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IT Training in the Military?
firehzd1 asks: "Yesterday's article about the new Czar of Security for the Department of Homeland Security raises a very important question, especially lately. What type of opportunities are there for IT work in the military/government. It seems every article I read is bashing the govt/military for terrible IT decisions/systems but I never hear the other side of the story. How bout we hear from those in the field that can give us a idea of what it is like behind the other side of the heavily armed gate?"
Also, you might want to google for "Army Smartforce" for the latest information on computer based training for all soldiers, not just those in IT related jobs.
Most of the people at the top of the IT chain have been in the military for decades. It's not like a regular business where you just hire new people. Everyone comes from within at lower levels and not always because they're the best person for the job.
good luck finding much out. I'd be willing to bet so much is classified that people that could post won't post.
Get a degree that will actually make you money. An MBA would be a good choice.
Then play with computers in your spare time.
You will have more money, more time to spend on your hobby, and you won't get burned out on technology because of idiotic managers and other riff raff dictating to you.
You will be the idiotic manager. And much happier for being it.
i dont think military has any worse IT dept then any other large corporation might have. it is just that they become the target of the media, since afterall it the "MILITARY" we are talking. but i think it is all just hype....
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
The military is always at the forefront of technology, so I'm sure there's plenty of oportunities for geeks like us.
DO NOT WRITE IN THIS SPACE
okHow bout we hear from those in the field that can give us a idea of what it is like behind the other side of the heavily armed gate?
;)
yeah as if they will declassify that info
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Hell I don't know a thing about the actual state of IT in the DoD, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn Express lastnight.
From what I've read about system purchasing for the combat arms and aviation the following seems to be important to the DoD when it comes to computing technology.
1. Robustness is important
2. There is growing motivation to buy common systems for all the branches (including Coast Guard) rather than have many specialized systems.
3. Anything you sell the DoD today you have to support for at least 15 years, that includes CPUs like the PowerPC and IA. The new JSF, F-22 and Super Hornet are using Cat-5 and PowerPC chips (in the 132-400 MHz range IIRC) to power the flight computers and to connect systems and buses.
I think the move towards Microsoft isn't so much of a whoring out to MS, as it's a decision based on the fact that MS will be there in 15 years.
If you want IT, go with the Air Force. If any of my nephews decide to join the service, I will strongly counsel them to go in the Air Force instead of the Amry (where I spent 7 years).
The fact is, most of the information systems in the military are pretty much exactly like the ones in the civilian sector. Their laptops are covered in kevlar, but there's no real difference between 'military information security' and 'civilian information security', other than the literal nature of the expression 'mission critical' and an increased focus on redundant, mobile systems.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Why teach the grunts how to use boxen when you can pay a contractor treble for the same services?
That's Un-American, old boy!
http://www.gd-ns.com
I live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia, which is home to the world's largest Naval Base, along with installations from the other services (Army, Air Force, and Coast Guard). While much of the work is outsourced to contractors, there is a large active-duty staff that helps maintain things. As you would expect, quite a bit of it is your standard Microsoft fare, but there are some intersting Unix installs, too. There are a couple of active-duty folks in our local Unix Users Group. The big project seems to be NMCI, which strives to unify the Navy's computing systems. I have a couple of acquaintances who work there -- but it doesn't seem to work very well.
:-/).
By far, however, the biggest thing you can get while you're in the military is a security clearance, which opens you up to the IT contracting jobs after you get out. It seems like two-thirds of the IT jobs around here require a clearance before you can even be considered (and I don't have one...
Bad idea. If there's a Democrat in office, he'll just shrink the military, and you won't be able to get in at all. Just look at how the military deteriorated under Clinton. Best to get in before the Bushies get kicked out next year.
"Military intelligence" is an oxymoron. Just remember that.
What type of opportunities are there for IT work in the military/government.
OPENING: Surveillance and Information Awareness Specialist
Department: Ministry of Love
Qualifications:
- Minimum 5 years experience neural implantation
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- Flexibility with surgical itentity alteration
- Prior experience with polygraphs
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The coolest voice ever.
Travel to interesting places
Use interesting computers
Then blow them up!
How bout we hear from those in the field that can give us a idea of what it is like behind the other side of the heavily armed gate?
Well, the gate really is not that heavily armed :-)
Considering that almost the entire US military runs on MS software, with the possible exception of some research labs and few places here and there, like intel units, that run Unix, there are tons of IT opportunities. I forget what the ratio is, but I have been assigned to some units where the sysadmin-to-user ratio was pretty darned high. Mostly because every time an MS exploiting virus hits (and I can remember quite few, at least back to '98) they scramble around trying to make sure that everything is secured, and then after it hits they run around fixing the 20% of the computers they missed in the first pass that got infected. The military also mandates that their IT people support a bunch of legacy apps, again complicating things.
Hard to get past the background check for some, but lots o' positions as I understand it.
They were recently recruiting in Denver.
Downside = You can't work in (near) any city that you've ever lived in.
(At least on the positions they were looking for in Denver)
So I can tell you for the most part it is sucky-sucky. Bad decisions, inconsistent funding, and stupid ideas get pushed forward all the time. On the good side, career gov't IT people get a little more scratch in their check, and pretty good opportunities to get a lot of training time in. Also, you can usually get a hold of spare equipment to screw around with.
Unfortunately, you sign up now, and unless you are an engineer capable of building a huge bomb from binder twine and pigshit, you're on the six week basic training bus, then straight to Iraq. They're already complaining that their troops are spread too thin.
But it'll beat being drafted.
What's it like? Well, they could tell us... but they'd have to kill us.
microsoft is "the biggest supplier to the Air Force" -- draw your own conclusions. also the f-22 has been plagued by uptime problems for a while now, delaying deployment to probably 2005.
I work for a branch of the military (i wont say which) but i work in an information security branch. we have top knotch people, some with degrees. some with certifications. some with neither. but every last one of us is TOP KNOTCH. this is why the United States is on top in these fields, trust me :)
Not being a military dork myself, however I do live in a military town Albuquerque, New Mexico. Here there is Kirtland AFB, Sandia Natl Labs, Los Alamos Natl Labs, New Mexico Tech, all with their complex of IT support, spin-offs, private contractors, etc. It's a huge complex.
Over the past 10 years or so, I regularly see classified ad listings for everything from your standard web+database stuff to really hitech programming visualization, simulation, prediction, etc. So it's not just battlefield stuff. It's not all nuclear weapons. Most people working at the labs don't do nukes. They micromachines, or nonproliferation support, or genomics and biology.
Read Cyptonomicon by N. Stephenson as it's kind of about military IT stuff.
a few years ago. It was a custom one week course at a secure facility. There were 20 students who needed to learn sys admin, and were supposed to already know some basic unix skills. No one knew crap, and these poor bastards had to work a 10 hour shift, and then spend 8 hours of classroom time with me. I think a few of them got something useful out of it, the rest were too tired to care most of the time. I made sure everyone got a copy of the OS manuals for the systems, a copy of Evi's book on sys admin, and the course materials I developed, so maybe they could puzzle it out after I left. As usual, all the officers who made them take the class refused to sit in, even at no extra charge. They couldn't be bothered to work late, the losers.
The only reason to work IT-type stuff in the government is to get a clearance so you can get a job doing the same thing for more money and less bureaucracy as a contractor. .mil network isn't enough to get some officers in trouble - I've seen it myself.) You'll enjoy the fact that you can coast on by and leave a mess behind when you move on in a year or two. Your reward for leaving things in decent shape would be that the next guy/girl will change everything (to leave a bigger mark in their short time in the position), making your advances null and void.
90% of the good tech-based jobs in the government sector are performed by civilian contractors. The other 10% are generally far, far behind closed doors, and you'd never even know where to look for them unless you're already "in the know."
In the military, at least, the "401k" plan consists of two easy steps: #1 work for us for 20 years. #2 get 50% of your base pay at the 20 year point for life. There is NO middle ground - you leave before 20, you get ZE-freaking-RO. Sure, the promise of a paycheck for life is a nice thought, but the 20 years of bullshit that you'll have to endure is (IMO) hardly worth it.
Again, in the military there is next to no inspiration to perform well. Unless you royally screw the pooch, you WILL get promoted. (Even printing out porn on a
I've been on both sides of this - govvie and contractor. I can honestly say that I've done more valuable work in just a few months than I did in the 10 years spent in the federal employ. Don't do it unless it's your last option, and for certain, don't fall into the "we give you good komputter and teknichul skilz" trap - it's a lie, lie, lie.
I was an electronics tech for the Navy. Did maintenance on comm gear and other electronic equipment. Went through a variety of schools. I feel the education is very good and the hands on experience is great. I worked with a variety of test equipment, receivers, transmitters, communication gear, etc.
When I was in, the most technologically advanced jobs were CTM (Crypto Tech Maintenance), ET (Electronics Tech), DS (Data Systems), among others (more specialized).
One individual I met while in was a Senior Chief ET at Treasure Island. As far as I know, he was one of the people to first develop laser listening devices for civilian purchase, or at least one of the first that I've heard of. I didn't see a working model, but he explained what it was and how it worked to me.
At yet another installation, I met a group of Navy Petty Officers and Air Force Sgt's that were developing a means to render video to CD, at the time, it wasn't common place (I hadn't even heard of the technology at the time) to find video on CD's.
There's many "cutting edge" tech gadgets being used in the .mil, of course these are the ones you never hear about until they're released to civilian use.
It's like the old story about the guy that invented the first "radar gun" for highway patrolmen, he also invented the first "radar detector" for civilians. :-)
Jerry Fletcher,
Privacy Protection By:
http://www.cotse.net/servicedetails.html
That's because I know enough to send him links to patches when necessary. He patches his office, it keeps working.
Just talked tonight; I told him that he should fix me up with a phat DoD contract. He said "Do you really want to work and live in Detroit?" Apparently the nearest IP dept is near Gratiot, and downtown...and they don't allow telecommuting.
I said..."Phuk that. I wouldn't pass the piss test anyway :)."
db
Cig:
ôô
High level tech/IT jobs are outsourced to civilians so go to school and learn lots and one day you can write programs for Uncle Sam. Low level tech/IT are done in house, these guys do the tech equivalent of changing lightbulbs. Not a diss just the truth.
WARNING - SPOILER for Starcraft BroodWar
... Does anyone else remember when the marines had to interface with the terminals during one of the missions...
--- ** ---
"How do you work this damn thing!"
Still cracks me up thinking about it.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
There is plenty of opportunity for IT work in the armed forces. I work for the DoD in an area that specializes in bringing fat pipes to remote military locations to keep the ships and soldiers connected in the digital battlefield. Practically all of the hardware we use is COTS hardware, such a Cisco routers and switches, plus more than a metric ton of Dell computers (the military seems to like Dell a helluvalot).
The Navy has a separate IT rate so it is available as a specialty.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
Don't forget about the military's IT department. The NSA employs tens of thousands of mathematicians and computer scientists. For the world's most secretive organization, the NSA's webpage is remarkably forthright about what they do -- protect American IT and aquire the IT of others.
Maybe a bit OT, but...
A guy that posts on a car forum I admin has posted a few times while he's been in Iraq. Just yesterday he posted that he's getting his access through a "Linksys WRT54G, with some kind of booster attached." Says his speeds are about the same as dialup at home.. "all traffic is going over sat., including DSN telephone service, so they have the internet bandwidth capped pretty low." He's an MP, but has just said that he's "near" Baghdad and has been shot at..
I guess someone over knows how to get our boys 'net access..
I though all the IT jobs were moving to India.
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
Ok, well for a quick overview of my non-classified job. Our own computer network, 95% Irix/Linux. A small handfull of windows bastard-boxes. We build ALL of our machines ourselves (except for those aging SGI's). I compile at least one kernel a week. If I'm lucky, sometimes more :)
Hell, sometimes I even get to patch 'em up to do fun stuff, like serve up > 2TB partitions through NFS (large block device patch is shweet). We build flight sims mostly. The remaining time we're actually doing our job writing code, mostly openGL stuff. Lot's of Performer, but it's getting phased out to openScenegraph. Performer sucks nuts. The only good things to come from SGI were openGL and XFS. However, there aren't many positions like this. I just stumbled into it myself....
The military can't keep people in technical positions because the pay stinks. At least in the Air Force, I think most base networks are now run by contractors. I've been working at the local base for about 7 years now, on what will be five different contracts as of next month. I don't know any military personnel that are still around from two years ago.
From what we see at the base level, it looks like the Air Force has some smart people, at least down to the major command level. They've got lots of great ideas on things like enterprise network consolidation and PKI, but there's a huge disconnect between that level of planning and the implementation level where we're at. We get directives like 'start using Common Access Cards for website authentication', but they can't tell us how to do it. Oh, they sent me a link to someone else's site that describes linking client certificates to domain accounts. No problem, I'll just call up the 1,000 or so users on that website, have them export their certificates, and spend the next month or two entering data!
But back to the original topic. If you're interested in IT in the military, don't bother. Go apply at SAIC or CSC or any of a hundred other contractors.
Bottom line: Military pay stinks. You have no guarantee of any particular job. Hardly anyone stays in one place more than two years, and anyone lucky enough to get training that's worth anything doesn't re-enlist because they can make three times more money on the outside, and still be underpaid.
Of course, this only goes for enlisted folks. Maybe it's different with the officers. I wouldn't count on it, though.
(For what it's worth, I enlisted. It's not a good career move if IT's what you're after, but it's a guaranteed job, and a respectable one. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from joining the service, just don't expect to be doing anything exciting in IT if you do!)
At one point I was considering this. You need to know that you will live WHEREVER they tell you, have to go through basic, etc. Other point you should note, they have rules against allowing people to inlist that have poor vision. (Blind as a bat? Keep moving.) Aside from that, and if you're willing to be shot at, and go wherever you're told. They have jobs for you.
Hate feeding trolls, but, Clinton closed, among others, the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard (which was one of the larger ones at the time).
The size of the military was also reduced although I do not know statistics.
As far as criminals goes... one was involved with the Rose Law Firm, had most of his old friends end up dead or in jail, and was accused of lying under oath. That is US law. The current president cannot be accused of these items -- however, on the whole war thing, we will have to wait and see what happens on that.
And, although I do not remember Clinton bombing Iraq [generally meaning Baghdad/Sadam], I remember a couple cruise missles aimed at one Osama bin Ladin.
-CPM
---You're all I need, When the water runs deep, You're all I need, Now I cry my soul to sleep -- Collective Soul, Needs
but in our place you can't get an IT job in military unless you've passed background/family/mentality tests because the job is very close to intelligence operations which involves a lot of classified materials.
:)
The closest I know has his family working for the Government for three generations and has no criminal records among their closer relatives AND close friends.
So, your academic qualifications are minor issue here.
Know dat.
HAND muthafucka
Hi. I want to test my 5ki11z against Big Brother. I thought I'd ask first on /. using my 31337 SE 5ki11z and see if anyone was dumb enough to let me know what I'm up against or point out any easy targets. Can you also post IP blocks, OS's and software used, any logins and passwords.....
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
Most of them don't talk about it much because they generaly arn't allowed to. Much of what's done in a military shop has very fuzzy lines about what's classified and not, so generaly there isn't much talk at all, to be on the save side. Don't know how things are on the Civilian side.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
All military communications and networks are controlled by one agency. This allows interoperability and consistency between the various branches of the US military (Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines). This agency is known as DISA. The Defense Information Systems Agency. And yes, DISA is responsible for sensitive and classified information systems. However, it is no big secret on how to seek employment with DISA. If you people would just put your ?LINUX: For Dummies? book down for just a 5 minutes, and take a look at DISA?s homepage. Go ahead and find the super secret area on the bottom right hand side of their homepage which says ?EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES? and click one of the links. Hope that helps. -paul
Yeah, the neo-fascists in charge now would very much like to forget that their recent policy face-plant in Iraq was won (on the battlefield, anyway) by the military that "...deteriorated under Clinton.". I watched two senior White House staffers nearly blow a cerebral artery when they were told that by a very senior visitor from the C-years. You should check out the DoD funding and tasking history under ol' Bill. The force restructuring Rummy is so proud of now took nearly a decade to achieve, most of it done on Bill's watch. I, for one, miss the days when our overlords only lied to us about sex....
In the last Marine squadron I was attached to, there were at least four separate IT departments I had to deal with to get my work done. First, there were the people that ran the NALCOMIS system, an ancient and extremely flaky database used for tracking aircraft maintenance. (Its existance and continued use is itself a great tale of woe and agony.) Second, there was the stupid supply computer system. NALCOMIS and the supply computers didn't talk to each other, so every morning I had to cross-reference two sets of printouts. Talk about a waste of time. Third, there was the Marine S-6 or whatever. I'm not sure what they did, other than sit in their office and play Counter-Strike. I think mostly they were responsible for reinstalling Win2K on the MALS officers' desktops after each round of Outlook viruses. And finally, there was NMCI, the Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, which was a bunch of civilians. They did the same thing as MALS S-6, but for the Navy officers' computers. I think they also took care of the base's uplink (our whopping partial T3). One time I needed to share some files with a coworker on the same computer. I had to have NMCI come over and log in their admin account, then explain to them how to share a folder...
If you're the type of person who gets annoyed when people use computers as a more efficient way of creating work for themselves, or if you get frustrated in an environment where you can't change anything and everyone just says, "that's the way it is"... don't even think of joining the military!
I've been in the US Air Force for just over two and a half years. A few weeks ago I finally sewed on my third stripe (for you civilians out there that means I got promoted). The entire time I have been a 3C0X1, Communications-Computer Systems Operations, or Comm-Ops for short. Along with two or three other career feilds we handle the vast bulk of the Air Force's military IT. Honestly, that's almost an oxy moron. Just about every military network out there, regardless of classification, is run by civilians (often trained by Microsoft, certified by Microsoft and knowing only Microsoft in my experience. That causes a heckuva lot of problems in and of itself). As military there's very little else we actually can do with the networks. Why? Well there's two main reasons:
1) Some big wig about a decade ago (you do the math) decided that it would be a good idea to start running the military like a business. So, he decided that instead of focusing on training the troops he would hire contractors and civilians to replace troops on the pretense that it was cheaper and would provide better service. When it was clearly proven and accepted that neither of these were the case they used the excuse that they're "freeing us up" for more combat-oriented positions. Well they sure are spending a lot of money on "freeing us up" and there aren't many contractors out there (in my personal experience) who'll work the same shifts we often do.
2) Let me tell you a little bit about military career training in the USAF. Before I begin, this is not a complaint but a straight portrayl of what it is. First, you go to Basic Military Training (BMT) at Lackland AFB in San Antonio for six weeks or so. That's all well and good and then you're sent to your tech school. For most IT career feilds that happens to be Keesler AFB, MI. There you go through a course that is not only taught by voluntold instructors, but is extremely outdated and poorly presented. It's divided up into various blocks, each block having a certain instructor with a certain set of slides. Many of these slides are extremely dull and feature the same monotonous background over and over and over again. I've been out of Keesler for over two years now and I still have nightmares about the slides with the light blue backgrounds and plain Times New Roman font. Anyway, the material, though not effectively taught, is simple and easy for most to learn. All well and good right? Well, not really. You see at the end of each block you take a test. These tests are written by I beleive a Senior NCO (Sargent for you civilians) who probably made up the CDCs (see below) or what have you as well. This individual received no training on how to write a test. All the tests are multiple guess however, in my experience, they have no actual bearing on the individual's knowledge of the material. Your level of comprehension in no way equates to your score on any of the these tests. This is such a prevelant phenomena that there is a well known saying in the AF explaining our tests: "There's four possible answers. Two of them are wrong. One of them is right. Then there's the AF answer." When I went through Keesler I went through a course that had been used for six years. I was taught 98 and NT. My class was the first class in that courses history to graduate without anyone flunking out of it. I've been told that the course has recently been rewritten but personally I don't hold much faith.
Well, for argument's sake, lets say you make it out of Tech School and arrive at your first duty station. Well you haven't really learned much yet have you? How can you progress further in your career knowledge you ask? Your answer: Career Development Courses, or CDCs for short. These are a series of manuals written by a senior NCO in the career feild who again is usually voluntold for this and receives no training on how to write a manual. Rather than describe the entire horrid process of testing on CDCs I would like to describe for you my personal experience with the 3C0
I can't speak for the folks in the .mil area, though I know quite a few that have went into companies like Mitre after leaving the service. I got picked up right out of college into .gov,--- things were definitely behind the times. AOS/VS on the servers and MS-DOS at the desktop. I worked as a sysadmin through SCO Unix, Win3.11, NT4.0 and Exchange 5.5. Over the first six years I saw around 40+ states of the US, as well as Guam, Saipan and Japan - a good road trip all on the taxpayers dime. At the same time, the pay was good at the end but looooow for the first couple years. The last two have been the best as we are all Windows 2000/ XP on Dell desktops and a mix of Netware, Wintel, Solaris and yes, some Red Hat on the server side. Some of the stuff about .gov IT is true, laziness, lack of security, blah, blah, blah. I am in my mid 30s (the youngest on an IT staff of seven) but trying to improve the situation for my end users and they see that. Compared to the sysadmin that left that was in his 50s and read the newspaper all day- I am the man. You won't get rich doing .gov IT, but it is stable and can be rewarding.
There are hardly no standards and any good things put together are hacked apart by budgets and politics.
Also the move to include COTS based equipment has completely removed any EMP hardening that the "Old" equipment had which while I was in the service my vocality on the matter was largely ignored on the basis that nuclear war was not reguarded as a likely scenario anymore with "most" countries we'd be at war with. However they dont realize that a nuclear weapon is not the only way to generate EMP that could effect their equipment.
As far as IT training goes there are no certifications nor will the army send it's enlisted personel to any training worth anything. A group of soldiers went to a cisco workshop that didnt even teach enough for them to get a CCNA. The military has a long history of giving training to soldiers that typically requires a license outside the service and says since they're trained they dont deserve a bonus since they can get out and get a good paying job. Which they cant due to the license requirements.
One example is a friend who was a powerplant and airframe mech on large cargo jets. He had to be FAA licensed outside the military but due to the fact that he had bills he had to find employment immediately and did not have time to persue some extra classes in order to rate that license.
The same applies for any of the IT mos's though you may not get certified many companies will hire you based on the experience as a associate position to see if you can learn up. That's how I got my current job outside of the military working in Data networking with hardly no training when I was in.
Two caveats before I reply:
1. I'm not in the military.
2. I'm civilian working for a para-military organization that interfaces indirectly with the military.
What I have seen of the IT technologies on the military bases range from the utterly mundane (Officers using P-266's as dumb terminals/wordprocessing stations) to the freakishly advanced geek-toys that are privately owned, to the freakishly archaic mixed with advanced hardware (lots of examples, none that I can mention). Over all, I'd say that most of the IT gear in use, if it still works, is still working. The poster who mentioned the "Not Invented Here" syndrome was very accurate. I work with/use a computer that was made before I started playing with computers.. Not to date myself too much here, but the TI-99/4a was still a hot machine back then. But it fills a specialized niche function, and they are still haven't managed to write any decent "upgraded" software for it, but it keeps on ticking.
I have seen what seemed like really bad decisions and asked how could someone make it. I prayed these people were on the take since I feared a leadership that would be so stupid to actually think it was a good choice.
Now that I am older and much more disenchanted, I realize some of the constraints placed on the military. For instance, I can not get a part for a squadron, but I have plenty of money to travel there and tell them in person that I could not buy them the $300 dollar widget and there are no funds to procure it.
If the different colors of money could be combined into one pot, much more intelligent decisions could be made based on need and not merely expending different funds.
Well, i graduated back in dec 2002 with an Electrical Engineering degree from a top tier school just to be SOL when trying to find a job. So i figured I would try uncle sam. Oh boy was it loads of fun. I always thought recruiters were supposed to hound you every day to get you to join, but the Air Force Recruiter Staff Sgt. Darby in Austin, TX is the laziest mofo I have met yet. I had to call him every damn day for weeks at a time to get a hold of him. He never returned calls, and was never at his office. Anyways, i put up with it for awhile, got all my paper work done and aced the shit outta the AFOQT. However, after being ignored and having to go through other recruiters in San Antonio, I just got fed up and said screw it. According to the air force website they have a critical shortage of Electrical Engineers and now I know why. It isn't like I would be getting payed a shitload or even have that great of a job. All I have to say to the AF is thank you for treating me like shit before I joined. If i would have hit the brick wall after I committed I would have been stuck with their bullshit for 4 years.
You see, if you actually join the military, they don't have to give you the job you ask for. So if you ask to be IT and disappoint them in any way, they'll scrap your education and make you an infantryman (That's the guy with the gun running around in the trenches as far as I understand.)
So is there opportunity? Sure. Will I take it? NOT FOR A MILLION DOLLARS.
I enlisted in the Air Force for 4 years. I had a guaranteed job of Computer Operations Technician. People in this career field generally do basic PC repair, networking, help desk, and communications center staffing. Lucky me, I spent most of my time in the comm center "monitoring" computers all hours of the night. It was basically 2.5 years of 12 hour shifts.
I also spent 6 months in computer security. It was interesting, but basically all we did after the schooling was make sure base unclassified systems were "compliant." It was a bogus check and a real waste of time, since we weren't granted access to the systems in question. We basically had to take the owner's word on whether they installed all the patches, etc.
The nice thing is that I spent the down time learning perl, php, mysql, etc., and now I've got a good web development job. But most people there weren't so motivated (and thus, are still in and making $1500/month gross).
I also spent 4 months in England doing network support. It was the most fun I had during those 6 months.
So in short, the training was bad, the job was bad, and virtually nobody in my squadron knew wtf they were talking about. I guess that's why the squadron was decommissioned a few years ago!
I think they outsourced everything to civilian contractors (except the 24 hour comm center, of course!).
Posting AC for obvious reasons. Nobody in their right mind is going to divulge any technical details. That fact alone should give some indication of the level of security. The IT world in the military is basically divided into two worlds: The crap that nobody gives a shit about securing even though it really should be(which most people end up working on), and the classified systems(which precious few on active duty maintain). The classified systems that are truly mission critical are locked down as tight, if not tighter than anything you will ever find in the corporate sector. Sometimes, classified data is mistakenly placed on unclass systems. This is the biggest risk. Barring that, compromising a classified system would almost certainly require inside access. Getting away with the intrusion is another matter entirely. Most incidents are reported and contained within minutes, and more often than not a suspect is identified within a matter of hours. Retribution is swift and the punishment is no laughing matter. As to the question of which service gives the best opportunity, the answer is the Air Force, followed by the Navy, with the USMC and Army running neck and neck for last place. Your chances of working on kickass systems are much greater in the USAF or Navy, but all services have some opportunity. USMC personnel often work alongside their Navy cousins, and Army personnel do mix with the USAF. I served in the USMC and have worked as a contractor for the Department of the Navy. I have a good friend who is a contractor on an AF base. On the civvie side, the Navy jobs have the edge based on our conversations. Of course the NSA is the pinnacle, but there are plenty of other opportunities that are effectively open to only veterans, regardless of the EOE crap.
Yeah, I was in the Army and was in IT. A joke, thats bout all I can say. They spent nearly 100 grand on me in civilian training (months of MS training from someone from MS, Cisco, UNIX, ETC...) and then when I got back to my post they decided they really didnt want to support us on our project so we sat there and surfed the web. Go Army, HUAAAA!
"every bullet will have an ip address"
I heard this from a general at the air force information technology conference im alabama. being a military IT worker, i can say from personal experiaence that the military has a long way to go. The good news is that we are making progress, things like planning and scheduling of air strikes have dropped from 6 hours to 2 or less now with improved networking. Even so the upper echelons are still fairly clueless, theyre just starting to understand the potential of IT the same way they were starting to understand the potential of the helicopter after WW2
I'm on a gov't contract in Kansas City, MO working with some Marines. I think it is a national initiative, they're phasing out all Marine programmer analysts. Most of our guys are getting turned into network admins, but there is no more COBOL, C++, or SQL training going on.
I am currently working the defence industry. Outsourcing is a huge trend nowadays in business as well as in the military. Most of the people that I know working on IT projects and information infrastructure systems in the military are contractors of some sort. Either working for a contracting company or directly contracting themselves. It is very unfortunate that the military personal/managers who are responsible for dealing with the contractors often have no clue about the technology involved. Hence comes the bad decisions , scope creep, project overruns etc etc. One doesn't need to look further than the huge cost and time overruns of various military projects to see the truth of this. I want to point out a specific example but unfortunately that's classified ;).
The nature of military systems are quite different from normal business applications. The military tend to like staid proven technology rather than cutting edge stuff. Having worked on something similar to the Aegsis program, I can atest to the truth of this.
If you have well rounded computer science training, you will be well prepared to take any kind of IT type tasks including military information systems management and weapons systems applications.
>It seems every article I read is bashing the govt/military
Easy, don't read those sources (NYT, CNN, AP, Reuters, etc.) which have an institutional bias against the military.
The prevailing attitude from those sources is 'if we play nice, everyone will like us'.
What a dense bunch.
Wake up. Radical Islamic believers want to destroy the USA and forcably convert all non-muslims to ISlam.
Too many cooks, not enough broth.
If I tell ya I'll have to kill ya... Actually there are ample opportunities for IT in the military. Even if that's not your primary job. There's a plethora of FREE training available thosein the military who want it as well, from how to use a word processor, to sys admin and more. just my 2 cents
...in gov't and mil (yes, I do work in "there"). The biggest problem is that you have to have at least Top Secret clearance. Not to bash the stereotypical /.'er but, ummm...the background checks are vigorous. Real questions I was asked:
Have you ever done drugs?
Have you ever smoked dope?
Have you ever used narcotics?
Have you ever abused a chemical substance?
(You think I'm kidding, they asked at least 20 times intersperced throughout the polygraph process...and for the record, no I haven't).
Have you ever lied?
Have you ever sympathized with a foreign government or people?
Have you ever cheated on your spouse?
Have you ever cheated on a girlfriend?
Have you ever been intentional cruel to another living creature?
And on, and on and on.
They even did tricks to prove to you that you can't get away with lying no matter how "good" you think you are. Something like this:
(Examiner speaking)"Look through these 20 playing cards and pick one mentally but don't give any indication of which one you picked. Got one? Good. Now I am going to go one card at a time and ask you if this is the card you picked. Please answer no to each regardless if it is your card or not." He then proceeds to tell you your card.
Then they have to talk to everyone you've ever lived with, dated (back to highschool), played with, teachers, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. Got any enimies out there? If so, they'll get mighty friendly with them.
Another problem is the cost. The background investigation for TSSC SBI takes an average of 13 months and cost on average $150,000. That being the case, they prefer to get people out of the military who are already cleared, trained, familiar with DoD (or whatever) systems.
Yet another issue is that each department has its own requirements for adjudication and thus clearance. If you're cleared TS Comp. for the State Department, that means exactly squat to the NSA, CIA, DoD, etc. You get the picture. One may be more rigorous than another. Mine for instance was for military IT security so it was more thorough than say a mail clerk.
There are not a lot of standards with regards to the process and the backlog on adjudication is insane. If you seriously want to get into gov't/mil IT and you don't have any (and I mean ANY) skeletons in your closet, joing the Reserves or the National Guard, do your 1 weekend/month (c'mon, the exercise will do you good) and two weeks/year. Once your clearance is granted the doors swing wide open.
Later.
Every IT troop has to attend a technical school upon entering the career field and recently the Air Force implemented several certification programs for network professionals.
No, the DoD rarely pays for your certification (troops become marketable and tend to bail early...)
But the most amazing site is when you see a baby troop, full of awe and innovation... ready to spend the next four/six years as a sponge... then you remind him that Comm is a primary target >;^)
Would I recommend following in the footsteps?? Definitely!
Yes, you will have to dodge bullets occasionally (hopefully you will have more than one opportunity...). But your outlook on the 5-nines is much different when you realize that there's a life (or bunch of 'em) behind the number.
Yes, you will go where needed... there are only so many slots for server drivers. It's pretty competitive to get your foot in the door (Dude! You're gettin' the Helpdesk!! heheheheh). The training though is there for everyone in the career field, but the best part is the on-the-job training. No guessing from trumped-up resumes whether a troop can do the job or not, and for the most part, you're weened into the job by a more experienced administrator. Oh... and no fear of loosing your job to a junior Admin (unless of course your just that bad at it). Overall it's a pretty knowledge rich environment.
Would I recommend it for someone who's been in the business for a while?? Well... unless you don't mind carrying a gun and a keyboard, or being ordered to sweep the floor on Friday, or wearing the same colored clothes every work day, or having to shave and keep you hair in regulation, or taking a nice 3, 4 or maybe 12-month vacation in a country not of your choosing. It is the military after all... not your local university.
And no... I'm not a recruiter (heheheheheh)
There are many opportunities for IT work.You know that already.
Most are available though the myriad of subcontractors who are entrusted to perform MIL/Gov work.
No mystery here - same mundane IT issues found in commercial industry such as:
Network and file management, data integrity, version control, configuration and data management.
Difference from the commercial world is security and I don't mean just secure systems. Security includes people and pratices as well.
Getting a clearance cost serious money - not something you would do on your own but even as a contractor if you can sell your services to a MIL/Gov contractor, they will sponsor you and pay the costs of getting "cleared".
As others have said, having a clearance is a good ticket to getting more work in a market you would not otherwise be able to compete in.
HTH
There are dogs who don't bark. -- Frmr Secy of State Albright
I must've seen 10 comments regarding how 'no one will talk about it'. Why is that? There are classified things that cannot be discussed, but much about military technology is open source and available in publically distributable trade magazines or on .mil public web sites, if you cared to look at them.
As for working for the military? Well, it's frustrating sometimes because of the circumstances. Let me give you a rough breakdown:
The people in green are great. They are savvy and motivated and want things to happen. Unfortunately, while they drive the train, they aren't the conductors. The lifer civilian employees are. Also they leave every couple years for new assignments. "Generals come and go, but the government employees stay forever!" is the mantra repeated by many. Initiatives often are left by the wayside as a result of this constant personnel reshuffle.
The lifer civilian employees are not so great. They are unmotivated and laxidasical in many cases. Let's say 85% fall into this category. They have poor IT skills and 30 years ago were driving a typewriter, and now are in charge of say, the e-mail system. They're waiting for a pension (60% are within 5 years of retirement, last I heard, DoD-wide) and couldn't care less about becoming more savvy. They are interested in making sure that their little power bases are not eroded, which they guard jealously. Things like access to rooms, decisionmaking authority about minor initiatives that fall in their bailiwick, their own departmental budget, and the ability to buy IT gear without going through any kind of central authority. They will frustrate the crap out of you. A very very few are excellent people. That's the other 15%. These people make the military work by circumventing the atrocious bureaucracy for the contractors (below).
The contractors are spotty. There are some excellent consulting companies, but many are not so good. Skills are lacking in many cases, and people are hired due to nepotism sometimes, which sucks. There are anti-nepotism rules regarding govt hires, but not for contractors. An arm gets twisted, and a contractor hires the spouse/son/daughter of a govt employee to 'facilitate' their contract. Still, the contractors do most of the real work.
Budget issues will plague you. At a bank, you have unlimited funds basically to accomplish whatever goal is required. They will spend the money to do stuff right if you tell them what the right thing to do is. In the military, this is not always the case. The budgeting and disbursement processes are baroque and byzantine, and I feel that is no exaggeration.
It's a lot like tech was back 15 years ago, to me. You have to cobble together systems sometimes out of scrap stuff. Sometimes you are made to do things you know are wrong, like putting Win2k server on an old Pentium Pro box that has seen better days so it can run something like Cold Fusion that is a cpu hog. This irritates me, personally. But you might be happy with some hacking in your daily life.
As for the tech? It's a little behind commercial stuff in the offices, but way ahead of anyone out in the field. Somehow everything gets done, even with the human and funding issues cited above. I think there are *just* enough people with a patriotic spirit toward their job to make everything that needs to happen, happens.
I've worked at some excellent banks and on Wall Street if you wonder about my context above. I hope this is helpful to you.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I remember my first glimpse of Linux. It was on a classified Sun Sparc based system in a custom, portable, hardened, tempest platform. I first started working with it in (you ready for this?) 1995.
I remember being impressed about how amazingly fast it was compared to similar Windows based (3.1 and 3.11 at the time) systems. Good to see things haven't changed. DoD Linux systems are probably still blowing the doors off of their Windows counterparts.
-- Gun
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
The mindset you describe is endemic to the other services. Marines hate doing shit just for the sake of doing shit. We're very much into "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The reason stems both from the culture of the Corps and the fact that we don't have an assload of money to toss around like the other services *cough*Air Force*cough*.
As Fr0mZer0 pointed out, our biggest problem is high turnover in critical MOS's - and computer-related fields are some of the worst.
Another problem we face is worthless systems or infrastructures pushed down on us from the Department of the Navy because the Navy wants some new whiz-bang, e.g. NMCI (don't get me started on that piece of monkey-shit).
I don't think asking people to do something outside of their degrees is a problem for two reasons. First, spreading your wings is what being an officer is all about. Second, you're there to lead - not be the technical expert. If you need technical expertise, that's what your senior enlisted are for and anything beyond them can be contracted out.
I don't know what the ratio of combat support vs combart arms forces are, but rest assured that they are much lower in the Corps, just as the officer vs enlisted ratio is. Besides, in the Marines, we're all riflemen anyways.
Without a doubt, you summed up not only military IT, but NASA as well! Without a doubt one of the best summaries of what it's like being a fly on the wall of activity.
I'm helping to get NMCI (Navy Marine Corps Intranet) up and running at a base. First the Navy spent a lot of money on a deal with Microsoft. Now we buy each computer from Dell fully loaded (Paying for OS twice, essentially).
One this thing is installed, if my keyboard breaks, I have to pay someone about $150-200 to come and replace it (I'm not allowed to detach or attach such peripherals).
The cost for a normal machine is a lease of about $3000 a year. LEASED! And there are tons of software installed (pushed from server), but each department is responsible for maintaining their own licensing (for proper versions).
When I want to print to the printer that is two feet away, it gets sent to my "server" that is almost 1000 miles away only to come back to me (that's where I log into, also).
It keeps getting better, but it's a TOTAL waste of dollars. I think a good LTSP would have been ideal. Everyone in the Navy on the same page and only a few admins per base. Instead, we have about 10 people trained out the wazoo and they can't touch the computers becaused they're not on the Lease contractor's payroll.
Gotta love the tax dollars at work.... muahahahahaaaa.
but then I'd have to kill you.
-Tim Louden
Since the poster wanted to hear from those that had done IT in the military, I spent 8 years in the Air Force as a Computer-Communications Officer (AFSC of 4925 or the newer 33S3C). I spent a fair bit of my time doing acquisition work (buying computers) and fighting my way around the paperwork involved. I did do a fair bit of plain tech work. In some places a lot of the IT is done by contractors, but there is enough other IT work that most Comm-Computer officers get a chance to play around. Now as far as combat communications go (setting up computers while deployed), that is done all with military folks (a good percentage of enlisted with officers overseeing). I don't know much about that as I never got a chance to deploy anywhere. I do think that IT in the USAF is a dead end job, as very few techies promote beyond Captain. The promotion boards are looking to promote officers that have command experience and most IT guys are the low man on the totem pole. In the mid-90's I knew a bunch of comm-computer captains not make major. When I put my paperwork in to seperate (leave) the service, a number of other captains asked me what form did I use and what the process was. I think they too saw the writing on the wall. Timothy Swenson Former Captain, USAF
the kind of wisdom that only prior service or affiliation gains you.
You are correct about OPR/EPRs... I was frankly embarassed when I read my first one. I went to my supervisor and told him "none of this stuff is true. I did my job... I'm pretty good at my job... but don't make it into something it's not." It's ridiculous that you have to go to such lengths, the flowery language, the embellishment, just to get promoted. That whole corrupt "look at me!!" self-promotion thing in the military drove me crazy. What the hell ever happened to doing your job humbly, quietly, being "steady eddie," and being promoted on your merits?
You are also correct that the reality is MUCH different than the recruiting spiel. Anyone joining the military better do their homework... or they have no excuse when they land in a place that sucks. I'm talking serious homework... talk to people, visit bases, AVOID commanders and such. In fact, talk to the peons, preferably the night and swing-shifts... they are often hiding from the admin types, and will be happy to give you the real scoop. Listen to such people, and THEN decide if the military is for you.
The US military kills people in industrial-sized lots better than anyone in the world, but it takes an enormous support system to make it happen. Particularly in the AF, if you're not killing people, you're support, and you'd better like that role, because 95% of the organization doesn't kill people... it supports people who kill people.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
According to an FBI agent I spoke to at a local job fair recently, the FBI has a priority set to hire computer science specialists to be federal agents. www.fbi.gov will point you in the right direction on that.
That green slime had it coming.
In the Communications/Computer career fields in the military, you can get a lot of experience but don't get paid crap unless you stick around for 20 years. Even then, a 20 year enlisted troop makes less per year than a 4 year officer. As civilians, that enlisted troop would probably make double or triple what the officer could make based on the hands-on experience each would have gained, but military pay is based on rank and selective retention bonuses for undermanned fields, not actual job skills or qualifications.
The hassles are similiar to the civilian world (boss calling at midnight on Sunday during a scheduled server upgrade demanding that her email be turned back on immediately, idiot users causing trojan/virus infestations, etc) plus the added bonus of deploying to places where you can get shot at. On the gripping hand, if you're not lined up for another job and have some bills to pay, a 4 year stint in the military can be a good place to grab a bunch of experience.
My advice if you're going to join the military - take the student loans, finish your degree, and go in as an officer. The difference in pay and personal freedom is worth almost any amount of suffering required to get that degree BEFORE seeing the recruiter. The hiring rate for ex-military personnel has been high for a fairly long time now and doesn't show any signs of weakening either.
...here we go. I'm a sys admin (windows & networking) with 15 or so years experience in the commercial world, half of that in silicon valley. I took a job with the Army in Germany (not as a contractor but a civilian employee) about 8 months ago, mainly so I could get the hell out of the country for a while. Here are some random impressions: The job I applied for is not the job I ended up with. BEWARE of Military Job descriptions. They are ridiculously inaccurate. At the same time, don't be too intimidated by military job descriptions. They tend be very general and appear to be describing someone who is expert in far to many things to be realistic. Chances are the position you get will only require the skills mentioned in one sentence of a half page job description. I was hired entirely via email. There was no job interview. I have no idea who actually decided to hire me and I haven't been able to find out despite trying. I have yet to meet a competent IT manager working for the army. So far they have all been counter productive, bordering on useless. The way IT works in the Army appears to be: hire 10 people for every job and 1 or 2 of them will do it right. The Army is HIGHLY REDUNDANT and it's likely you will be too. Civilians & contractors have most of the knowledge & ability, though many if not most are ex-military. Soldiers appear to be tossed into IT jobs with none or only rudimentary training. The few that like this stuff do well, the rest are useless. Nobody cares however, the soldiers are only promoted based on their knowledge of Army trivia and ability to follow orders; not their actual job performance. Regulations and policies governing IT in the military are always out of date and so stringent that they are impossible to follow correctly in every case. This can put you in precarious positions so be nice to people! There is alot classroom training available for both military & civilian IT workers but it tends to be dished out haphazardly & you won't necessarily use much of it in your particular job. Pay is pretty good if you go overseas & factor in your housing allowance. If you stay in the US it's not so good. Turnover is high. In 8 months, in a 20 person organization, I've seen half leave & be replaced. The soldiers, of course tend to last about 2 years in one place and all the civilians I know are looking for other jobs. You would think there would be a highly organized and well thought out structure to IT in the Army but in reality it's a cluster fuck with generally pooor communication between organizations. It only functions because it's HIGHLY REDUNDANT. You have to get used to seeing some of your co-workers rarely showing up for work, simply making things up when they do, and generally being more of a hinderance than a help yet nobody will ever call them on it. I haven't figure out how they get away with it yet. You will need a security clearance however this takes so long that you will be employed for two years with a intirum clearance before you actually get one. Microsoft, Microsoft, Microsoft, Dell, Dell, Cisco, Foundry, Sun, various defense contractors. There's rumoured to be sanctioned Linux boxes somewhere but I've never seen one. Oh.. I could go on and on but I need to get some sleep.
Think old, old and/or purpose-built systems. They run, they do their jobs - but they're old, Milspec special-purpose or COTS (Common Off-The-Shelf) Microsoft fare, for the most part.
There are always exceptions; there are some gee-whiz things like sonar processing, signals anlysis, counterbattery radar, etc. But by and large, DoD/service branches are behind in general-purpose computing, and -way- behind in networking (with a few exceptions who're way ahead).
All the other advice about being a civilian contractor is sound; you make a lot more money and generally have a greater breadth as a contractor. You can move around more, you're generally treated like an officer, and of course you can quit at any time without being declared AWOL, heh.
The above is based upon 15 years of experience with DoD, all four U.S. service branches, and various affiliated TLAs, FYI.
(disclaimer - 20 yr USAF retiree. 15 yrs aircraft weapons systems, 5 yrs PC (Windows) programmer. Got out in '97)
First Do NOT join the military to get good training so you can get out and get a good job (whatever the field).
Join the military because you want to.
Having said that, here we go. Try to keep up, kids.
There is LOTS of good training in the military. IT included. A lot of it is old (tech school), but when you get to your actual base, you find yourself working with, and learning from, people who have done (whatever) for years. Been there, done that, got the tshirt.
My last base was Langley AFB, VA. Air Combat Command HQ. And also, the hub of computer ops for ACC. When I was there, I was in the ACC Computer Sys Squadron. A 300 person software shop. Every imaginable job related to s/w development. Configuration management, coding, project management, testing, db design, you name it.
A LOT of very professional people. And just as in any other large organization...some slackers.
However, the Langley Computer Sys Squadron is a CMM Level 3 organization. Not given out lightly. I was on the level 2 & 3 eval teams. We brought in some outside contractors, and a few of us active duty types were tasked as part of the eval team. And we passed. With zero command influence to get a good rating.
Yes, you do get to write code. Or yes, you do get to manage networks. Often, you get the chance to run things sooner than you would on the outside. For instance...a small team is deployed to set up a secure LAN somewhere. You get to be the NCO or junior officer team lead. Deal with it.
Training? I learned far more by myself, than was taught in tech school. But also learned a lot in OJT (on the job training). Each job is different. Some you can learn in class....some by doing. So what if tech school teaches concepts and tools a few years old? Once you get to your real base...you'll quickly be taught the actual tools you'll use. A single point classroom for a huge organization cannot possibly keep up with the quickly changing technologies. And....the miltary tends to keep things a few years old. Because it's proven to work. Cutting edge is for (currently) drone aircraft and the like. Otherwise, use what works.
What's inside the heavily armed gates? Basically, people going to work. Some jobs may be a little weird (loading missiles on F-15's), but all pretty much the same.
Again...let me reiterate point 1. Do not join the military to get good training to get a good job.
Join the military because you want to.
Any questions?
I spent five years in the Army as a 98C, which isn't exactly IT, but since we're the "tech guys" of the MI branch, we ended up setting up and administering all of the classified systems in our unit. We were running a secure LAN on systems based around WinNT (though we switched everything but the domain server to 2000 when no one was watching) and Solaris. All of the hardware was COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) - most of our laptops were hardened Panasonics (CF-48's, I think). We did have some custom software for what we did, and I ended up writing several largish apps while I was deployed to Afghanistan.
As for IT training, we had some in AIT (Advanced Individual Training - job training), but most IT type training we did at our units. My OIC (Officer In Charge) made sure to send everyone he could to as many classes as we could, and most of the people in my section were pretty close to being either CCNA's or MCSE's (or both). The actual IT people (74 series like someone mentioned above) had even more training than we did. Of course I suppose it depends on where you're assigned - my unit always had way more money than we could ever spend (I was in special ops).
So to answer the original question, yes there is some exotic hardware/software out there (usually for very specific purposes), but the majority of the military uses the same stuff as civilians.
"I am Dr. Freud, but you may call me.siggy."
I could tell you the other side of the story, but then I would have to kill you, trace your IP address, physically destroy your computer, wipe out all your friends and relatives, and use a Titan-I-60 Orbital Optical Defense Platform to wipe out the county you live in.
The assumption that these bodies make terrible decisions regarding IT projects is just plain wrong. Decisions are simply not made in the government.
If there were decisions, as you claim, wouldn't that imply some responsible party was behind a decision, and thus could be held accountable for the outcome of a project? For that matter, wouldn't the absence of a responsible party precluse the existance of a decision in all positive expressions of the word?
The success or failure of a software project for the government can never be assigned to a single party, agency, institution or operating unit. While there may be documents which may have signatures and while financial transactions may be taking place, no one working for the federal government in any capacity ever made a choice between two or more courses of action in any meaningful way.
As a federal contractor with over 18 years experience designing systems for the federal government and the miliary, I understand how important it is to combat this notion there are people making decisions in federal IT work.
You're just trying to scare people away from military IT! I'll bet that military IT is actually a fantastic gig, so good that you and your fellows will do anything to keep from sharing the goodness!
Since graduating high school over six years, ago, I've spent a majority of my time in the defense sector (sans a short stint in a commercial job), either in uniform or as a contractor, so I'll try and give both sides of that story.
I received excellent training and experience as a Small Computer Systems Specialist (MOS 4066) in the US Marine Corps. However, the opportunities for IT-related MOSes in all branches of the service are rapidly dwindling.
The reason is that all "white", or garrison, networks and IT support is being contracted out to civilians. Whether its Team EITC for USSOCOM bases, or NMCI for all Navy/Marine Corps bases, there is no sign of this ever stopping.
The reasons for this are relatively simple. With uniformed servicemembers in charge, there is a turnover rate of 2-4 years, average of about 3. This means that every 3 years you lose someone who's got the experience and bring in a greenhorn. Many military installations felt this was unacceptable and felt permanent staffing was more appropriate. As civil service was too expensive (yes, they're paid less, but their overhead is ridiculious), contractors were used in their place.
What does this leave for a servicemenber? This isn't to say the only work left will be fixing airplanes or carrying a rifle, there are plenty of opportunities available to learn IT in the serivce, and that's on the tactical, or "green" side of things. Setting up networks in the field, satellite communications systems, crypto, its all still in high demand. There's also need in the Navy to manage shipboard networks -- something a civlian would not be able to do. Sure, contractors are even taking some of these billets on the battlefield (applied for one not too long ago myself...), but you can have your chance -- just be careful and listen to everything the recruiter is telling you before you buy off on an MOS you're not entirely sure of. Keep in mind, though, that IT and communications are one in the service -- either the SC branch in the Air Force, or S-6/G-6 in the Army and Marines. You may be managing switches and routers on one tour, and doing sat-comm another, and doing cryto yet again after that. Keep this in mind -- there is no guaranteed "you're a data-dink".
The key advantage in being in comm in the service is twofold. One, you get a security clearance. This is solid gold in any kind of government position. To obtain even a SECRET clearance nowadays takes over a year -- time a company can not afford to waste on a new employee before putting him to work. TOP SECRET takes even longer. If you manage to come out of the service with a TOP SECRET/SCI clearance, or even better, NSA/CIA authorization, you'll have a great deal of marketability.
There is also another, less tangible benefit. You'll be a member of "the club". Government contractors are far more likely to hire prior servicemembers than they are civilians off the street. No, this isn't discrimination, its simple business. Their customer is the military. It takes a long time for a civilian to understand how things work in the military -- and someone coming straight from that environment will be more likely to adapt far more quickly to the quasi-military/quasi-civilian world of the contractor.
Then, there are those benefits the recruiters love to talk about. Honestly, my four years in the Marine Corps were some of the best in my life. Sure, I bitched and moaned, had some headaches, but being in the civilian world for the last two and a half years, I quickly learned that all the headaches I had in the Corps are here on the other side of the fence, too, just a little bit different in nature. You'll get to do things no one else can do, experience things you'll never get another chance to. And, you'll get other experience that can be relevant in finding a non-IT job if, after four years, you decide IT just isn't for you.
And maybe, just maybe, the economy will turn around by the time you get out.
In the Army there's a position called "Information Systems Security Officer" that deals with IT issues. Every Army computing environment needs to have one, but it doesn't have to be a Real Life Officer. Further, they don't have to have any computing experience. That's what OJT is for.
The most imoprtant qualification is that you can be trusted - it's usually someone in the counterintelligence field who gets the job, but that isn't requrired, either.
So, do these newbie ISSOs set up the networks or perform maintenance beyond setting up user accounts and keeping classified info from being smuggled out? Of course not, that's what civillian contractors are for. The Army has long since learned that, if they train soldiers for jobs like that, those soldiers soon leave the military for higher-paying jobs In the Real World, so hiring them from the outside saves a step in the process.
Look into ManTech or Kellog, Brown, and Root (KBR) if you want to get a job in Army IT. Please. The guy ManTech sent to swap out a failed hard drive for me in Bosnia got confused about how the power button worked.
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"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
from the sgt.-byte-and-cpl.-processor dept.
I believe this was from Col. Panic's and Gen. Error's department.Not sure about IT but as far as Electronics its hard to beat good old school navy training. Take a look at Basic Electricity by Valkenburgh, Nooger, and Neville. The book mentioned was written as a part of the COMMON-CORE program for the U.S. Navy in 1954. The explinations are great and the figures are a blast.
The computers or the places?
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
Its amazing how simular certain aspects of a culture can be. So much of this writeup could be used to describe my own USAF career (almost a decade past). The odd thing is that I was an Electronic Warfare techie - electronics maintenance on radar analyzing and jamming systems. Microwave transceivers. And the occasional flar/chaff dispenser. Entirely not IT (although I did end up with the additional duty of my shop's CSO).
Sometimes it's rather odd how simular things are in that environment.
Oh - and I would have done it all again too. It was a hard choice to get out (although I still think it was right one). I owe a lot to my experience in the Air Force. Much of my ability to deal with people and situations come from my old military training and experience.
Highly recommended - but know what you're getting in to. When you enlist... and you take a technical career (have that guarenteed before you sign anything)... be prepared to live what was described to you.
Back during the bubble almost all the comp sci college kids were in it for the money. Government jobs didn't pay enough for them.
Well, they pay enough now.
A friend of mine works "in a library" in Langley, VA. He doesn't touch sensitive information, he doesn't participate in "operations," (doesn't even know who does), and... his job still sounds a hell of a lot more interesting than the VBA coding I'm doing.
I guess this isn't much detail, but he certainly can't tell you any more than I have. Being a spook is a'ight. My friend's job isn't even morally compromising, but I don't know if that's always the case. If I thought I'd fit in in a gov't environment, I might consider applying. They seem to be awfully... sober.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The Civilian contractors do tend to provide decent service though I have had some concerns. The 6 shops (G-6 or S-6) vary greatly, often based on the knowledge of the officer in charge. I know one G-6 who's Masters is in comp sci, he knows his stuff runs a tight shop, and has recently been very instrumental in getting new equip for my unit.
However, when deployed to macedonia a couple years ago, there was more than one occasion when I found myself explaining to the six shop there, where a problem with one of my office's systems was and how to fix it. (this shop actually tried to recruit me into their shop when they realized what I knew, but I had another job to do. It's been a couple years so I can't remember exactly what it was but I also remember that when Code Red and the Anna Kournikova virus hit, (god was that one a pain, what email subject is every male soldier guarenteed to open immediately but one promising pictures of a babe), the non-classified systems (referred to as the NIPR-net) in my office were some of the lightest impacted systems on the base. Of course as the classified systems are totally seperate they saw no problems.
On the other hand, the six shop there did know how to work the exchange server and utilize all it's features for collabrative work.
Now I contrast that with my most recent trip overseas, Bosnia. There the NIPR-net was run decently with frequent reminders to update the anti-virus software. However, I had some concerns about the support the civ contractors provided. For example, I took a system in after my CO had managed to fry the mouse port on his box. It's very easy to do when running on 220 volt electric systems. Anyway the problem was easily diagnosed and was an easy fix of swapping the Mobo. So when I turn it in they warn me that the hard drive will most likely be re-imaged as part of the repair. When I asked why the hell they needed to even bother with the HD when it was just a mobo prob, they told me it was standard procedure for any service. Upon further thought I now recall that this was just weeks after that same system had had its powersupply die and the CO was talking about how it had a new HD after he got it back. They reimaged the HD for that repair as well.
Oh and how can I ever forget the pain of the webfilter they used. Since when should http://www.joecartoon.com be blocked? Sure it's tasteless, thats why I wanted to go there. ;) What better way to deal with the stresses of military life than nuking hamsters?
Then there was the problems with some specialized systems we ran on the classified network. My unit had people scattered around all the bases in the US sector of Bosnia. We were to implement the use of a new integrated system. Problem was the six shop was never able to figure out how to get the systems to be able to see each other over the WAN.
This was a system that had supposedly been thoroughly vetted on state-side setups of the same network we were on, but evidently nobody had ever tried getting the systems to talk to each other from seperate locations through the encryption systems. As the network was based on the everpresent M$ exhcange server systems, I could find the remote systems in the My Network area. But the network people could (or would) never figure out what ports the systems needed open for the specialized apps to communicate, and of course I wasn't authorized to install any tools to determine the ports needed. At the end of our six months the systems were still not being used as designed because they couldn't talk to each other.
Other aspects of the IT environment I've seen are also of note.
About three years ago someone in my Guard unit got so upset with the lack of automation we had to work with that he solicited a donation of older systems from his employer. Even then the best systems in the unit were the three 266Mhz Compaq presario notebooks we the unit had received in 97. When t
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I don't know what you people are thinking. The military provides the same "quality hands-on experience" that you'd get from your neighborhood tech school. You spend 2 years learning to install Micro~1 products and configure low-end Cisco equipment. Likewise you could spend the same amount of time learning to replace fuses and solder wires in the "electrical technician" field.
You are not expected to know when or why you would do the things you've learned, only to be able to execute a given task when commanded to do so. It's grunt-level, mindless training for professional grunts.
Why on earth you would expect the military to provide any better training to enlisted men is beyond me -- if they wanted people with an education they'd find officers, who are *already* trained.
Just like most things, if your not in the right place at the right time you miss out. I've been lucky to recieve some great IT training from the DoD. As a Marine, I have the MOS of a 0659 (Data Communications Chief). When we deploy as a unit we take everything; server, switches, routers, cable, software, the works. One of things I enjoy the most is on that deployment, it isn't some double degree holding puke creating the network, it's me and my Marines. We do the planing, design, loading, and creation of it. It's like building a car just pulled from the junk yard. I can say that cause when we go pull the gear, it's like searching through a computer junk yard. There are those cases though that I have worked with the latest and greatest equipment. I've been on projects where we use all fiber equipment, to 110 miles of wirelss connectivity. Some people may have heard of ELB (Extending the Litoral Battle Field) where we used wireless equipment on ships, planes, vehicles, and even troops so that battle information can be passed. That technology is used today. I've transmitted data across steel lines, copper, fiber, radio (including HF, VHF, and SHF equipment). I know there are many in the DoD that haven't had the training like some have. Again, right place at right time. Yes there have been some rough times. Spending days, weeks, and months in heat, rain, and inside a steal floating can will be rough. If you can handle that, then join up. If not, be a civilian contractor. I know plenty of those pukes too. I know the Marines Corps has embraced technology, and is pushing it as hard as the budget will let us (thank you Gen. Grey). I know of plenty who have left ther service to move on to bigger and better jobs, and mostly it was because of the training they recieved from being in the military. I'll say it again, they just happen to be with the units that can/do provide a high level of training. Just a sugestion for those who don't recieve training, make your own training. Out here in the desert I work with the Army. The soldiers I have are traing only in one specific area. Some A+, some Win2k, some web pages. I brought the learning material I have with me, and we started a training program so that each of us can teach something we know. If you want to strive to become better, put Warcraft III on pause for a while, and just sit down to learn. I would be half of the training a person needs to excell in this line of work can come not from a classroom, but from the people sitting around you.
As the title generally says, I have had an extremely good experience with the Army and IT. Before you write this off as a "party" line, I honestly couldn't care who reads it, everyone that knows me knows this is how I feel. I started out (and still am) an 11C.. for the non-mil folk out there, I'm an Infantry grunt that knows how to fire a mortar system. But I got a degree in Electrical Engineering before working for the gov. Someone had to pay for it, right? I got into a really cool program in the Guard that lets me do infantry stuff on the weekends and two weeks during the summer (which, btw, is BS.... I get to go to The Sandbox for a year) but get paid as a DoD civilian, GS Scale with incentive pay, 9-5 monday-friday. It's a good chunk of change, only about 10-15K under going rate for a well trained security guru, but the bennies are great. Good insurance, retirement, alternate work schedules, get to pick new projects, involved in funding streams, etc.
My education was a much more professional one... my degree got the whole 74B garbage waived, and I go to some really cool black-hat type hacker schools, SANS training, Cisco schools, etc. I needed to brush up on Perl, so I dug into my budget, asked the boss, he was cool with it and I went. That easy. We have CCIE's, MSCEs, CCNEs, EMC Certified Engys, and even a guy with an Oracle Master's. I make sure I send as many people to training every year as I can, especially to places like D.C., Vegas, San Luis Obispo and make sure they have all the amenities. Makes everyone happy.
As far as the IT environment goes, it's hostile. Period. I'm responsible for the security on over 2400 nodes, and our IT shop is small with assets spread out over an entire state. It's a constant battle, and there are figurative bullets flying at us from every direction. If it's not the latest MS security hole, it's foreign interests trying to hack. But I like this. My job is never boring, and very fluid... in 4 years I haven't done the same thing in two days straight. I've got a decent manager, and everytime we get a new position funded, it gets filled in a matter of days, almost always with a really qualified person in it for the bennies.
IT decisions, on the other hand, are often boneheaded, pushed from the top down by people who don't know what they're doing and lock us into contracts that are inflexible and software or hardware is obsolete by the time we get it.
But, that's changing. New purchasing procedures let us choose best value for the buck, not lowest price. So now we buy Dell servers instead of having JoeBob Inc.'s servers shoved down our throats. Requiring EAL Compliance on everything we buy means that we're not going to get stuck with some fly-by-night company's product in a contract, when the company folds before the contract is fulfilled (Gain Systems, anyone?). If the product got EAL conformance, at least the company has enough cashflow to get it evaluated. We have a framework, caled the JTA-A (Joint Tactical Architecture - Army) which we must operate in, but that's a wide boundary and lets me pick some very cool projects at a whim, and start some pilot projects with new technology which get funded if they pan out. Because of our ability to bring in other military personnel as needed, as well as a very defined chain of command, we can and have reacted very quickly to threats in the security arena. For instance, we patched up almost 1500 windows systems for Blaster only three days after the warning came out. September 11 was the biggest trial by fire, we had over $1 mil of working telecom and data equipment with operators at WTC less than three hours after the first strike.
The only real issue I have is the budgeting process. We get X dollars every year allotted to us, which is nowhere near enough to run the shop efficiently, but suddenly in September we get an influx of cashflow in the million dollar range. So you put together quotes for everything that broke during the year, everything that will break, and all new stuff and
"If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat." -Sun Tzu
Actually I think it would be a good thing if the majority of the posters at /. spent a year working in defense-related IT. Then the frequency of the 'Evil Overlord American Conspirators out to Destroy the World' posts might drop a bit.
/. bad guys you might stop comparing Ashcroft with Hitler and coming off like such a bunch of ignorant reactionary asses.
In other words, some of you might actually have a clue about the topics on which you currently post with such 'righteous vigor'. Maybe if you all had a chance to see the real life difference between real bad guys and
There's some various civvie IT-types I've run across who were doing some work in one 'stan' or another over the past couple of years. Getting close to the situation has certainly changed their world view.
DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!
A little nonsense now and then, is relished by the wisest men... --Willy Wonka
The University at which I teach has many campuses on US Military bases.
I know of hundreds of officers and enlisted men who have improved their career prospects through further graduate level education.
As a CISSP I heard from one of the instructors that they do a lot of military and spook work with the NSA.
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I wonder how much information someone (say, a 'terrorist') could divulge from all this posting made by military servicemen. Could it be that all these points made by the 'grunts' of the service, outlining what they see as the good, bad, and ugly aspects of service would be potentially damaging to the US military if placed in the wrong hands?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
This is based on my 6 years of experience as a USAF network guy (3C0X1 - Computer and Communications Systems Operator)
The Pay - Contrary to what other may say, the pay isn't horrible. I'm 24 and a SSgt, been in 6 years, I gross over 50K a year, most of it tax free. There's also the free health care, etc... I have a new car, a nice place to live, and lots in savings. Those who complain about how much they make in the military don't know how to budget (or when to stop having kids).
(10) Don't join the military because you want training and experience. All the good jobs are filled with civilians and you'll spend more time training on fire extinguisher saftey (or homosexual policy) than network operations. The training you do get will be of marginal quality. And of course, you never know if you might end up spending 2-3 years doing something non computer related (ex. driving a forklift). Sure you can never get fired, but you're much better off getting a job in the scary real world. History favours the bold (or something like that).
(12) Civilians. These people fall in to two groups:
Contractors - work for a company that has a contract with the governemnt (SAIC, Lockheed, etc...)
DOD Civilians - work directly for the government.
DOD civilians are good at heart but incompetent. Many of them are retired military and wanted additional income. They have minimal training and work inside of an impossible bureaucracy. It really isn't their fault.
I love Contractors. Most of them are knowledgeable and hard working. As opposed to everyone else in the system, they can actually lose their job. People complain that they are taking away all the good jobs. It's true, but they do them better. What do you expect when they do their job full time for years in a row instead of the military guy who spends half his day shining boots and writing EPR's as well as changing jobs ever 2-3 years. When I call the distant end to troubleshoot a problem, I want to be talking to a contractor, the only people I've met so far who know what a 3 way TCP handshake is (god bless them). If you absolutely must work for DOD, do it as a contractor.
(1) As noted above, your first tech training will take place at Keesler AFB. Most of the information is outdated and the teachers lack any real world experience, simply repeating what they have read. For instance, when I went though in 1997 my network training was in Windows for Workgroups and Novell. I was running windows 95 at home already and haven't seen a DOD IPX network since leaving Keesler. Hardware training was on 386's running DOS something or other. I was running a cheap Pentium at home. In the end tech school was a waste for people with any prior experience but usefull for those still learning about HD's, IDE Cables, and Motherboards.
(2) After leaving tech school and arriving at your first base, you will start your CDC's (Career Development Course). OUtdated and overgereal are the key words. In 98 they told me that DOS was the most popular OS, thicknet was A-OK, and the motherboard is the green thing at the bottom of the case. They are also riddled with errors.
(3) During your first year or so at your new base you won't get much real experience. There is alot of meaningless work to do and not much good stuff. Those who have been there the longest will be doing the good stuff, you (as a new recruit) will be mowing lawns, sweeping floors, and picking up trash from the side of the road.
(4) If you are fotunate, you might get sent to some sort of in-house training. Usually this is where they sent one guy to a class and when he got back told him that he was going to be teaching it to other people. Who the teacher is depends as much on rank and name as it does knowledge. These classes are generally ok. The information is mostly current and you spend the whole day learning ithout distractions. You'll probably get a good foundation of IP addressing and Windows networks here but also some bad inf
Looks like the ACE and TAO frameworks are heavily used in military applications for some cool stuff with fighter jets, helicopters, radar systems, satellites, and a heck of a lot more.
Of course C++ is used for many cool non-military applications as well.
So, learning ACE and TAO and C++ probably won't hurt you.
As a former Navy man, I would just like to point out how many Air Force posts there are to this article. It warms my heart to know that so many chairs are being warmed by so many butts, and that the Air Force is getting it's fill of /. Aim High, indeed!
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
I came into the Army Signal Corps in MOS 31F - Mobile Subscriber Equipment Switching Systems Operator. It's the equivalent of a telecomunications engineering position. Learned all about digital encryption, multiplexer technology, methods of transmitting multichannel links, how to run the software that made it all work (it was some kind of *nix by the way), and actually build the network from the ground up.
Then, a Master Sergent at Fort Sill noticed my technical ability w/ computers when I came back from Korea and he put me in 75th Field Artillery Brigade's IT department. I got experience and training that enabled me to get into the workforce and work as a IT guy / programmer without having a degree. Employers see the military experience on the resume, and it counts for something.
However, I didn't re-enlist. The pay sucks.
The major is housed in the Computer Science department, but there are courses designed specifically for IT students and faculty uniquely dedicated to the major. More information is available at the link above.
Perhaps Army and Air Force have similar programs in their respective academies??
I was a 3361 back when we had those (that's running the mess hall and field mess db's), and once they got rid of that MOS they made me a 4066 (no training, mind you; just said "now you're small computer systems").
So, I wound up at GPAC for 1FSSG being the ONLY person who knew the first thing about fixing a computer (I don't know what most of you 40**'s do out in 29 Stumps, but the kids lately don't seem to learn jack about computers). The senior enlisted are usually either former grunts who would have been up-and-outed of 0300 so switched to 0100, or are career 0100's who are pissed off at the fact that they've been admin clerks their entire adult lives (most of the master gunny's and tops started out doing all their admin work in pen and paper only and never quite switched to the digital paradigm... maybe that will change as the older generation retires).
At least on the Marine side of .mil, our computer readiness is absurd. We have one massive WAN for each of the major commands, each in one big NT4 domain. Most nodes are Win98. Security is... well... nonexistant.
Now, I got excited when I heard about the BattleNet idea (a tactical wireless LAN for small units), but once I saw how it was implemented, I'm very glad I got out of the Corps.
All's true that is mistrusted
but I do work for a military research lab.
We have legit high tech. On a simplistic level, my group (which does communication technologies) uses about 1/3 1/3 1/3 linux/Mac/MS in our offices. Oh -- on gigabit. Advanced hardware, software, and scientific equipment abounds.
There's plenty of advanced technology in the lab, but it doesn't make it out to the field. Why? Maybe there are issues in supply chain, environment, training, power availability, cost, etc. I have no idea.
Do consider that more advanced systems are often more expensive, more complex to roll out, and more fragile. That doesn't mean that our boys overseas should be using Atari 2600s to manage the theatre, but an organization as large, multifaceted, and cautious as the military is bound to be slow to upgrade.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I found that a fascinating concept and it has stuck with me ever since - som people think graphically, some think procedurally. Translation from one to the other is not a big deal, so don't force people to learn a thinking method that does not work for them, let them think how they like and then translate to make both documentations available.
Each solution was then gone over line by line (or picture by picture) until the problem was thoroughly diagnosed by the entire class. In 12 weeks, you really would learn generic programming, and if you were lucky your first duty assignment allowed you to proactice what you just learned and apply it to a real language (meaning any computer language in use at the time - many people graduated "programmers" but then got assignments with no programming involved at all).
So when you ask - can the military teach programming... my answer is hell yes. In some ways better than most colleges. Sadly, right after learning how, most airmen quickly forget because they end up doing junk work that has no programming in it at all.
Many young troops pick this up as a hobby because their jobs are so unrelated to their desired career, they develope their skills. A few get a lucky duty assignment where they can actually develope their skills. A few pick up an inspirational contracted training class from a nearby college professor of a professional services company. Those lucky few end up decent programmers and/or IT professionals. The rest are probably not fit to load tapes.
Sadly, the military - like most guaranteed job scenarios offers no incentive to perform and very little incentive to stay in if you do perform - so over time most of the good folks leave and the result that is in any military IT unit, fewer than 1% are worth employing.
When I worked at the 7th Communications Group at the Pentagon (about 600 USAF, 500 civil service) I frequently felt like 15% of the people were doing all the work and carrying the other 85% on their backs. When I left (in 1994 - shortly after conversion to DISA), I would not have taken more than about 10 people with me if given the opportunity (yes, only 10 out of 1100 were worth it, ouch!). Several of those 10 eventually did end up at the same company.
Another anomally about the military way, is that rank has absolutely nothing to do with programming skill. That lends to the problem of no incentive for performing. Don't assume that a Colonel knows any more or any less than an Airman First Class. The Colonel pays more in taxes than the Airman makes, but they may have equal computer skills... I am not saying all high ranking officers are dumb, some of them are brilliant - but the skills are not reflected by rank at all.
Wow! If you'd ever thought about doing IT work in the military, these comments have to have put you off by now.
If not, maybe the possibility of getting shot/bombed will be a further dis-incentive?
Wired did a great article on IT on the frontline a short while back.
My experience is through my work. I work for a company that is a contractor for the DoD. We do IT work, Video TeleConferencing (my area), and all other manner of things for them. THIS is where the IT jobs working with the government and military are.
So far (I've only been with this company for a short while yet) everything I've seen leans to the government contracting things like IT work out, and it seems to be a good idea. The contract companies are generally better staffed and equipped to manage the IT needs of such organizations, and do a pretty good job. I think the government is moving this way more and more, in the wake of said "bashing"
but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
(note: this post is just me speaking.. I do not in any way represent anyone other than me, and certainly not my employer)
I've been working as a gov't contractor for about 6 months now, and it is nice in some respects. Most of the government workers at my base (which is about 80% civilian, 15% contractor and 5% military) are about as lazy as they come. The know they'll have a permanent job because it's basically impossible to fire a government worker (unless you steal or commit espionage) so they don't do anything. The government IT workers that they have here and simply stupid. I can't believe they are actually considered IT workers. They would never make it in the real world. Ever. At all. The only people that know anything are the contractors. The gov't employees get preferential treatment for finding jobs because the gov't can't fire them, so even if they aren't qualified, they can get the IT jobs.
That being said, contractors can get the short end of the stick often times, at least at my base. The gov't can have you fired for no reason, the contract houses often have bid so low that your pay sucks or the benefits are horrible, and the bosses are just a pain in the ass sometimes. The only useful thing I'm getting outta my contract is my clearance. I'm just hoping they decide some of us need to ramp up to TS instead of just secret. One contractor I talked to said: "As long as you are willing to move, and you have a clearance, you will never be unemployed." Something to think about.
I like working for the DoD simply because of all the money. I have so much cisco gear laying around it's disgusting. I have a full lab of equipment just to test will, 6509's, PIX 525's, VPN 3030's. Just piles of em. It's amazing. It's also nice not to worry about being downsized as long as your base isn't on the BRAC.
Plus, you can go work for the Navy in Hawaii. Who wouldn't want to do that?
It's a lot of work. The best training we get is in setting up our own networks from the ground up and running them off of diesel generators out in the field somewhere w/ a satellite uplink. We have to ddeal w/ a Wintel monopoly so the training we do I enjoy most is the Cisco router work. BY the time one of my Marines is relaly knowledgeable, it's about time for his 4 year enlistment to be up
This guy is way out there
I spent 21 years in the Navy as an electronics tech/electronics material officer. Along the way I completed an Electronics BS and a Computer Engineering MS via night school. I retired in 94. So, the IT world was limited to specific purpose mini-computer systems, dumb terminal/server combos, and a few desktops while I was on active duty. The maintenance folks did most of the systems maintenance. My military training was excellent, but it was for what is now lost art, discrete component repair and electromechancical device repair. When I left the military, I went into federal agency engineering support and worked primarily with the FAA and the IRS. Both agencies have serious shortcomings with the knowledge level of their government employee computer specialists. There was not a lot of new blood or folks who had continued their educations. The computer specialist field is filled with senior people that started their careers as main frame tape apes/system operators. Unfortunately, they now make decisions about system engineering and acquisition and are for the most part saved by a few knowledgable standouts and a large cadre of better trained contractors. I will say that the IRS has a dedicated and extremely competant crew of COBOL and Assembler programmers that seem to get the extremely complicated tax systems running correctly every year in spite of what Congress might do to change the tax codes.
I know someone whos pretty high ranking in the military, a civilian that is. But he tells me of the kind of computer security they have. Everything is totally locked down and security updates and patches are always installed. Computers are also monitered and logs probably taken. New user names and passwords are given out almost weekly to important people. And believe it or not. Top secret documents are never put on computers, they are still transfered with a person handucuffed to a briefcase. This person breifs another important person in a room that is sound proof, steel enclosed (like a giant bank safe). An armed guard posted at the door. And of course, you need to swipe in with proper ID or the steel door wont open. This person tells me that the IT people working at his location are very well trained and do not mess around with anything. They need the best computer security, and they have it.
Being currently in the Navy, I can say that there is a rate(aka job) in the Navy call the IT rate. Now the break down of this rate is two sided. On one side it is everything to do with surface radio and comms, and the other side is everything relating to computer admin.
The basic job skills are basic admin, with A+ certification, and a chance at Network + cert. Now the great thing about all this is that for any cert test you pass, the Navy will pay you back the money you layed down for the test. So for those $1000 + tests that you know you can pass, that is very useful.
But ultimatly it all depends on your own drive to learn, to work, and to play. To make any serious changes to the existing networks, you have to prove the cost effictiveness of the change, and show how secure, and pretty much just how much better it all is. But if you are good enough you can do what ever you want, you have one of the highest security clearences, free schooling, travel, all for the cost of having to follow a few orders. But if you are truely that good, then they will leave you alone mostly.
Waaaayyy back in 1987-89 while attending Indiana State University and getting my B.S. in Computer Science I got the opportunity to co-op for three semesters at Crane Naval Weapons Center near Bloomington Indiana.
It was a pretty interesting experience. The place was huge! Once I got thru the front gate I had another 5 mile drive thru rolling hills and woods before getting to building in which I worked.
I actually don't remember much of what I did, most of it was maintenance on old COBOL based systems the DoD used for inventory management within the Navy. The people I worked with were pretty cool though. Used to have some mean games of spades with some mathematician/statistics guys during lunch.
One of the oddest things was the overtime pay. In the fall my manager would come to me and say "Do you want to work some overtime? We have this overtime budget that we need to spend or we won't get approved for it next year." So regardless of what my workload was (usually pretty light) I would work a few Saturdays here and there for the extra $.
They offered me a full time position upon graducation, but the pay rate just wasn't there. Besides there were a lot of rumors floating about that the base was going to close or the operations like the IT dept. getting moved somewhere else.
I'm a retired military communications officer who put 20 years into the Air Force. I retired two years ago. Also, I started out as an enlisted guy (4 years), so I've seen the view from the bottom, too.
There's a lot of opportunity, both personally and professionally, if you can stomach the military long enough to make it a career. The pay and perks are better as an officer, but even an enlisted career offers certain benefits if you make it to retirement:
1. Income at 50% (or more) of your base pay for the rest of your life.
2. The best medical plan in the world. It's free for you and your family while you serve, and goes up to $460 per year for your entire family once you retire. (I've seen plans that charged more than that for a single month.)
3. Lot's of opportunities for education. Granted the tech schools can be pretty primitive, but the military will pay up to 95% of your tuition for any college courses you take. If you're an officer, there are programs where they will send you to graduate school *and* pay you your full salary while you're there. (I did it. There's nothing better than getting paid to go to school.)
On the downside, you can be moved anywhere, any time, with or without your family. You have to follow dress and personal appearance rules, and be nice to people who outrank you regardless of your opinion of them.
(These are not all bad. See the world while it's still there. And many people would benefit from not having to make their own fashion choices, take regular baths, and lose a little arrogance.)
Yes, there are a lot of contractors. However, that only makes the few remaining military people who understand technology even more valuable, as they become essential to managing the contractors.
The military runs some of the largest networks in the world. Even if you don't plan to go 20 years, spending 4-8 years in that environment will set you up for whatever else you may want to do with your life.
Another advantage of having some military service is that you can qualify for Veteran's Preference if you want to apply for a civil service job. I'm currently a regional telecommunications manager in DHS. I made the "top 3" on the list for this job partly because of veteran's preference. Every position I've hired for has included a majority of veterans on the candidate list largely because of the extra points they get just for having served in the military.
Government is not the place to be if you want to invent warp drive, but there are opportunities around if you can resist the urge to lecture the scum that rise to the top what idiots they are and eventually live long enough to replace them.
TLR
A man no more knows his destiny than a tea leaf knows the history of the East India Company
There is a downside though, not everyone gets into a good position, YOU'RE IN THE FRIGGIN MILITARY, you contantly have to bend over and take one for the team, and the pay sucks. And I almost forgot to mention temporary duty to places like Florida, this is where I'll be for the next four months :(. These are some reasons why I will be leaving in a couple years. But you have to take it for what it's worth, you get some of the best experience possible if you apply yourself.
I think that anyone decently knowlegeable could really do something good for themselves coming into the AF, you have an opportunity to really do a lot. It's funny though, since not to many people do anything with their career. I guess it's just to easy to slack off. If you are a really determined to make something of yourself then go for, come join me in New Jersey and learn. This is definately an experience that I could never have gotten somewhere else. If anyone has any other questions to ask me or would like some more insight into how things really are just drop me a line.
Well, I wouldn't say that the USAF has the best training programs or the best jobs, but some locations can be more interesting than others. Don't expect a whole bunch of lies from this end, but don't take my point of view as the point of view of the USAF or federal government either.
I am currenly an Active Duty Comminications Computer Systems Operator for the USAF. Our job is quite simple, the operation of computers, computer networks, and most things associated with them. This is a broad field, meaning you could be operating an ancient obscure PDP-11 doing ancient database work, manning a help desk for 12 hours a day, working computer and network security through various agencies, or even act as a plain old systems administrator. I have heard of jobs to include Sun Cluster Administration and things like that, but these jobs are rare and people are handpicked for them.
Our training is at a very basic minimum, covering Windows, Unix, TCP/IP, Networking Fundamentals, and proprietary military information that really isn't important unless you attend the technical school. This course is approximately 14 weeks long and requires very little effort to pass unless you have no previous knowledge of computers except how to turn one on. Most of it is regurgitation of information. Some like myself found the training a good overview of computing in general.
I will warn people however that the military is not for everyone. You will deal with hard headed ignorant people on a daily basis who make absurd requests. This could be any job except for it is in the military with military rules and laws. If you can conform and want a steady paycheck, maybe this is for you. If you would be interested in this career field talk to a USAF recruiter.
The career field is known as Communications Computer Systems Operator. There are other career fields in IT as well such as Programming, Technical Control (Communications Equipment and Routers, VOIP, etc.). More information about these career fields can be found at a USAF recruiting office.
I have been doing this for four years and can honestly say that I will not be reenlisting because I have other goals beyond the USAF. Some might like this lifestyle and others may not like it at all. It really depends on the person.
Because i've rarely wanted to keep working at the end of the day and I try very hard not to think of the projects i'm involved with. Contrary to popular belief, not very many IT jobs are cutting edge or interesting.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Don't even get me started on the differences between career fields and their SRBs (bonus for signing away a few years of your life).
For those of you watching at home, SRB = Selective Re-enlistment Bonus. This is money given to those in high-demand (and high-turnover) positions. When I got out I turned down an SRB of 3, meaning the bonus would be (3 times $figure times the # of years on the re-enlistment). 3 is quite high re: the SRB; it was a nice chunk of change for a lowly enlisted guy - about $22K before taxes - but still not worth it. YMMV.
Not to mention NO room for fast advancement.
This one bothered me, too. Epecially in the lower ranks, most people get promoted around the same time: the difference between Mother Theresa and Charles Manson [promotion-wise] would probably be about 4-6 months. As a silly-vilian, my career is on my shoulders.
The only way to move on to bigger and better things is to go officer.
However, officer = management. Seriously, officers are there to run things, not to do things.
Expect to spend 50% or more of your career away from your family as well.
This depends on your job category. I was in for 6 years and never went TDY (temporary duty). My brother has been in the USAF for 18 years, and he has been TDY for a total of less than two years and overseas (unaccompanied) for one. 3 != (50% of 18).
Ops tempo is crazy right now, and it's getting worse. Bush and co will run you ragged for shit pay.
BZZZZT! Red herring alert! This is not a Bush/Republican/political issue. I served under two presidents, and guess what? The pace at work depended on what was happening around the world at the time. Of course, I was in a different line of work; the demands on a PC tech are probably relatively static (modulo manning).
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I still remember the 'intro to programming COBOL' course, it was three weeks of self-paced (and basically self-taught) learning. But it gave me a very good background into what is really happening inside computers, knowledge that I still use every day. I also had a System 370 Assembler course, that has come in handy many times while trying to debug abends.
The hardest part was after I had been in the Corps for two years (and having been programming for seven years), and getting a new boss that was a "lateral move" into Information Systems. Her former Marine Corps job was playing in a Marine Band, but since she had six weeks of I.S. experience -- and a higher rank! -- she was my "boss". It was pretty funny, I could code circles around her, but she wanted to code-check my work.
Looking back, I'd recommend that you at least look into the idea of military service IT training - just remember that you're making a committment to your country, and that isn't something to be taken lightly nowdays. You could easily be sent "in harm's way" at short notice. You're not just signing up for the IT training, you're signing up for the whole package, the good and the not so good.
Semper Fi!!
Despite 99th percentile ASVAB scores in all categories(!), the three recruiters I spoke to basically said that IT type positions were all (or mostly) contracted to private corps, and therefore there wasn't really any chance for me to avoid being a front line grunt/target through military programs, only through private-sector work.
Needless to say, I didn't join the army.
Has this situation changed significantly?
-dave-
The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
A couple of people have already touched on this subject so I'll try to sum up. If you're interested in government IT work as a direct hire or (especially) as a contractor, choosing an IT specialty in the military could be beneficial for at least one reason: a security clearance. For those who don't already know...generally speaking, the clearance process can be a very lengthy and expensive process, depending on the level of clearance that you're getting. If you come out of the military with an existing clearance, that will definitely be a feather in your hat when you go knocking on the door at the Lockheed Martin's and Northrop Grumman's of the world. There is a quite a bit of government IT contracting work right now (at least in the DC metro area). However, a good percentage of that work requires a TS or TS/SCI clearance and in some cases a CI or lifestyle polygraph, as well. Because of the time and money that it takes to get a clearance, some companies are only interested in people with existing clearances. Obviously, that's not always the case but in general, I think it's a fair statement to make. So, while you might not get a tremendous amount of in-depth IT experience in the military, the experience and knowledge that you do get coupled with a security clearance will certainly give you a good set of credentials to work with if/when you join the private sector.
Training in the military isn't such a bad thing, since you can start with absolutely no knowledge at all about computers, like I did. I was in the Navy for five years, and during that time I learned enough (and studied enough) to become a Cisco Certified Network Professional. While they didn't pay for those certifications, or even the books, having access to the equipment and the time to learn on it was worth it for me. Yes, there are better jobs outside the military, and they definitely pay more, but there are some people who are in the military mostly because they just want to be. I wasn't one of those types, but there are a few rare times when working my current, private sector job that I do miss it. Overall, anyone going into the military to get IT training will only get as much out of it as they put into it, as I'm sure it is with most types of education.
I'm in the AF, I'm a communications officer with a psychology degree, and my troops come to me for networking and programming advice. We're currently working on deploying augmented reality equipment into training and the field, as well as developing a MMORPG-alike type platform for instruction and modeling. Behind the times my ass. Unskilled my ass. My programmer lead is a cable puller by trade who taught himself 3 programming languages. Sorry I'm not being negative like every other person on here--there's progress being made, you just can't make it on the forward edge of battle--you have to do it at the rear eschelon. It's stupid to try to fix a car that's currently driving down the road; you work on the car that is either in the shop or in prototyping. I can't believe I'm the first non-negative post that I've read.
...to do more than just learn a little bit about computers. So you're saying Army Basic Training/AIT is not all fun and games? There's hardly any TV?!? OH GOD WHAT IS THIS COUNTRY COMING TO?
When I joined the Marines, I aced the asvab, just like all of the slashdot readers would I'm sure, and I was offered a job working in computers. I was a 4066, small computer systems specialist. I of course went through regular marine corps basic training, 1 month at the pcp, physical conditioning platoon(pork chop platoon) to lose some weight first, and 3 months of regular basic training, a month of marine combat training at camp pendleton, and 3 months of i.t. training at the now defunct computer science school in quantico, va. We spent one month mowing lawns, painting, cleaning rifles, ect and 2 months actually going to class. Quantico is full of officer types, you know they don't like to get their hands too dirty. Anyways, the school started out with dos orientation, then windows 95. We learned how to run a banyan vines network, unix commands, file permissions, and cisco router interfacing and commands. We also learned about ethernet, token ring, and coaxial networks, subnetting ip, network construction and a little fibre optic networking. We learned basic computer repair and upgraded, learned how to securely delete information and how to run the magnets to wipe hard drives. For being such a short course, I thought the books were decently written, and my instructors very competent. We had a lot to learn in a little time, because every installation's i.t. needs were different, not all of the material would be applied. Honestly, when I got to my duty station, I found that the dos training was more usefull because there was still a whole glut of dos/win 3.1x machines to network and support on a banyan vines networking system. I learned a hell of a lot more doing the day to day work than I did in class. You know the funny thing, when I got out, I worked in the computer field for about a year and a half, and tired of the office politics, the excessive stress to low pay ratio, and stupid users. I moved back to my home town, got a job in Wastewater Treatment of all things, and now can sleep easy at night with my good pay and no stress job. Just my $0.02
but it seems most of them are for unrewarding and, sometimes, downright disappointing pork-barrel work that a local politician reeled in. Also, watch out for domestic-spying-smelling contracts. I saw a couple job postings for those and couldn't even work myself up to send a resume.
Also be prepared for top-down purchasing decisions...like spending several hundred thousand dollars on nice servers, WebLogic, and Oracle for a piddly-ass website that could have been done adequately with a few perl scripts and PostgreSQL.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
With a mixture of good-and-bad folks working in the SA trenches, NOC/NOSC, etc, and having to implement out-of-touch CIO/MAJCOM ideas/whims/policies based on some gee-whiz/virus threat/I-saw-it-at-a-convention-and-it-looked-cool thinking that said CIO/MAJCOM had no idea how to implement, or didn't comprehend the effects of said implementation. And didn't care about the cost.
I've been working IT for the USAF for 4+ years now as a civilian, and that pretty much decribes it.
Other than the $, how different from the real world is that?
BTW, you USAF Comm guys, how long did it take YOU to block port 135?
yes its true, once you get active you learn a lot more through experience. you would probably work in an S-6 or commo or whatever your group wants to call it. our S-6, when we got deployed, managed to have a post intranet and website with all kinds of dvd rips and thousands of mp3's, plus we had internet. the website was well done too. they had all the latest software (doubt the army authorized and paid for it though..) they built computer from parts, fixed others, and pretty much had customer support for the entier base, all in a remote country you never heard of. the military is only as advanced in this area as it's soldiers make it. the experts only look at the military training and standards, not the reality of what goes on in units. it can be poorer or better, but either way we get the job done.
The military is primarily for the psychologically immature/uneducated/sociopathic cross section of the population who lacks the sorely needed critical skills neccessary to think for themselves and to question authority. Providing they have the intelligence, one should find a more creative outlet for their skills then to waste it contributing to the decline of culture.
It will also put you to sleep, even after two sixpacks (pots) of your preferred liquid stimulant...
...you can feed'em information, but you can't make'em think
I've noticed a trend in the posts from former or current military folks. The posts with the useful/interesting info weren't talking about the "state of IT" in the military exclusively. They were talking directly to the people thinking about entering the military, offering sometimes very good advice. I would like to continue with that topic.
My experience with the AF taught me some things. The tech schools did not teach me what was useful, the experience of being in the AF taught me those useful things. Just being in the military (depending on the job of course) will teach you how to deal with massive amounts of stress. Or you will go crazy and my job could get pretty stressful. It will teach you how to deal with seemingly impossible situations. How to handle difficult people. How the world works in general and even though it's a cliche it's still true, it's not what you know it's who you know.
I have heard it said several different ways so far and here are the main points. Know what you are getting into. Do your homework about the job. Get it guaranteed in writing. Don't expect the military job to translate at all into civilian life. If it does translate it's a bonus. Know why you are going into the military.
I went in to (1) get college money (GI Bill), (2) to travel somewhere (San Angelo Texas, Monterey CA, Osan AB Korea) , (3) to grow up some. I knew I wasn't really ready to finish college and didn't feel like stacking up the debt required. You've probably heard this before, my parents made too much to get financial aid and they made too little to actually help pay for the college. I essentially approached my enlistment with a totally mercenary attitude. I squeezed everything I could out of the experience within the four years I was in.
What did I get? I got the GI Bill money which helped pay for two degrees. The money for education from the AF isn't as good as the Army but geting $10800 for a $1200 investment isn't too shabby. I paid for a car, My tech school got accepted as transfer credit at the college I attended after my enlistment ended netting me 22 hours of foreign language credits. I was a Korean linguist. I got a TS/SCI clearance that I could have used to get a contractor job. I let the clearance lapse but that's another topic. That clearance can translate into a pretty choice job. As has been said in other posts getting a clearance as a civilian can be well nigh impossible. Let the military pay for it. I got to live in Monterey California for a year which was great and I got to live in Korea for a year which wasn't. I took some college classes while at my last duty station in Texas and the AF helped pay for it. The material we had to leard at tech school wasn't conceptually difficult it was the speed at which we had to learn it that was hard. This learning at high speed for a year and a half helped my abilities of concentration tremendously. College wasn't intimidating at all anymore. It didn't even rate as something which was onerous, it was fun in comparison to training I did in the AF.
What kind of computers did I use? You're gonna love this. I used a teletype console and the input went directly to tape on a mainframe. My unit in Korea still had some machines called Mod 40's that read paper punch tape, don't know what they were used for. As I left Korea those teletype consoles were being replaced with PC's. This was in 1988-89.
One of the major problems is that IT/Computing decisions made by the DoD and government in general, are made by people with zero IT/Software/Computing experience. It's a marketing game and nothing more.
I joined the Army in 1988. At that time, I had already worked 2 years in IT for a consultant building PCs and servers and installing LANs. I had also taught myself Turbo Pascal and worked with 6 other people to write a BBS for the PC. So I joined the Army thinking I would get some great communications training working with satelites and computers.
Well, here is what happened. I left on Feb 1st. Basic Training was, well, physically hard but I made it through. Next, I go to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) at Fort Gordon, Ga. By week 3 of training, they had me take a test and quickly bumped me up to the last 4 weeks of training because I was correcting some of the instructors (and turned out to be right).
Having gotten done with AIT in 7 weeks instead of 6 months, I got to go to Airborne School and earn my jumpwings. So, there it was, Labor Day and I was showing up at Fort Bragg, NC assigned to the 82nd Airborne. They found out what I could do with computers and immediately sent me to headquarters. I ended up a database programmer for a year. I sat at a desk writing code for $15k a year while I had to work with (and often provide instruction to) government employees earning three or even five times as much.
Finally, in 1990, I got sent down to the 313th MI Bn and got to actually do stuff in the field that involved computers, radios, etc. with the intelligence guys and gals. Desert Storm was a hoot and I felt like I made a difference.
But when it came time to re-enlist, I realized that I had learned NOTHING in the Army that I had not: (1) brought in with me and (2) improved on my own by self-learning.
I left the military, got a civilian job and was soon making 4 times as much money and I never had to salute anyone. =)
If you know absolutely nothing about IT, you will learn something in the Army. You will also leave the military with some experience on your resume and possibly a security clearance (very valuable right now).
But since you are already reading Slashdot, there is probably nothing in terms of IT skills or money to be gained in the military (though I enjoy knowing that I can kill out to 200+ meters with almost any decent rifle with a good caliber).
That having been said, I still am proud that I helped pay for the price of Freedom in America (even if John Ashcroft is taking it away) and that I served something bigger than myself in my formative years. So while I learned very little in terms of IT, the experience I gained in life has been priceless.
And this is different from the civilian world in what way exactly?
Ah, I see. It's OK because the civilian world does it too? C'mon... I'm all for promoting people with their shit together, but the fact that the current system encourages bullshit artists is wrong. Results should get you promoted, not flash-and-dance.
I should point out that rank and promotion are utterly unimportant to me, unlike most of the military... let me explain.
I'm a physician, residency-trained and board-certified. I take care of patients... that's what I do, and there is no greater responsibility. There's nowhere to go educationally speaking (I already have a terminal degree, and specialty post-doctoral training), unless you want to go to school just for fun. Why would I want to climb the ladder as a physician? So I can become an admin type and trade my hard-won skills and experience for some kind of paper-shuffling gig? That would be advancement how? My feeling on this issue differs from yours, but our positions are totally different. Going into a management position was a step UP for you... whereas for me it would actually be a step BACK.
One of the big things that drove me crazy about the military medical corps was that they won't let doctors be doctors. If you want to get to full-bird colonel, you generally won't get there by being a good doctor. Low complication rates? Big deal. High patient satisfaction? So what. Able to "move the meat" in the clinic? Bah. You get to full-bird by pushing your clinical responsibilities off onto your colleagues, and becoming the "go to" guy for every senior officer's pet project... you get there by making yourself highly-visible in the command for admin stuff... NOT for patient care. I personally couldn't care less if I'm a captain, or a colonel... I'm doing the same job, regardless of my rank, and nobody orders me to take care of a patient in a way I find improper... rank be damned. I've had colleagues "ordered" by senior ranking physicians to do things they found medically objectionable... "Hello? IG's office?" That's one of the problems with military medicine... you serve two masters: your medical/ethical/professional obligation to the patient, and the military rank structure, and they don't always want the same things.
The only reason promotion even exists for physicians (and the only reason most even care about it) is because they tie your pay to your rank. Personally, I'd change that, and simply tie it to years of service, regardless of rank... but I'm not in charge.
I was active duty for 4 years. Airborne Infantry. I received seven(7) Army Achievement Medals in that time. First choice of school slots. All my promotions were after minimum time in grade. You think I got that by being humble and quiet? No. I got that by accomplishing the mission no matter what it took and making sure the right people knew it.
Good for you. If you were a competent and effective soldier, I would expect you to get promoted. Accomplishing the mission no matter what is a given... if you can't do that, leave the military. Making sure that people "knew it" is a FAR CRY from the kind of blather that goes on OPRs/EPRs... and you know exactly what I'm talking about (either that or you haven't read very many). You can have a guy who pushes a button for a living, and if you read his EPR, it'll make it sound like he's the only thing standing between freedom and the communist hordes, in addition to personally saving half the defense budget. I'd personally like to see a person's EPR/OPR actually reflect what they do... having to cut through all the bullshit is a waste of time, and dilutes the accomplishments of the true "AJ squared away" types. It's the military version of "grade inflation," and it's just as bogus.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The arm forces have invaded St. Lawrence College (Kingston Ontartio), there swarming all over the college pretending to be students in Electronics Engineering Technician program (EETN).....
Seriously the Canadian Arm forces has sent 100 personal to be trained as electronics technicians. EETN covers IT work, the program is a jack of all trades idea, yes Network installation, consumer electronics repair, phone systems, other types of communication systems, PC trouble shoot and repair, CRT repair(hence trainded around High voltages), UPS's (as well as take them apart and repair them) etc etc If your interested in reading about the program just go to http://www.sl.on.ca for more information
btw whoever is wondering I'm a receint grad from St. Lawrence College from the EETN program
FrostByte03
I sure hope the writer was defending us from Olie North when he along with Jello-Brain Reagan and George "My dad did business with the Nazis" Bush Sr. were propping up Saddam in Iraq against Iran and funding and arming Osama bin Ladin against the "Evil Empire" in Afganistan. I'm sure the writer was defending us against those dangerous peasants in Central America who were such a threat that the American military needed to train Contra death squads to squelch their uprising. Keep on defending us, that is, Haliburton, Exxon, and the rest of BIG OIL, from those who resist our theft of it from them.
I am currently enlisted in the USAF and I love it. I am currently working an IT job and I work with various NEW equiptment and can get my hands on any new device out there. As far as training is concerned I get plenty of that. They are paing for my CCNA, MCSE and next week I will be TDY in Los Angeles for a SANS Course (Track 1). It just all depends on your location and the shop you work in.
they use Suns there now (at Osan).
Can rest easy in the knowledge that they will be able to crack into the US Military's computers at will. They run Windows.
I am a civil servant in the IT field. I get to work with all sorts of fun Cisco equipment and a bunch of ATM equipment also. This would be fun even if they didn't pay me, but I receive a very generous salary for someone only 3 years out of college. The gov't has a special salary rate for folks in the IT field. I personally make about $66k which is grand!!!!
I receive all sorts of free training for real work as well as for certifications (just in case I don't like my job and want to get out). Uncle Sam is paying for my graduate education. I have a clearance (again...handy if I leave). I also have a good happy feeling that I am helping with the war on terror and supporting all of the men and women who are protecting this great country.
In a Burroughs environment.
I don't want to talk about it.
The Marine Corps was not always under MS's thumb. They used to have the largest Banyan network in the world. If memory serves me correctly, they used to have over 10K servers under Banyan. We had problems under Banyan, but nothing like they have under MS. I left the MC before they discarded Banyan, but everyone knew it was coming. Banyan was a great system, but MS and other reasons made it obsolete. But the troops were not always as poorly trained as they appear now (in IT training, not combat). I saw it as a Sgt back in the early 90's. The training changed at Quantico (Computer Science School) to where the NCO's in the field had to take the new troops under our wing and train them because they were darn near incompetent when they graduated. It was sad to see that the Data Dinks had fallen so low. Yes, the MC does train a lot, but I was in charge of the Micro Repair shop, Network Control, Mainframe Ops and Banyan Admininstration as a Sgt. I walked away from that billet with a personal request from HQMC to do circuit provisioning for the MC before it went to DISN. I had some Corporals who I would not let them touch my PC's for any reason. This was when A+ was a four hour course and a test to be certified. I think the MC has gone the wrong way in computing (toward MS) but their are individuals who are intelligent and knowledgeable and have learned on their own other operating systems and have become superior Data Dinks. As for those who rely on MS..... I shake my head but have no sympathy for you.
Calm down. I live in Santa Fe. I went to UNM and lived in Albuquerque for several years before that. I regularly am in Los Alamos because I have family there. I am in Socorro at least once per year.
You mistakenly assume I'm an idiot and mistakenly assume that I need a geography lesson.
I couldn't believe it when the DOHS chose all MS products at a gigantic expense the week a number of security holes were found. Read my jornal for a rant about it.
... during Desert Storm, we had a laptop based system that was brand new, that means untested in the field. They told us how it was going to change the whole front-line concept of ELINT (electronics intelligence) and really talked it up.
... until the temp got up over 120 and the laptops started overheating. We soon realized that we could not sit them on top of the encryptiion devices (which got hot) and that bought us a few more hours. Finally, we started wetting our "sandstorm scarves" and putting them on top of the laptop to allow evaporation to buy us the rest of the daytime hours.
... it is something you learn on your own while under fire (sometimes literally).
First, we had to get rid of the floppies. Sand and floppies do not mix. So out into the desert we go and for a few hours it worked great
Now this is just the hardware. I will not even get into the issues we had doing manual database changes in the field. No floppies, remember. Well, we found a way, but it was ugly.
So while defense contractors and government civilians might have designed this crap, it is the men (and now women too) in green (or desert camo) who have to actually make it work by any means possible. This is not something you learn in a class
That means I'm a contractor. I work at a federal agency doing IT. The A-76 program is Pres. Bush's plan to 86 the entire civil service and make all federal employees private-sector. The advantages are, you can get hired without a lot of BS, and I consider myself reasonably well paid. The disadvantages are that, unlike a civil service worker, I can be fired without a lot of BS (or any BS), and I don't have a retirement plan.
Also, tomorrow Washington, D.C. is closed for the day, because we are going to get hit by a hurricane. I will have to take a vacation day or two while the Feds (the civil service folk) probably get to take catastrophe leave or telecommute.
My commute is 1/2 hour on reasonably clean and air conditioned Metro trains, although the weather here sucks. My last job was in SoCal where the weather is perfect and you had to drive 3 hours a day on clogged freeways to commute 15 miles.
I was never in the military, and I am fortunate indeed to have one of the 3 or 4 gummint jobs that doesn't require a security clearance. More than 1,000,000 (!) DC area jobs -do- require a clearance just to get in the door to the job interview, and clearances are impossible to get unless you already have one.
The clearance people are said to care a whole lot about numerous categories of completely mindless bullshit, never mind that the spies they manage to catch (e.g. that Hansen dude who betrayed all the FBI secrets) tend to be straight-arrow squares from the Knights of Columbus. It is said that the jobs become more stressful the higher the clearance you have, but how the fsck would I know.
A very widely pushed and thus soon to be disseminated suite worked on by my last employer also saw an alarming lack of clues related to even the most basic security concepts. It is pathetic watching the superficial rubber stamping of accreditation, when it is clear that the developers do not understand their own product OR the security necessary to run them with even the most insecure requirements outside of password.
What any admin, programer, or technical supervisor should know especially for military and other sensitive systems:
- Hint1: Taking months to implement a non-static db stored login password system is silly when there is no obfuscation or session encryption (or anything else) for the sign in... yep, clear text
- Hint2: Try understanding what clear text is and why it is bad
- Hint3: SSL is not data encryption, SSL is not data encryption, SSL is not data encryption.
- Hint4: Learn what a message digest and hashing algorithms are and what they do
- Hint5: No, they do not encrypt files
- Hint6: Learn what the idea of Access Control Lists is all about
- Hint7: No, ASP is not "like VBScript" anymore than Desert like a 3 inch high slice of chocolate cake from IHOP... one is _an_ example of one particular available language for ASP
- Hint8: Someone touted and revered as an ASP expert getting 60k+ should understand this at least
- Hint9: Information Assurance is not simply using a password to control access to a virtual document repository... thus please don't give this as your answer to "What methods IA measures do you use with stored files submitted by users?"
- Hint10: Data Integrity, please learn what this is
- Hint11: If you are getting 90k and are labeled as a Java and VB developer specializing in Windows, then please at least be able to do something
The sad thing is that not ALL the coders are like this. There are really good engineers, developers, system admins, and even managers out there. However, the environment is openly hostile to anyone clued in. There are those gems of customer reps that recognize the need for real results (good ones) over more politics, bureaucracy and the welfare system known as government contracting. These sadly are recognized and snatched up by various black ops leaving a void to be filled by more complacent sloths. Really high security acquisitions however have their own unique set of politics, so you can't just win by following them often.So, from my experience it is not merely a lack of training or opportunity but the overall environment that is the problem. You can take the most talented, motivated and dedicated individuals and through organizational bureaucracy reduce their efforts to that of a inebriated monkey with severe head trauma and a penchant for self mutilation. Needless to say, the three virtues listed above then take a nose dive.
The training come is Computer Based Training style and it's completely done on your own time.
You can find training on anything from how to use a computer to how to build your very own router/firewall/printserving coffeepot.
I had the opportunity to do some and it's pretty good haveing some knowledge in the subjects I chose to get "official" training. It is however bandwidth intensive and I had a hard time finding someplace that I could be for a while without losing my connection to the brass or whoever.
The company they use is, I guess, used by some other large organizations. You can find it at here although I think that the Website has been pretty b0rked lately with all the securtiy stuff.
Anyway I figured i could maybe shed some light. Even if I am a bit late.
I will say this, government is _THE_ place to go if you want very generous funding for developing of a product that you will later refine and make usable enough to sell in the marketplace. This is assuming you divorce yourself of all professional ethics of course.
I am a US Signal solder in currently in Iraq. I have my CCNA, studing for my RHCE, and the only linux guru in the Army it seems like at times. My five years in the army have taught me this about the goverment IT. They are more worried about following regulations then doing anything right. The people who write the regulations have no idea what they are writing about. The admin fallow the regs religously without any thought of what they realy need to do to get a single task done. I am suprised that anything works. You will never hear this, "How do we do this Right?" You will hear, "What does the regulation say?" In the fast paced IT market this is a bad way to do bisness. This is the truth take it for what you will.