to fly me up but I had to pass a preliminary security checklist. When asked about whether I had dual citizenship, I replied that no I hadn't, but I was in the process of seeking Irish citizenship for sentimental reasons.
The security officer said that was enough to disqualify me. Although I was disappointed, the interviewer was even more so.
The job concerned pretty secret stuff, but it's hard to imagine what kind of security risk I posed. It's not as if Ireland lacks extradition treaties with the US!
On another note, I should mention that in the tech writing field, a good 50% of the openings are government jobs requiring security clearance.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer , Idiotprogrammer, Austin, Texas, Technical Writer
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
Spent about 12 years in that business, then used the IT skills I learned to move to the commercial side. Having a higher level clearance (TS or poly/lifestyle) REALLY helps.
.com person would have felt at home (and it did become the youngest and most civilian-background group on the contractor team).
.com. Now working for yet another commercial firm.
There are different types of contractors - some build/code stuff, some advise the program offices that buy the stuff other contractors make, some help the government operate the stuff they've bought. My experience was in the second group, the "support contractors". There are many IT jobs in the 3rd group (operating contractors, sometimes also called support contractors, depends on the agency)
Since we didn't "officially" build anything, much of our work was writing reports, making presentations ("viewgraph engineering"), etc. On one project, however, we wound up developing and running a substantial web-based information system (yes, we used linux for some of it). A
I got bored and left for a real
In the meanwhile, the project is STILL going strong. People who were working on it in 1985 (when I joined it) are STILL THERE. So as long as your employer wins the contract renewals (or the customer INSISTS the new contractor take you on - it happens), there's job security, as long as politics (it was a high-visibility program and a political target) doesn't kiil it. Many projects do take on aspects of jobs programs, the job security follows. Helps if your Senator is a committee chairperson.
Breaking in - it helps if you speak the language. There are a lot of TLAs, processes to learn, the way of doing business is DIFFERENT. Not always good, not always bad, but DIFFERENT.
Having a clearance helps, it was less important when the job market was tight.
I spent several years in Albuquerque being turned down for Department of Energy contract jobs because I didn't have the magical Q clearance. Seems you can't get a Q clearance unless you are already in a government job, and you can't get that kind of job without the clearance. One hiring manager told me he'd hire an orangutan if he had a clearance. Competence and experience didn't matter, just the right piece of paper.
I also a former military person would like to debunk the above falicy, in fact most everyone in the military is under qualified!!!!
The innovation the above soldier refers to is in fact innovation that has been sponsored by the military. It is the many DARPA, DOE, various security agencies, defense contractors, and private sector / military funded companies that bring about the innovation - not the soldiers, not the officers, not in the Army, the Airforce, the Marines, or the Navy.
As a matter of fact, innovation is frowned upon. Conformity is the rule of the day, without it, we wouldn't be able to fight wars - try to imagine a team of 18 system administrators taking orders, following through on them to the letter as assigned by a superior and then working as a team to finish a task without trying to out-do a team member.
Innovation comes from rebels - Rebels are kicked out of the military! There are reasons that people in the military are refered to as 'Jar Heads', 'Lugs', and 'Dick Weeds'
If you have a bachelor's degree, meet the requirments for going to Officer Candidate School (OCS), I know that you can join the Army National Guard on an OCS option. On successful completion of OCS (approximately 18 months later), you would have a commission and at least a secret security clearance.
I do not know about the other services. You will need to speak to a recruiter about that.
Some serious food for thought.
I'd like to point out is that the government managers would rather hire an underqualified person with a security clearance and later train them in their tradecraft
Do you have some experience to back this up? I work for a government contractor and would have to say that a good amount of the work we do is certainly harder that hashing out php scripts for some dot-com?
Where do you get off saying that designing our own protocols and writing embedded systems is somehow easier than writing websites?
What planet are you from?
The last time I checked, there weren't a lot of PhD's going into internet muffin delivery, but perhaps that's just because they realize that nobody would ever order muffins over the internet when they can go to the snack machine down the hall!
BTW, they wouldn't hire an unqualified person WITH a clearance over an overqualified person without. Do you think that the major difference in who gets hired in a market flooded with perl programmers is the clearance? Especially when you're talking about the types of programming the military does?
You're right. All three look like they were written by the same kind of person. All three are impenetrable gobble-de-gook to those not skilled not only in the art, but in the particular sub-category of the art being described.
And all three are examples of bad writing. Stephenson may not really be bad writing, since he skillfully evoked the exact feeling that he was attempting to evoke. But it looks just like the other examples.
Documentation should be intelligible before you already know what it means.
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
One should be quite wary about accepting a stereotype that is being pushed by the press. Frequently it's being pushed because it's easier to push a stereotype than to figure out what's going on.
Ask yourself: Have I ever been on the site of a news event, and then read the account of it afterwards? Did it match what my senses reported?
I have been on the site of about 5 major news events. I was never able to satisfactorially match the news description up against what I observed. I feel that the "news" is so processed for entertainment value, that it's relationship to anything actual is quite questionable.
Slashdot seems to be no worse than my local newspaper, for all the complaining that people do. They just know something about the subject matter. Slashdot just has a different slant. The Weekly World News, however, does seem a bit more creative. I'm still awaiting the invasion from Mars by Chambered Nautiluses.
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I work as a government contractor for the DoD. Their is a little bit of misinformation going around though. First of all, government contractors are not necessarily doing fantastic right now. The Bush administration has been doing a lot of cutting in the DoD and some pretty big important contracts have been postponed (DD-21, Deepwater). Right now, the government is re-evaluating the future of the military which means things are a bit chaotic.
Government work is almost always stable though. I personally love it. There is an extremely high concentration on quality of robustness. It's one of the few places that you can really test your skills.
Dot-com'ers definitely don't fit in though in this environment. A lot of people who left the goverment and went to dot-com companies are coming back know though. A security clearance is very important. It's not difficult to get one if your qualified (it usually only takes about 2 weeks to a month). If your not qualified though, it can take upwards of a year. Two of my co-workers just go laid-off because they had not received their clearances after a year and a half and probably, would never receive them.
Despite what some people are saying though, having skills is really important in government work.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
As interesting a concept as it is you have SO MUCH more freedom in the outside. I work for a .net writing code and I coudln't love it more.
I get to design ALL my programs the way I want, and code them however I want. I document all my design and code thoughorly and use coding standards out of personal pride for my work. It doesn't take THAT long to write this stuff and is of invaluable assistance.
As a fringe benefit I can play my guitar while I'm thinking up design ideas, wear bob marley T-shirts, smoke pot (off the job, of course... for that matter why would ANY employer care what I do off the clock), keep any hours I please, and the only boss I have is the owner of the company, who is a really nice guy.
I wouldn't give up that kind of freedom for all the money in the WORLD. Money is not an end to itself and anyone who chases dolars for THAT reason alone really need some help. Remember we only take the soul with us.. the materials get left on earth.
And as long as I do well, and my coworkers are motivated to do well we ALL have job security.
The only way to maintain this motivation is to allow freedom of expression and freedom to create when and where I feel most comfortable.
I honestly do not see a single advantage to government work. Of course I'm a person who is perfectly capable of making my own descions and don't need some regimented wank who doesn't know jack about the creative process teling ME what to do.
-- Object known as a camera. Vintage uncertain, origin unknown. - Twilight Zone
Oh joy.
I worked for a company that was formed by a group of contractors. They had taken their previous employers bid, slashed the prices by 1/2 and submited it. I was hired in after the jokers got the contract.
This was to a US AF base in wonderful part of date your sister Georgia. The contract was with DISA (used to be DARPA) but involved servics for the AF. Now let me count the bosses. 1 for the head hunting company, 2 on the Air force contract side (one was the contract manager, the other was on the technical side). On the DISA side there were two more. Due to goverment policies of who can be a boss, none of these people were qualified so all their supervisors also were my bosses. The company with the contract had a local supervisor, a local contract supervisor and a project supervisor and a project contract supervisor. With the overlap, I had 12 bosses. Only one of them was clueless and a problem. About onnce a week I would be called into Katy's bosses office (he was my boss two different ways and hers one) where he would simply say "Kathy wants to fire you again. Got any idea why this time?". In one of the weekly meetings, I proposed a new metic of "MIPS per square foot" and based on that she got one of those awards goverment empolyees love so much even though she wanted to fire me because I did something to raise her MIPS/sqft" with a new sun box. I suspect she still has no clue.
The plus side was that I got to play with some cool equipment and I meet people that played with even cooler equipment -- a F-15E beats a sparc station any day. I learned about security from people who knew what they were doing. It was worth while and let me pay of student loans.
I also got to work on the Gossip email spec and made a change to allow SMTP as a "transition" email system which effectively killed X.400.
so are there any gov job listing URLs out there? .Gov headhunting? Or does one have to search through each agency to find a tech gov job?
I think the karma police are after me
Lessee, I'm ex-military, have a degree, about 10 years of web programming/Unix sysadmin and a a gaggle of certs.
Oh and I'm out of work.
So I too am about to become a gov contractor because thet govt is the only one hiring.
Yes, I can hardly wait, a rainforest full of paperwork combined with a Soviet work ethic.
Oh boy.
How do I get a security clearance?
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
I used to refer to the DoD contractor as "life in the parking lane", and for parts of the company, that was accurate. Despite this, they built real satellites which were launched, worked, and were used. Everything was big, clunky, and slow, but it worked.
Typical example: we had obsolete minicomputers, but first rate power, grounding (2" busbars for ground), air conditioning, fire protection, and physical security. Very little downtime.
More stereotyping...
I'm one of those who has access to new technology in my job as a federal contractor and would not say that NIH research in environmental health sciences is pork barrel.... I expect most people would argue with you.
--[Cyber Bear]
For those of you asking about a URL to search for Government jobs:
http://dod.jobsearch.org
-Strange Beer
I doubt you'd be able to safely set foot into a plane.