It’s just as much of a problem as anything else big government
From more or less the end of the Cold War, there has been a growing public consciousness that is aware and extremely critical of government defense bloat. And this is not without good reason, with one of the most famous examples (and failures) seen below.
But there is quite a lot that these critics miss, through no fault of their own, because they haven’t been involved in this extremely convoluted system. I’m going to give some examples from my own personal experience working in the defense industry, for both one of the largest defense contractors in the world, and for a smaller sub-500 employee contractor.
I spent some time at my first job out of college working for a large defense contractor as an engineer. The facility I worked at was a R&D and production go between, without actually being a testing facility. The workplace was rigid, my project work scope was rigid, and I’d clock out every day as soon as I could because I couldn’t take the boredom of making another SolidWorks assembly drawing without wanting to put my head through a bandsaw. I had to go to a sign out desk for a screw driver, and couldn’t change a screw from 4-40 to 6-32 without at least Despite that, being a defense giant that made billions by stacking bodies had some perks; there was never any stop in workflow on any project (everything was funded for the foreseeable future), any part that I wanted for mock fabrication was already stocked in the back, and not once did I have to worry about money managing. That’s just how big defense works, and these systems have been in place since the end of WWII.
I left this job about six months ago due to moving to a different place, and also for a search for better work opportunity. I ended up landing a job at a company fractions of the size of my previous, but allowed me the freedom to make actual design decisions and changes
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