I worked at DOJ for years, I was there from WordPerfect 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 (so bad) and finally a version that worked ok, WordPerfect for Windows 6.1. WordPerfect is a legacy item, it is not something new. Also, the US Courts use WordPerfect as the defacto wordprocessor in all 94 judicial districts.
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.
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I worked at DOJ for years, I was there from WordPerfect 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 (so bad) and finally a version that worked ok, WordPerfect for Windows 6.1. WordPerfect is a legacy item, it is not something new. Also, the US Courts use WordPerfect as the defacto wordprocessor in all 94 judicial districts.
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.