Private vs. Government defense employers 3

[wangus]

Hi guys. I wanted to get your opinions on what are the advantages and disadvantages of working for a private defense company as opposed to a government defense company. From what I know, the private ones pay roughly 10 grand more for entry level guys like me than Government ones. Are there any benefits that government companies have that private don't? Thanks guys.

 

[buzzp]

There are about 50% of the government contractors who do good work. Apparently, they have all caught on that the government will not cry foul on most anything they want to do. The 50% can even do a decent drawing or turn in there submittals before mobilising (as the contract says). Its sad but I believe, at least our department, is really cracking down on these contractors. We have defaulted two contracts this year already due to lack of qualifications.

Then the other half of the contractors do good work and follow all the guidlines but then the government workers let if fall through the cracks. Example, contracting officer gets submittals (dwgs, data sheets, etc) at the right time but fail to pass them on to the correct technical reviewer. Contracting is a nightmare for the facility or whoever, is going to use the design or equipment. Ultimately, these people want things to work right but generally have very little to do with how the contract is fulfilled. The other government people involved really have no reason to care other than their own drive to take care of the facility that is using the equipment.

I am hoping this is changing but the only real solution is to put technical contracts in the hands of technical people and not contracting officers. And can all the contracts that are not followed to a 'T' until the easy money reputation of the government goes away (after 20 years or so).

 

[AeroEng33]

this world would be a perfect place if engineers run engineering projects, and have business people "SUPPORTING" the engineers.

at our facility, busienss people have 19" LCD flat panels,while engineers have 15", 17" monitors. business people use theirc omptuer to play solitaire, while engineers use theirs for actual work...

 

[rustin03]

If you're interested in defense work, there's a third option besides just being a contractor or civil servant...
become an officer and go active duty military. The Air Force "developmental engineer" career field is probably the most accessible if you want to do straight up engineering work as a junior officer. I think that most of the Army and Navy engineering jobs are for field grade officers.

Anyhow, you'll get free housing, and some good operational experience to go along with the engineering and management work you'll do. The pace of promotions can be slower than in the DoD civil service, but being the real deal definitely has its benefits. On the other hand, there are plenty of obvious drawbacks to being in the mil.

Just thought I'd pass that along in case that was something you hadn't considered.

 

[AeroEng33]

draw back to being an engineer in the air force is limited advancement (not too many engineers go past colonel) and no oversea tours (unless you volunteer for iraq). there are only so many engineering bases in the air force and i believe most of them are in the middle of no where.

 

[DenRud]

This thread really got me intrigued and I am wondering how I would apply to a government defense company? What is a good resource for finding such companies?

 

[IRstuff]

Not sure what that'll do for you, but here is a list:

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/top-100/2004/

TTFN

 

[jmw]

AeroEng33,

I am not in a position to comment beyond showing this example of the Airship disaster as an example.
Firstly, this happened in the 1930's.
Its relevance to today's environment is probably extremely limited though for things to be different today we woul have to make some assumptions about human nature (including that of engineers, we're just people like everyone else) and the ability of governments to learn.

The interesting questions to be asked are: how many similar projects are there today i.e. where a government funded (unlimited) and controlled team, with the best engineers at its disposal, and a private sector team with limited respources both compete to complete a project to the same definition, specification and time scale? and what are the comparisons?

It seemed to me that R100 and R101 represented a case almost designed to exactly test this situation.

Nevil Shute, despite the Darwinian extiction of most of the Government team in its airship when it crashed in France, seemed to me to be struggling to be fair and balanced in his comments and i suspected he would probably have said much more and in stronger language in private.

He portrays an almost Faustian situation where he belives the Government engineers were working under severe pressure and constraints that corrupted their judgement. This was not a critisism of the engineers but of the system.

Incidentally, he makes very good comments about the professionalism of the inspectors with regard to their treatment of the private company project despite the fact that they were actually part of the Government team (their competence within that team is open to question when one realises that the R101 was given a certificate that enabled it to fly to France despite having had no flight testing following a major change to the airship, to cut it in half to insert an extra as cell).


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[AeroEng33]

all gov't jobs can be found at

http://www.usajobs.com

darpa jobs can be found at

http://www.darpa.mil

 

[SWhit]

My 2 cents worth on this. I have never worked in industry, but have been an aero eng civilian enployee of the US Navy for a while now.

There are definately some advantages to working for the government, some have already been mentioned. Time off is good, 10 holiday days a year; new employee, 13 days of sick and annual leave a year, afer 3 years 13 days sick, 20 days annual, after 15 years 13 and 26. Overtime is paid, the ammount is capped (currently $33.06 per hour, or your regular hourly rate) but better than nothing. I don't have a reference to compair health insurance to, but whoever said practically no dental was right (practacally no vision either).

I don't know anything about the demo projects that are now arround, but under the GS system, the starting pay is not great, but regular raises are good until you reach your "working level", then level off some. Under this system raises are based only on tenure. There is a new system in the works, but I am not sure how much confidence I have in it.

Retirement is better than most, a 401K type plan (called thrift savings) with matching essintally 1:1 up to 5%, and a pension plan that pays 1% of the average of your high 3 years salary for each year of service, and social security.

Job security is better than average, but nothing is for sure, and with base closure a topic now jobs are subject to move.

There are bad/lazy engineers and they are very hard to get rid of, this adds some frustration. Where I work we actually do quite a bit of engineering, so government doesn't necessarily mean "contract moniter" I work with contractors quite a bit and they are generally good, hard working people who want to do good, same as us. We have more work than we can do and don't spend much time watching the contractors.

I don't know about the Army or Airforce, but there are very few Naval officers who do any engineering.

Hope this adds to your understanding of civil service.

SWhit