Fairly Typical Large Defense Company
Pros
Typical pros of a large company: - Lots of room for career growth - Wide variety of projects to work in - Wide variety of locations to work at and travel to (including internationally) - Fairly stable work backlog Typical pros of a defense company: - Military projects can be very interesting - Projects can literally result in lives saved - Clearance is valuable
Cons
Typical cons of a large company: - Individual achievement can get lost in the noise - Lots of ways for people who coast to hide - Lots of smoke and mirrors between different layers of leadership - Peter Principle is in full effect - Inter-organizational politics frequently get in the way of getting work done - Easy to get lost in the organization without a mentor - Tribal knowledge is a big issue due to lack of tools and processes to properly capture and maintain that knowledge Typical cons of a defense company: - Government incompetence and bureaucracy is an ever persistent hurdle - A lot of defense work is on existing systems and platforms, which can be severely constraining in everything from the tools you have, to the final product that you can expect to deliver (expect to work with the "cutting edge" of tech up to half a century old) - Projects can be shorthanded while people wait for access, access that may never come - Not everything you learn in defense world will translate to commercial due to the bespoke nature of the industry (granted, it's bespoke for good reason) - Work-from-home can be absolutely non-existent depending on how much of your program is classified work
