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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.
...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.
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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I'd have to disagree with you. I left a national, publicly traded company to go work for a local city government (pop. of about 22K in SW Ohio). I've been working on and rolling out 'cutting edge' technology (VoIP, wireless PDA's, etc.) for a city government where at my private sector job, I wouldn't have even thought of being able to. I'm have fun at my job, working with top notch people, with current technology. Average length of employment is 3-4 years (then they typically move on to a promotion and a larger city). I might be the exception to the 'rule'...
BTW, I got a raise coming here...
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.
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?
Just off the top of my head, the tradition of lynching is an old-fashioned just-plain-folks type of atrocity. Organized crime is responsible for plenty, too. And, of course, just what government flew airplanes into 2 skyscrapers last year?
Out of curiosity, how would one go about getting Security Clearance? I think I could use one of those.
Dumb Ass.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
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...
I assume that when you wrote this that your brain had to shut down so your fingers could work.
"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. "
To just pick the most current example: what government sent its agents to knock down the World Trade Center? What government did the woman in Texas who killed her own children serve as an agent for? What government set the Omagh bomb in Ireland? What government dived the Egyptian 747 into Long Island Sound? What government opened up on all the other passengers in a car on the Long Island Railroad? (Or are all those examples of 'protected' speech?)
While I will not deny that governments have been responsible for atrocities, (In the whole of recorded history, we could probably find examples of cartoon characters being responsible for atrocities) you are seriously blinded by some form of political belief to blame everything on them. Remember, the reason people banded together to form governments was to protect themselves from the physically stronger.
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
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
Of course, you have to avoid drugs, and the best jobs require a security clearance.
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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.
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.
I've traveled to 5 of the 7 continents (still waiting on Australia and Antarctica), played with high-tech military and NASA toys, flown through the Himilayas in the back of a Russian Mi-17 transport, and met some of the most amazingly eccentric and intelligent people in the world while trying to establish a satellite connection in subzero temperatures.
Plus there's the good feeling you get knowing that your job really helps people live their lives better, safer, and healthier.
There's more to the US government than the Dept of Motor Vehicles -- there are plenty of jobs with Uncle Sam more interesting than the dot-com workplaces I've seen...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
Count the programmers at the average dot-com who actually have degrees in CS. Then count the number of people working in federal research labs who have MSs or PhDs.
When you're working on mission-critical systems, where "mission critical" means "lots of people will die if you fuck up", the stakes are higher and people understand that. Dot-commers tend to do highly slapdash work because they figure they'll just sell the bug fixes as an upgrade.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
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.
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.
with a TS clearance... doesn't matter what you know (they'll train you). You are guarenteed a big number of high paying jobs with that !!
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.
So by that logic Microsoft qualifies as a dot-com now ?
+++ath0
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.
Look at TRW Space and defence in Redondo beach CA, look at BAE Systems in San Diego. Those places are cutting edge. I don't understance the "2nd or 3rd rate" comment, definitly troll.
Remember that ARPANET was developed by government contractors.
Job for life mentality? What does that mean? Their company offers a pension instead of stock options that may well evaporate? They offer job security? Those things are more important as you grow older and get married and whatnot.
I interviewed with TRW. (Didn't take it because I decided I didn't like Cali). One of the people that I was interviewed by was actually a telemetry engineer for the Apollo 13 mission. That was cool.
The reason that a lot of places don't get much attention is that most of the really cool stuff to work on is rated DOD Top secret.
(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."
...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
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."
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 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.
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.
Nope, no drug busts and pretty good grades. Thanks for the info!
I posted to
Was I mistaken?
You could've hired me.
Correction, I think possesion of some of the comsec and other high end top secret clearances is classified.
Best Slashdot Co
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!"
Now that they've got a monopoly, they take more time to do releases and hire better people. But there are still problems with their code base. Interestingly, their Mac products (which have been re-written from the ground up since 1995 or so) are very high quality. Makes you wonder what they'd do if they could trash all their old code and start fresh. I bet MS would produce some high quality stuff. And I say this as someone who is NOT an MS fan.
To be fair, it's not just MS. Guy Kawasaki, long-time Apple evangelist, once made a speech where he said "don't be afraid to be crappy." He was encouraging people to release fast, release often. While there are ways to do release-early-and-often and produce high-quality results, virtually no dot-coms actually follow these steps. Combine that with the amazingly unqualified people who call themselves "software engineers," and the criminally incompetent people who pass themselves off as "software project and program managers", and you get disasters.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
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.
Pardon my arrogance here, but it bloody well should be.
If you do a job that requires a clearance, and you're given information that Bad Guys would be able to use against us, well, you're a security risk.
More to the point, when it entrusts with such information, the Government is taking a risk, and the process of evaluating someone for a clearance is all about limiting that risk.
For instance, that part about credit history and bad debts -- plenty of "normal, upstanding folks" have "turned" (that is, spied on us for other governments) because they "needed/wanted the money". If you've got a lot of debts, you're a higher risk than someone who isn't, because you're more likely (all other things remaining equal) to say "Yes, I'll send the Russians that list of agents for $60,000, because I need to make my mortgage payments before the bank forecloses".
If you've got drugs in your past, or a history of mental illness, or an oddball sexual habit, or have belonged to Naughty Organizations you're another type of risk -- blackmail. You're more likely to say "Yes, I'll send the Taliban those structural blueprints for the nuke plant, otherwise the guy with the scraggly beard will tell the world about the thing I did in college with my best friend's goat, and send copies of my NAMBLA membership card to the New York Times".
> In any event, this is far beyond what private employers require (or can even legally ask),
In any event, people applying for clearances are asking to be entrusted with access to information where leaks can do damage far beyond what leaks at private organizations can.
When your company's next quarterly earnings report gets leaked, some shareholders get ripped off, and some unsavory elements make a bundle. When classified information leaks, people can can be killed.
Back in the mid 80's I answered a knock at the door of the house I shared with some college classmates to be greeted by a guy in a suit with a badge. Fortunately, I'd been warned. A former roommate was getting a security clearance and they were interviewing friends, etc.
;).
Now I knew he'd been honest and confessed to some consumption of some flammable refreshments. I didn't let the agent in the door (too much evidence lying around) but did answer his questions, agreeing with what my roommate had said. He got his clearance.
Several years later, I got a secret clearance (which I never used) by also being honest. They seemed to be mainly interested in whether my drug use could be used to blackmail me (did my parents know, etc.) and whether I was still doing it
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
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."
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."
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
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.
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?
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).
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.
Well, my desk is nothing fancy, but I've got a Steelcase Leap chair, PowerBook G4 (Titanium), and 19" monitor (probably due to be replaced in a year or so), in a room painted off-white. Of course, I'm in a 100% government-funded non-profit company, so it isn't exactly the same as being a government contractor, but close enough. However, we're not hiring, because people won't leave (attrition is at about 0%).
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.
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.
Yup. (That is, getting one ought not to be trivial, and holders of clearances -- as I'm sure the vast majority of clearance-holders do -- ought to take seriously the responsibilities that come with their clearance.)
By way of analogy - if we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in end-users, we reduce the probability of social engineering resulting in leaked passwords. If we inculate a culture of responsibility and security in programmers, we reduce the probability of buffer overflows being introduced to code.
The one good thing about the "culture of secrecy" that surrounds high-level .mil and .gov projects is that at least there's an awareness of the responsibilities that go with Knowing Stuff. (And while I sometimes mock the Gummint for its bureaucracy, there are places where it's useful in keeping secrets secret. Putting up with the red tape to build funky aircraft is one thing. Putting up with it to push paper for the DMV or Social Security Agency is another thing altogether ;-)
> And you also agree that people wishing a clearance should submit recognize that they may no longer be able to exercise the full range of legal, constitutionally protected activities that citizens are permitted?
Note that some of these issues aren't about the issues per se, but about disclosure and the possibility of compromise.
Consider that a closeted gay man in a stereotypically-conservative town is a security risk, in that his desire to keep his sexuality concealed from others could be used against him. When Ivan walks up to him with those nasty bathhouse photos, he's compromised. ("Oh my god, I'll do anything to keep my friends and neighbors from finding out!")
The exact same guy, in the exact same conservative town, but out of the closet, is not a risk. When Ivan pulls the same stunt, the response is "So? Everybody knows about that. Your Russian accent is cute... you want a date or something?"
> Having to live your life so that you always need to be concerned whether an associate, organization, or legal spare-time activity may result in your clearance being revoked is a very sad way to live in my opinion.
If you believe that your activities or politics (for instance, the same guy in the 1950s, when his bedroom antics were illegal, well, unless your last name was Hoover ;-) are fundamentally incompatible with a clearance, then be honest with yourself and your potential employer, and don't ask for one, nor expect to work on projects that require 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
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?
There is a famous NSA story, told by many security briefers for many years (and for all I know, still making the rounds), about a guy who was gay and got called in for a security review. He was told to sign and send letters to parents and friends telling them he was gay if he wanted to keep his job.
No one cared about the guy's sexual habits as long as they weren't hidden and therefore potential blackmail material. Ditto former (light) drug use. I knew someone who was almost denied a clearance because she claimed she had never even puffed on a joint. The polygraph test said she was telling the truth, so she passed and got the job, but the clearance people didn't believe her until she was tested. They didn't care about drug use, just that if she had she was willing to openly admit it.
You don't need to be sane to work for NSA or other "secret" agencies, either. I have known many raging loonies who held high-level clearances. Several Ann Arundel County cops (where NSA is locatated and many employees live) have told me hauling off foaming-at-the-mouth-nuts NSA crypto geeks is not unusual, especially when the moon is full...
- Robin
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.
.
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.
Yeah, but you (Hi, Roblimo!) of all people oughta know from experience that all crypto geeks are, well, a little foamy-at-the-mouth. All that number theory, must, like, do stuff to your brain ;-)
(Either that, or all the crypto geeks I've ever encountered are also working for NSA. Feeling paranoid yet? ;-)
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.
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.
I feel for you, brother. I was in the Army for 6 years, got out, went to college, got a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering (straight "hard core" EE with very little computer engineering above and beyond core requirements), and what was the first firm job offer I got? A DoD civilian job at an Air Force base just south of Macon, Ga. Guess what I did? I turned it down.
I had to decide... Do I really want to be a DoD Federal civil service employee with a GS pay grade and make exactly half what I would be making as an employee for a big private sector government contractor such as Lockheed Martin or Northrop Grumman? I decided to go for the DoD position for the sake of job security and lower stress (due to the very slow pace imposed by layers of bureaucracy) and better feelings about retirement (especially in light of the Enron fiasco).
But a week before the start date, with papers and travel orders in hand, I had to turn the job down because of a family hardship that having to relocate would have brought on, no matter whether I worked at a government or a private sector job.
Although I interviewed for Northrop Grumman, I was eventually turned down, so I'm stuck trying to get my foot in the door at all the local refineries, power plants, etc. (I live in a heavy industrialized area). It's looking more and more like me not getting any job is going to cause more hardship than me moving away from my family, I just hope I can re-apply for the DoD job if it comes to that.
Oh yeah - it was. I wasn't disagreeing with the facts - merely expanding on the points you made to show that the restrictions (again, self-imposed or otherwise) aren't as unreasonable in the context of certain .gov/.mil jobs as they would be in the context of most private-sector work.
> Others thinking about "the clearance route" should think hard about what they are giving up.
Agreed. It's not something that one should undertake lightly.