Are retail (grocery) laborers that serve defense contractors culpable? Punching down at laborers seems counter-revolutionary.
Well someone has never read the bible.
The Bible didn’t even invent the concept of hell
I once worked for a defense contractor as a programmer. 😬
…but I didn’t have a degree yet (it was an internship while I was still in college) so it’s fine, right? 😅
I had occasion to freshen up my resume recently and did some research on said defense contractor. They’d changed their name (is that an oddly-common practice among defense contractors?) and pivoted into “agentic AI” bullshit for the private sector. It’s good that I never sought a full time position there.
Hey man, the bay area had too many salad restaurants and wanted me to live in a condo. I just want to live in a single family home, run air conditioning 24/7, and eat from drive thru restaurants, while shopping at Walmart. The system works for some.
/s
You can fantasize about imaginary punishment realms and guillotine.webp or you could punish them while they yet live and learn some carpentry skills.
You think that’s bad, how about using your law degree to lobby on behalf of oligarchs.
That definitely puts them at the bottom with fraud and treachery. While working for a defense contractor merely falls under wrath and avarice, a slightly less severe circle of hell.
These micro plastics aren’t gunna make themselves
I keep saying to myself, at least I am not in “defence” or AI. Pay is bad, career is practically impossible, and positive impact on the world is near zero, but at least I am not making things worse with my day job.
Jokes. It’s the only way you can make a living from your engineering degree.
It’s literally not though?
True. You can also work as a post-doc doing research funded by a defence contractor.
You will need to be selective. “Dont work on anything that requires a clearance” is a good rule to start with.
But even that is a low bar.
“Dont build tech for the countries with the largest militaries” is closer to my new goal.
Its a great big beautiful world out there. Still a lot to choose from and be able to sleep at night.
“defense” industry when it’s about turning children into ash
I was gonna say, it’s always called defense even when it’s obviously offense.
It’s defending US interests from hostile foreign parties, specifically, liberating natural resources from the people who live above them.
Also the US defends its interests when a state’s government wants to regulate US factories, there, say by requiring them to pay workers a minimum wage, make the work environment safe, don’t pay women and children less, allow them a weekend and so on.
I think it’s actually called the department of testosterone now
The only people who are having an easier time getting gender-affirming care.
As someone in cybersecurity, don’t fall for the claims that they pay more and the money is somehow worth it.
They pay a competitive salary just like everyone fucking else. They will not shower you in money. Companies like Google, OpenAI and Meta will pay way more than the average company, and defense contractors are generally average.
Check https://levels.fyi/ if you doubt me. Check Raytheon software eng salaries. It’s like $70k to $200k. Companies like Meta are literally something like twice that. $70k might sound nice but software engineers make twice that easy in tech centers like San Jose, San Francisco, or Seattle.
They get a lot of applicants because people fall for this, and thus don’t have to pay as much as you think.
There are plenty of dipshits who just need a job who don’t care who they work for. You will not get rich working for them. you will just compete with other fucks like yourself that have no morals, and somehow think they’re special and that the company is less evil with them there.
Your salary is mostly tied to the company, what they’re willing to pay, and how hard you’re willing to negotiate. You will find high salaries elsewhere if you know how to play this game.
Trust me you’ll go to hell working for OpenAI or Google too.
Was just about to say, tech companies are increasingly taking defense contracts so that’s a distinction without meaning.
be fair, Google amd OpenAI are defenae contractors (and Facebook might as well be one too)
used to work with someone that designed the circuits in missiles. he couldn’t do it anymore and left the field.
One of my cousins worked for Raytheon right out of college. He didn’t last long there though. My aunt and uncle are conservative and he lived in a conservative area, so I imagine he went in with a positive view of the defense sector and then soured on it when he saw what was actually being done. All of those cousins were mad at their parents when they voted for Trump, and he attempted to block Fox News from the tv when he moved back in with them
Can confirm it’s the same with all the other one’s, like CGI, NorthropGrumman, GDIT, Leidos, CACI, etc.
Never met a person that’s said they treat them right in any of these places. I’ve had experience with at least 2 of them and I personally did not like working with these companies. They don’t treat you like a human being, which is not exclusive to these companies, but it really stands out with these guys when comparing with other kind of environments and employers.
The whole defense space in general is pretty toxic, at least where I’ve been at. I would say they mostly lean conservative just by how the culture is in this sector.
As someone who has worked at these places, most of the criticism about the type of work is fair enough. But they are actually some of the most liberal work environments you will find. The are tons of minorities at defense contractors, including trans people. They’ve tried to tone down their vocal embrace of minorities to please Hegseth, but they take all comers.
Better late than never I suppose.
We had an intern at a previous employer who worked with us for two summers. Last I spoke to him, he was gonna go work for weapons company. I told him that was a morally terrible decision. As far as I know, he went there and might be making a lot of money. No respect from me if that happened.
I swear I thought the drone guiding system would only be used for small drones used to film YouTube videos.
