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I'm in the industry... It's a constant psychological game. The type of highly educated people necessary to pull off these ventures are less interested in bein

I'm in the industry... It's a constant psychological game. The type of highly educated people necessary to pull off these ventures are less interested in being part of the MIC than they used to be. Nationalism in that crowd is thankfully much less aggressive than it was during the cold war. As such, founders have resorted to lying about their goals so they can expand their applicant pool for developing the tech, then "pivot" and get acquired by Raytheon et al. I also think to some extent there are employees who know but semi-appreciate the cover. In a prior life, I worked on some stuff that's, unfortunately, currently being used to murder people in the middle east. That just doesn't make good small talk at parties.

eschneider 3y ago
Rest assured, founders who'll lie to their applicant pool about that will lie to their applicant pool about anything inconvenient.
buildsjets 3y ago
It may have hurt me financially and limited my career opportunities, but this is one reason why I refuse to work on any technology that requires me to have a security clearance. It's a decision I made way back at the end of the last century and it has served me well throughout ~25 years of aircraft development while the world has been at continuous war, and mostly kept me out of military programs. Also, I took one look at the SF86 and said F that, no government deserves that information, so I didn't get screwed in the Department of State OPM hack like all the other suckers.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > may have hurt me financially and limited my career Weapons doesn’t pay as well as making people click ads. The people working on this stuff are usually doing so because they believe it’s the right thing.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    Actually, working for DOD programs has several advantages: 1) The pay is pretty good. It's not FAANG-level pay, but it's generally better than non-FAANG pay, without so much competition. 2) The work-life balance is excellent, as long as it's in a place you want to live. No 80-hour weeks, as overtime is generally prohibited unless approved by the customer (and then you get overtime pay). Time is tracked and paid by the government on an hourly basis, so they don't allow overtime unless necessary. No unpaid "exempt" overtime. 3) Generally stable employment. It's hard to find people with a security clearance, so it's hard to get fired unless you're a really poor performer. You probably don't have to worry about dealing with stack ranking unlike many regular jobs.
    - 486sx33 3y ago
      It’s rather funny to me - that you cannot get security clearance unless you were born in the USA, against the backdrop of the level of contribution von Braun provided.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > you cannot get security clearance unless you were born in the USA This is not true.
        486sx33 3y ago
        Is it only certain levels of security clearance then ?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Not that I know of. Even Yankee White and TS-SC can go to naturalised citizens. Hell, our current Secretaries of Energy and Homeland Security are foreign born.
- agapon 3y ago
  Hope you find comfort in fact that smart guys in China don't have such reservations and smart guys in North Korea don't have any options.
autoexecbat 3y ago
> less interested in being part of the MIC than they used to be It's just TC being too low Plenty of us are happy, even pleased, to make weapons.
petertodd 3y ago
I'd hope some of these employees are looking at what is happening to Ukraine and reconsidering their positions. Without weapons of your own, you're beholden to unfriendly nations with their own weapons. Certainly I get the sense that a lot of Ukrainians have reconsidered their own views. There's people I know who I doubt would have ever involved themselves in weapons development, who have gotten into it and related things.
- AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
  What's used in Ukraine today may be killing Gazans tomorrow. I'm not an absolutist, I'm still in the industry, but I have rules on what I'll build for people.
  - shiroiushi 3y ago
    It might be, or it might not be. Weapons can be used for good or bad, just like most things. Also, some weapons are less useful for bad purposes than others: a missile-defense or air-defense system, for instance, isn't terribly useful for bombing civilian populations, and it's kinda hard to criticize someone for wanting to shoot down incoming missiles. Dumb bombs, on the other hand, are great for bombing ground targets, which could be either Russian invaders or cities with trapped civilians. However, if you're a SWE as many people here probably are, and you get into the business of building weapons for war, a lot of the stuff you'd work on probably isn't that useful for killing Gazans. To kill lots of Gazans, you just need things like dumb bombs, artillery shells, etc. Those things don't use software; they've been using those weapons since WWI or before. The "smart" weapons the expensive SWEs work on aren't so useful for indiscriminate killing of civilian populations: they're much more accurate, but also much more expensive, so if your goal is just to kill civilians, they're not a very good way to spend your money. It's much easier to just get lots of artillery shells and shoot them in the general direction, just like Russian troops do. Engineers in many different industries can be blamed for enabling awful things. Facebook engineers, for instance, I think have a lot to answer for, for being instrumental in destabilizing society and increasing radicalism. Engineers in the petrochemical industry have worked to cause climate change and pollution.
  - 3y ago

eschneider 3y ago

Rest assured, founders who'll lie to their applicant pool about that will lie to their applicant pool about anything inconvenient.

buildsjets 3y ago

It may have hurt me financially and limited my career opportunities, but this is one reason why I refuse to work on any technology that requires me to have a security clearance. It's a decision I made way back at the end of the last century and it has served me well throughout ~25 years of aircraft development while the world has been at continuous war, and mostly kept me out of military programs. Also, I took one look at the SF86 and said F that, no government deserves that information, so I didn't get screwed in the Department of State OPM hack like all the other suckers.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> may have hurt me financially and limited my career Weapons doesn’t pay as well as making people click ads. The people working on this stuff are usually doing so because they believe it’s the right thing.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  Actually, working for DOD programs has several advantages: 1) The pay is pretty good. It's not FAANG-level pay, but it's generally better than non-FAANG pay, without so much competition. 2) The work-life balance is excellent, as long as it's in a place you want to live. No 80-hour weeks, as overtime is generally prohibited unless approved by the customer (and then you get overtime pay). Time is tracked and paid by the government on an hourly basis, so they don't allow overtime unless necessary. No unpaid "exempt" overtime. 3) Generally stable employment. It's hard to find people with a security clearance, so it's hard to get fired unless you're a really poor performer. You probably don't have to worry about dealing with stack ranking unlike many regular jobs.
  - 486sx33 3y ago
    It’s rather funny to me - that you cannot get security clearance unless you were born in the USA, against the backdrop of the level of contribution von Braun provided.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > you cannot get security clearance unless you were born in the USA This is not true.
      - 486sx33 3y ago
        Is it only certain levels of security clearance then ?
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        Not that I know of. Even Yankee White and TS-SC can go to naturalised citizens. Hell, our current Secretaries of Energy and Homeland Security are foreign born.
agapon 3y ago
Hope you find comfort in fact that smart guys in China don't have such reservations and smart guys in North Korea don't have any options.

autoexecbat 3y ago

> less interested in being part of the MIC than they used to be It's just TC being too low Plenty of us are happy, even pleased, to make weapons.

petertodd 3y ago

I'd hope some of these employees are looking at what is happening to Ukraine and reconsidering their positions. Without weapons of your own, you're beholden to unfriendly nations with their own weapons. Certainly I get the sense that a lot of Ukrainians have reconsidered their own views. There's people I know who I doubt would have ever involved themselves in weapons development, who have gotten into it and related things.

AnarchismIsCool 3y ago
What's used in Ukraine today may be killing Gazans tomorrow. I'm not an absolutist, I'm still in the industry, but I have rules on what I'll build for people.
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  It might be, or it might not be. Weapons can be used for good or bad, just like most things. Also, some weapons are less useful for bad purposes than others: a missile-defense or air-defense system, for instance, isn't terribly useful for bombing civilian populations, and it's kinda hard to criticize someone for wanting to shoot down incoming missiles. Dumb bombs, on the other hand, are great for bombing ground targets, which could be either Russian invaders or cities with trapped civilians. However, if you're a SWE as many people here probably are, and you get into the business of building weapons for war, a lot of the stuff you'd work on probably isn't that useful for killing Gazans. To kill lots of Gazans, you just need things like dumb bombs, artillery shells, etc. Those things don't use software; they've been using those weapons since WWI or before. The "smart" weapons the expensive SWEs work on aren't so useful for indiscriminate killing of civilian populations: they're much more accurate, but also much more expensive, so if your goal is just to kill civilians, they're not a very good way to spend your money. It's much easier to just get lots of artillery shells and shoot them in the general direction, just like Russian troops do. Engineers in many different industries can be blamed for enabling awful things. Facebook engineers, for instance, I think have a lot to answer for, for being instrumental in destabilizing society and increasing radicalism. Engineers in the petrochemical industry have worked to cause climate change and pollution.
- 3y ago