When I was an undergrad I had an engineering internship with the army Corp of Enigineers every summer in the 1990s. It was a very professional environment. I

When I was an undergrad I had an engineering internship with the army Corp of Enigineers every summer in the 1990s. It was a very professional environment. I ended up going to the private sector after (they had a RIF (reduction in force)) the year I graduated. But the government employment pitch was more stability, less compensation, better work life balance. Honestly the engineering process wasn’t too different. The government projects were strictly funded, and used these cost codes where you had to bill every hour to a project. This was a PITA. The quality of the engineering designs wasn’t different. The government job had some inefficienies because of a lot of process. Eg we got a plotter running and wanted to try a few different pens, so we ordered a small sampling. It got held up while they looked for cheaper prices, a process that probably cost more than the pens my boss pointed out. but I can see why they would try that process for big ticket items. When I ended up at a big company it was frankly similar. One of my first engineering jobs in the private sector was capping a landfill that went privately managed, then when the management left they found 5 drums on site. Any savings by having the government turn over that contract were wasted by having us deal with that (turned out the drums were all rusted out, the contents long gone).