26 ms·

I've enjoyed working in national security and defense. It's a laid-back environment and I can leave work at work without feeling stressed.

ryandrake 11y ago
What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.
- morga3sm 11y ago
  I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.
sciguy77 11y ago
Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 paid holidays, and when you get home you are simply done with work until the morning of the next workday. It does not matter much if you do your job well or do it poorly, because there are so many other people working on it that you will never get recognition for a job done well, nor will you get any blame for doing it poorly, so long as it does what it says on the box. The deadlines also vary by contract, but as every layer of middlemen adds its own padding, it wouldn't be remarkable to have two years to develop yet-another-CRUD-app with zero scalability, compatibility, or interoperability requirements. No one doing the actual work is a direct government employee, because the uniform pay schedules are completely incompatible with industry norms. The government employees are simply there to make sure the contractors do what is required. The net result is that you can get all your work done in just 2 hours and look busy for 6, or amble through it at a sloth's pace, gold-plating everything, achieving 100% test coverage, using ordinary software as a teaching lab for industry best practices, and such. There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    > There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work. These are the same downsides you see in the private sector.
  - unknownknowns 11y ago
    Are you in SIGINT? If you're not in SIGINT, I agree with everything you've said, otherwise my experience has been pretty different likely because I'm in SIGINT. Most of us are employees and the work can be pretty satisfying and rewarding, especially when you can see the effects and/or results when you're just a small cog in the machine. It's possible we're in different countries, though :-).
  - hipsters_unite 11y ago
    11 or 10 paid holidays? Do you mean that's the total number of holiday days you get in an entire year? Does that include public holidays?
    - goldbrick 11y ago
      To me as a US English speaker this meant public holidays, since we normally call the other type of holiday "vacation". He probably gets at least 10-15 of those as well.
    - logfromblammo 11y ago
      The federal government has exactly 10 federal holidays: New Year's Day, MLK Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Government controlled sites are closed on those days. That means contractors can't work at such a site on those days. Rather than requiring their employees to work elsewhere, contractor companies often just concede that their employees can get a holiday too, and most of them even make it paid time off. Some companies observe different holidays, such as by adding Christmas Eve and the day after Thanksgiving, and removing Columbus Day. There is no such thing as public holidays in the US. Some days are bank holidays. Some days are school holidays. Some days are federal holidays. But there is no law that requires any employer to give all of its nonessential employees paid time off on any particular day. The only sort-of-exception is that an employer can't prevent someone from voting on Election Day, but that does not have to be paid leave. Wal-Mart, for instance, has only 5 paid holidays: Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. (Note that Easter is always on a Sunday, a time when many people already have a day off from work.) And if you get holiday bonus pay for working on those days, your hours are rumored to be cut afterward to compensate. Some companies are also generous enough to allow 80 additional hours of paid time off every year, to be used as either sick leave or vacation days.
- unknownknowns 11y ago
  I'm a full-time employee. Managers and government benefits are a pretty big part of it. Work hours are very flexible (some roll in at 6am, others 10am), lengthy vacationable time, etc. Like morga3sm said, we want to do things correctly. It has its downsides of course: getting a TS security clearance can be stressful, but that goes away afterwards; not being able to tell your SO what you do other than high-level stuff; career advancement and progression can be a long process and you basically know where your salary is going to go when you first start (because it is standardized); and so on.
  - samwiseg 11y ago
    I find that incredible (in a good way!) My idea of govt organizations was strict dress code, clock in at 8 AM on the dot, leave at 5 PM sharp, unknowable bureaucracy above your head.
    - unknownknowns 11y ago
      Yep, that was my idea at first too! But in the summer I see people in flip flops and shorts :-) Execs still wear suits, but us lowly engineers not so much.
- NDizzle 11y ago
  I have a good friend who lives in Alabama and works for one of the many DoD contractors. When he leaves work at 5pm he actually can't access his work email. Nobody can send him anything from work on an unsecured line. When he leaves work at 5pm on a Friday, nobody can contact him about work related things until he is on site at 8am on Monday morning. He's a senior level unix admin. That can't ever be paged. I'd say that's pretty okay.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    Depends on the company and facility situation. I worked for several years in such an environment, but the facility was open 24/7. You could be paged at any time for critical issues, but of course would always have to come in to find out what it actually was. Not being able to bring work home just led to the expectation that you would spend more time in the office.

ryandrake 11y ago

What a world we live in. Defending the security of a nation = laid-back, no stress. Writing yet another CRUD backend for a mobile app = crazy hours and ulcers.

morga3sm 11y ago
I mostly agree that the environment in government contracting is pretty laid back. We definitely have surge times, but generally we're focused more on getting things done correctly over fast. I think there's also a good understanding that people aren't as effective when they work over 40 hours/week for consecutive weeks.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Having been in government, this seems to be the opposite of what I've seen. Makes me think it is fully a byproduct of culture, independent of the work done.

sciguy77 11y ago

Woah, can you expand on this? Are you a contractor or a government employee? What makes it laid back? Are the deadlines just more reasonable?

logfromblammo 11y ago
It depends on the contract. For the most part, the scrutiny of government auditors ensure that you actually can't work more than 40 hours in a single week. Sometimes the contract also ensures that the work cannot be done outside of a government-controlled facility. So if you're the actual do-the-work peon instead of someone in any of the several tiers of useless middlemen, you work regular 8 hour days, get 10 or 11 paid holidays, and when you get home you are simply done with work until the morning of the next workday. It does not matter much if you do your job well or do it poorly, because there are so many other people working on it that you will never get recognition for a job done well, nor will you get any blame for doing it poorly, so long as it does what it says on the box. The deadlines also vary by contract, but as every layer of middlemen adds its own padding, it wouldn't be remarkable to have two years to develop yet-another-CRUD-app with zero scalability, compatibility, or interoperability requirements. No one doing the actual work is a direct government employee, because the uniform pay schedules are completely incompatible with industry norms. The government employees are simply there to make sure the contractors do what is required. The net result is that you can get all your work done in just 2 hours and look busy for 6, or amble through it at a sloth's pace, gold-plating everything, achieving 100% test coverage, using ordinary software as a teaching lab for industry best practices, and such. There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  > There are plenty of downsides, of course. The work is never glamorous, and you never really have much say in what you do or how you do it. You have zero job security, as you could be out of work if the wind changes direction in Washington, DC. The codebase will always be complete garbage when you are first introduced to it. The unimaginative and slow environment is not stimulating, so you absolutely must have a hobby or side-project that can engage you mentally outside of work. These are the same downsides you see in the private sector.
- unknownknowns 11y ago
  Are you in SIGINT? If you're not in SIGINT, I agree with everything you've said, otherwise my experience has been pretty different likely because I'm in SIGINT. Most of us are employees and the work can be pretty satisfying and rewarding, especially when you can see the effects and/or results when you're just a small cog in the machine. It's possible we're in different countries, though :-).
- hipsters_unite 11y ago
  11 or 10 paid holidays? Do you mean that's the total number of holiday days you get in an entire year? Does that include public holidays?
  - goldbrick 11y ago
    To me as a US English speaker this meant public holidays, since we normally call the other type of holiday "vacation". He probably gets at least 10-15 of those as well.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    The federal government has exactly 10 federal holidays: New Year's Day, MLK Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day. Government controlled sites are closed on those days. That means contractors can't work at such a site on those days. Rather than requiring their employees to work elsewhere, contractor companies often just concede that their employees can get a holiday too, and most of them even make it paid time off. Some companies observe different holidays, such as by adding Christmas Eve and the day after Thanksgiving, and removing Columbus Day. There is no such thing as public holidays in the US. Some days are bank holidays. Some days are school holidays. Some days are federal holidays. But there is no law that requires any employer to give all of its nonessential employees paid time off on any particular day. The only sort-of-exception is that an employer can't prevent someone from voting on Election Day, but that does not have to be paid leave. Wal-Mart, for instance, has only 5 paid holidays: Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. (Note that Easter is always on a Sunday, a time when many people already have a day off from work.) And if you get holiday bonus pay for working on those days, your hours are rumored to be cut afterward to compensate. Some companies are also generous enough to allow 80 additional hours of paid time off every year, to be used as either sick leave or vacation days.
unknownknowns 11y ago
I'm a full-time employee. Managers and government benefits are a pretty big part of it. Work hours are very flexible (some roll in at 6am, others 10am), lengthy vacationable time, etc. Like morga3sm said, we want to do things correctly. It has its downsides of course: getting a TS security clearance can be stressful, but that goes away afterwards; not being able to tell your SO what you do other than high-level stuff; career advancement and progression can be a long process and you basically know where your salary is going to go when you first start (because it is standardized); and so on.
- samwiseg 11y ago
  I find that incredible (in a good way!) My idea of govt organizations was strict dress code, clock in at 8 AM on the dot, leave at 5 PM sharp, unknowable bureaucracy above your head.
  - unknownknowns 11y ago
    Yep, that was my idea at first too! But in the summer I see people in flip flops and shorts :-) Execs still wear suits, but us lowly engineers not so much.
NDizzle 11y ago
I have a good friend who lives in Alabama and works for one of the many DoD contractors. When he leaves work at 5pm he actually can't access his work email. Nobody can send him anything from work on an unsecured line. When he leaves work at 5pm on a Friday, nobody can contact him about work related things until he is on site at 8am on Monday morning. He's a senior level unix admin. That can't ever be paged. I'd say that's pretty okay.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  Depends on the company and facility situation. I worked for several years in such an environment, but the facility was open 24/7. You could be paged at any time for critical issues, but of course would always have to come in to find out what it actually was. Not being able to bring work home just led to the expectation that you would spend more time in the office.