7 ms·

Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds

by jcadam 11y ago

Hmm... I'm a 35 year old programmer and I work in Defense/Aerospace. If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. If you're any good at all, you will always be employed and well compensated. The work can be dull, with Vogon-esque processes and procedures, but I have side projects to keep me sane :) Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll try to apply to non-defense jobs, and I get the impression that there's a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector -- "Sorry, we're being deluged with applications right now, we'll totally get back to you someday." And the interviews generally involve 3-4 rounds of hazing via Knuth. In the defense sector, they verify your clearance and credentials, check for a pulse, then show you to your desk. Some are interested until they hear my current salary "You'd have to be a 10x RockNinja to make that kind of salary here." Yes, even Silicon Valley companies (and I live in an area with a relatively low COL). I'd love to find a remote job, but those seem to be even more competitive (understandable, I suppose). Guess I'm stuck.

nrjames 11y ago
That happened to me in a similarly restrictive field. I eventually just quit my job so that I would be forced to reinvent myself. That led me back to a graduate program in analytics, where my programming background was enormously useful. While the ~ 9 months in the program were expensive and stressful, the degree made me very employable, and the programming background gave me a huge advantage during the recruitment process.
mgkimsal 11y ago
Problem there is you can't just go get a security clearance - you have to be ... sponsored(?) - is that the word - by a company already. At least, that was my reading of the situation a few years back. I gave up applying to defense positions years ago because every one required existing security clearance. It's the defense industry version of "you have to have experience before we'll hire you to get the experience".
- genericuser 11y ago
  They will say existing security clearance required, because that greatly speeds up their hiring process. However there really is a severe drought of qualified developers with clearance, to the degree that even the worthless ones don't really get fired if they show up and don't anger security. And while for some of the jobs that may indeed be a hard requirement, for most of them its more of a preference. If you are a good programmer and fairly confident you will be able to be cleared, then they will sponsor you through the clearance process. Pro-tip just don't lie about shit and should be able to get clearance, they will look over most past issues if you acknowledge them and state that they are no longer an issue.
- jcadam 11y ago
  Right after I graduated with my BSCS in 2002, I went into the Army for four years (which is how I got my clearance). The only employers willing to even look at me ("if you love programming so much, why haven't you been doing it for the past four years?") were defense companies, and only because I already had a clearance. :) We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are generally expected to already have them. It's not cheap (and definitely not fast) to get someone a clearance. Though, some companies/contracts/projects are probably more flexible on this, especially if they have something unclassified you can work on while they wait for your clearance to come through.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Out of curiosity what's your take on people who had a clearance and then let it expire? They go inactive after 2 years so getting back seems like an issue.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    "We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are generally expected to already have them" Sounds like the problem is one entirely of your company's making.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  Interesting. Is there no way to pay the same fee a company would pay to apply for clearance for yourself?
fweespeech 11y ago
> Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll try to apply to non-defense jobs, and I get the impression that there's a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector -- "Sorry, we're being deluged with applications right now, we'll totally get back to you someday." And the interviews generally involve 3-4 rounds of hazing via Knuth. In the defense sector, they verify your clearance and credentials, check for a pulse, then show you to your desk. > Some are interested until they hear my current salary "You'd have to be a 10x RockNinja to make that kind of salary here." Yes, even Silicon Valley companies (and I live in an area with a relatively low COL). Its finding the company willing to sponsor and foot the bill for the clearance that is the trick. But yeah, I've noticed outside of E-Commerce, Defense & Finance, I'd like to leave my current position too...but I want something other than those three. I'm tired of being responsible for other people's financial data [e.g. Credit cards] or having a guy flip out because I got up to go to the bathroom and forgot to lock my screen. xD
logfromblammo 11y ago
The shortage of developers with clearance is exacerbated by the number of people with clearance who want to exit the defense contractor ecosystem, because it's a military-industrial clusterfuck from top to bottom. They hire us for our brains, and then tell us not to use them. Except we can't get out because of two factors: 1. The non-defense ecosystem won't fix their insane hiring processes. 2. If you do actually get an offer, it is 80% of what you currently earn, or less. There is not a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector. There is a glut of barely adequate engineers, and the employers out there seem unwilling to pay reasonable rates for anyone better, aside from some exceptions in the tech hub cities. I'm stuck, too. I would jump ship in an instant if only someone would offer me 102% of my current pay, 40 hours a week, and the opportunity to do more fulfilling work.
- jcadam 11y ago
  You have summed up my thoughts exactly.
- doktrin 11y ago
  This is fascinating. I work for a research lab and have a clearance, but we all make below private sector industry standard. I've never actually looked at defense contractors and thus had no idea what the pay scale was like.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    The official government pay scales are orderly and consistent--consistently lower than private sector pay. They also contain a lot of hidden benefits. Once you cross into contracting, there is no pay scale. The pay rules are largely set by the contracts. And there are thousands of contracts, all different. The pay rates in these contracts are not necessarily connected in any way to current market rates, or indeed any portion of reality. They might just be numbers made up to sound plausible. If you have a clearance as an employee of a contractor, and don't get extra pay for having it, you just leave. It's pretty common for the government to give your company $90 for every hour you work, then it turns around and gives you $45 of that. They keep the rest, sometimes for doing literally nothing except paying you your salary in their own name. This gives the company a lot of wiggle room on pay, because you seldom know how much they are actually charging the government for your work, unless your hobby is reading thousands of pages of government contracts. And never mind if you're an employee of a subcontractor. Right now, I'm probably at around 70% of equivalent Silicon Valley pay, and 120% of same-region private-sector jobs. I want to move cities and get back to the private sector, but I don't want to go all the way to California.
JamesBarney 11y ago
I was under the impression pay for devs in the defense sector topped out at the 80-120k mark. Which is definitely good but very comparable to unimpressive mid-senior level devs at many development shops. If you wouldn't mind, in your experience what is the general range of pay for development work in the defense sector?
- pmorici 11y ago
  I think you are mistaken. I have friends in that industry and my impression is they wouldn't even bother with the interview unless the salary was at least $150k and closer to $200k is not uncommon in a locality that Wolfram Alpha says has a 30% cheaper cost of living than SF.
- insamniac 11y ago
  In my previous job, on an Army project that required a TS clearance, I was making the San Francisco equivalent of $202k according to Wolfram Alpha, as a W2 employee, This was with ~10 years experience. The catch is that the work is terrible, and your coworkers will likely be pretty unqualified. Some friends and I refer to a clearance as 'Golden Handcuffs' because the money is good, but you end up trapped since you're still writing code for Java 5 or 6, deploying in weblogic or jboss 4.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
woah 11y ago
Completely off topic, but I'm dying to know- how concerned are you about the OPM hack?
canadiancreed 11y ago
> If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. Maybe it's harder to find in the States. I had a Canadian clearance for ten years (it wasn't a low level one either), and could never get a job, even with experience in whatever stack they were utilizing. The reason? Couldn't speak french. Even thought the coding language is all either English or math, and from contacts I have in the industry it's completely English, no dice. Then again I can't get work for any defense company in the states because I'm not American so that's always fun too.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  If it were the difference between getting the job I wanted and not, I would learn French.
  - canadiancreed 11y ago
    If I had the skills to learn French, it would have been done by now (you're forced to take it for at least five years in Canadian schools). Don't know what it is, I can pick up coding languages easily enough, but human languages? No dice.
milspec 11y ago
We have a rockstar programmer. No, really. He put out CDs and all. Technically he's a former rockstar I guess, but close enough. He rocks. We still lack a ninja. We have been unable to find one who could do low-level programming and get a US (not Japanese!) security clearance. So far we've had to settle for Nerf dart skills, which really isn't up to ninja standards.

by jcadam 11y ago

nrjames 11y ago

That happened to me in a similarly restrictive field. I eventually just quit my job so that I would be forced to reinvent myself. That led me back to a graduate program in analytics, where my programming background was enormously useful. While the ~ 9 months in the program were expensive and stressful, the degree made me very employable, and the programming background gave me a huge advantage during the recruitment process.

mgkimsal 11y ago

Problem there is you can't just go get a security clearance - you have to be ... sponsored(?) - is that the word - by a company already. At least, that was my reading of the situation a few years back. I gave up applying to defense positions years ago because every one required existing security clearance. It's the defense industry version of "you have to have experience before we'll hire you to get the experience".

genericuser 11y ago
They will say existing security clearance required, because that greatly speeds up their hiring process. However there really is a severe drought of qualified developers with clearance, to the degree that even the worthless ones don't really get fired if they show up and don't anger security. And while for some of the jobs that may indeed be a hard requirement, for most of them its more of a preference. If you are a good programmer and fairly confident you will be able to be cleared, then they will sponsor you through the clearance process. Pro-tip just don't lie about shit and should be able to get clearance, they will look over most past issues if you acknowledge them and state that they are no longer an issue.
jcadam 11y ago
Right after I graduated with my BSCS in 2002, I went into the Army for four years (which is how I got my clearance). The only employers willing to even look at me ("if you love programming so much, why haven't you been doing it for the past four years?") were defense companies, and only because I already had a clearance. :) We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are generally expected to already have them. It's not cheap (and definitely not fast) to get someone a clearance. Though, some companies/contracts/projects are probably more flexible on this, especially if they have something unclassified you can work on while they wait for your clearance to come through.
- Retric 11y ago
  Out of curiosity what's your take on people who had a clearance and then let it expire? They go inactive after 2 years so getting back seems like an issue.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  "We sometimes hire fresh grads without a clearance, but experienced hires are generally expected to already have them" Sounds like the problem is one entirely of your company's making.
JoshTriplett 11y ago
Interesting. Is there no way to pay the same fee a company would pay to apply for clearance for yourself?

fweespeech 11y ago

> Every couple of years (ok, at least every year) I'll try to apply to non-defense jobs, and I get the impression that there's a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector -- "Sorry, we're being deluged with applications right now, we'll totally get back to you someday." And the interviews generally involve 3-4 rounds of hazing via Knuth. In the defense sector, they verify your clearance and credentials, check for a pulse, then show you to your desk. > Some are interested until they hear my current salary "You'd have to be a 10x RockNinja to make that kind of salary here." Yes, even Silicon Valley companies (and I live in an area with a relatively low COL). Its finding the company willing to sponsor and foot the bill for the clearance that is the trick. But yeah, I've noticed outside of E-Commerce, Defense & Finance, I'd like to leave my current position too...but I want something other than those three. I'm tired of being responsible for other people's financial data [e.g. Credit cards] or having a guy flip out because I got up to go to the bathroom and forgot to lock my screen. xD

logfromblammo 11y ago

The shortage of developers with clearance is exacerbated by the number of people with clearance who want to exit the defense contractor ecosystem, because it's a military-industrial clusterfuck from top to bottom. They hire us for our brains, and then tell us not to use them. Except we can't get out because of two factors: 1. The non-defense ecosystem won't fix their insane hiring processes. 2. If you do actually get an offer, it is 80% of what you currently earn, or less. There is not a glut of highly qualified engineers in the private sector. There is a glut of barely adequate engineers, and the employers out there seem unwilling to pay reasonable rates for anyone better, aside from some exceptions in the tech hub cities. I'm stuck, too. I would jump ship in an instant if only someone would offer me 102% of my current pay, 40 hours a week, and the opportunity to do more fulfilling work.

jcadam 11y ago
You have summed up my thoughts exactly.
doktrin 11y ago
This is fascinating. I work for a research lab and have a clearance, but we all make below private sector industry standard. I've never actually looked at defense contractors and thus had no idea what the pay scale was like.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  The official government pay scales are orderly and consistent--consistently lower than private sector pay. They also contain a lot of hidden benefits. Once you cross into contracting, there is no pay scale. The pay rules are largely set by the contracts. And there are thousands of contracts, all different. The pay rates in these contracts are not necessarily connected in any way to current market rates, or indeed any portion of reality. They might just be numbers made up to sound plausible. If you have a clearance as an employee of a contractor, and don't get extra pay for having it, you just leave. It's pretty common for the government to give your company $90 for every hour you work, then it turns around and gives you $45 of that. They keep the rest, sometimes for doing literally nothing except paying you your salary in their own name. This gives the company a lot of wiggle room on pay, because you seldom know how much they are actually charging the government for your work, unless your hobby is reading thousands of pages of government contracts. And never mind if you're an employee of a subcontractor. Right now, I'm probably at around 70% of equivalent Silicon Valley pay, and 120% of same-region private-sector jobs. I want to move cities and get back to the private sector, but I don't want to go all the way to California.

JamesBarney 11y ago

I was under the impression pay for devs in the defense sector topped out at the 80-120k mark. Which is definitely good but very comparable to unimpressive mid-senior level devs at many development shops. If you wouldn't mind, in your experience what is the general range of pay for development work in the defense sector?

pmorici 11y ago
I think you are mistaken. I have friends in that industry and my impression is they wouldn't even bother with the interview unless the salary was at least $150k and closer to $200k is not uncommon in a locality that Wolfram Alpha says has a 30% cheaper cost of living than SF.
insamniac 11y ago
In my previous job, on an Army project that required a TS clearance, I was making the San Francisco equivalent of $202k according to Wolfram Alpha, as a W2 employee, This was with ~10 years experience. The catch is that the work is terrible, and your coworkers will likely be pretty unqualified. Some friends and I refer to a clearance as 'Golden Handcuffs' because the money is good, but you end up trapped since you're still writing code for Java 5 or 6, deploying in weblogic or jboss 4.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

woah 11y ago

Completely off topic, but I'm dying to know- how concerned are you about the OPM hack?

canadiancreed 11y ago

> If you think finding a good developer is hard, try finding a good developer who also holds a security clearance. Maybe it's harder to find in the States. I had a Canadian clearance for ten years (it wasn't a low level one either), and could never get a job, even with experience in whatever stack they were utilizing. The reason? Couldn't speak french. Even thought the coding language is all either English or math, and from contacts I have in the industry it's completely English, no dice. Then again I can't get work for any defense company in the states because I'm not American so that's always fun too.

aidenn0 11y ago
If it were the difference between getting the job I wanted and not, I would learn French.
- canadiancreed 11y ago
  If I had the skills to learn French, it would have been done by now (you're forced to take it for at least five years in Canadian schools). Don't know what it is, I can pick up coding languages easily enough, but human languages? No dice.

milspec 11y ago

We have a rockstar programmer. No, really. He put out CDs and all. Technically he's a former rockstar I guess, but close enough. He rocks. We still lack a ninja. We have been unable to find one who could do low-level programming and get a US (not Japanese!) security clearance. So far we've had to settle for Nerf dart skills, which really isn't up to ninja standards.