It's not an invitation to badmouth, it IS an invitation to discuss the ethical concerns involved, and why you found it acceptable (even if it's just that it was a meal ticket until you found something you objected to less)
I'm personally beginning to think there is a crossroads coming up for me and would value your perspectives if you have time to share. Thanks!
The bidding process for defense contracts means a lot of Big Design Up Front, and an inability to change things easily once signed, means that though there are attempts at being agile, they likely involve only the technical delivery side (CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, etc), not the interaction with product and other stakeholders (no fail fast and pivot, real MVP, etc). I know there's been some attempts at moving in this direction, but I honestly can't see it happening, since it's innately at odds with the short term incentives that Congress has (and the Pentagon operates under).
The place I worked at had decent perks, but nothing like Silicon Valley tech companies. We had a cafeteria and a Starbucks in the building, but neither was subsidized. Vending machine snacks, again, at cost. Pay and benefits were reasonably competitive for the area as best I could tell (but didn't look that much; when I was ready to move on I wanted different geography as well).
General culture was fairly laid back; only the month or so before something was due did it feel crunchy, and then only for certain people. A lot of dead weight, but a lot of job security, especially for those who delivered.
The projects could be interesting. I worked on a distributed data visualization system that got me exposed to the CAP theorem back in 2011ish, which helped set the trajectory of my career, though I didn't realize it at the time. I also encountered people who said, half jokingly, that their skills had stagnated to the point they weren't hireable elsewhere. I doubt that as true, but certainly at the time there was work on technical things that didn't translate outside of defense (but many of the skills did even if not the technology).
In terms of would I go back to the defense industry? Probably not if I have a choice. While there are a lot of problems in public sector tech companies too, and many with the same issues as defense contractors, there are more of them, and the constraints placed on them tend not to feel as daunting or arbitrary as some of the ones placed on defense companies. Ultimately the impression I got was that defense companies tend to be very stable and predictable, and I just don't appreciate that as much as I appreciate being able to suggest changes and seek improvements.
Approaching this the other way - stepping into my first public sector company, I got to appreciate being agile, actually working with stakeholders to understand and address their needs directly. I got to make technology choices with the team based on what would address the problem the best (and that we were interested in supporting) instead of being told what they were based on what the contract said. And I got to work on smaller more focused teams. Longer term, I've gotten better compensation I feel like (though haven't directly compared; is there more than just a ~15% bonus offered at defense companies now?), the feeling of a lot more things 'done', and the ability to change jobs (without having to change geographic locations) when I felt like I needed a change.
I'm here for a job, not to play weird mind games.
And as other people mentioned, especially in an interview where you're being intensely judged and have to give second thought to everything you say, I'm not about to give anything other than a neutral answer that's supposed to appease most people.
> checking to see if I'm a disagreeable person who is willing to badmouth somebody generous enough to employ me.
Ah, but you see, the guy I originally replied to is checking to see if you're willing to badmouth companies he dislikes. And if you don't, he will dismiss your application. It's an unspoken rule you can violate without ever knowing you're in violation of it and has a huge affect on the outcome of the scenario.
No reasonable interviewer is going to put you in the position of having to cast aspersions on a previous employer. That's a minefield for all sorts of reasons.
Not convinced you have much space to declare some global idea of "reasonable interviewer" although you're more than welcome to complain about you personally not getting an offer from a company that clearly doesn't share your values. Your words say "badmouth" but that's just a way of hyperbolizing the ability to be vocally self-critical, which is necessary to learn lessons and achieve actual growth as a company.
Most startups have to do this, in my experience. You can't experiment without it. If you can't identify one weakness in your prior employer's model (whether ethically or functionally) or you'll get huffy about talking about that in an interview setting, why would I trust you with the responsibility of being in my organization? I'm going to get to those answers eventually. Why waste your time?
Looking back at history, do you think they called them the "traitorous eight" [1] because they were "reasonable interviewers" who would never "cast aspersions on a previous employer?" No. The history of this industry in the USA is based on vocal critique, competition and paper chasing in the pursuit of out-executing your competition.
If you don't have that culture of critique and open communication, it will be very hard to become #1 in whatever you're trying to do. Maybe that will never matter to you and the companies you join. Okay. If that works for you, great. But I'm a career startup person, so it does matter to me. I would literally /never/ have gotten anywhere without being able to earnestly note what my previous employers did right and wrong, and use those learnings in my next opportunity -- often very vocally.
I have no problem with honest critique. But once you get into talking about the ethics of a company, especially one you may have taken money from for an extended period of time, that's an entire subjective area. I'm not willing to go there with either employers or employees.
My way of avoiding the issue is to simply not work for companies I find ethically questionable. And if I were working for a company that I found later to be ethically questionable, I'd get another job.
The eight didn't get new jobs, they started a new company. It's like Activision and Atari. And it's a far cry from "I don't agree with their management structure" or "I don't like their method of crediting work" to "I think they're unethical".
It may sound subjective, but that's a view that may not be shared by the rest of the world; not in the eyes of the law, legislators, prospective employees. An accomplice is an accomplice. Especially in 2021, if you can't accept some responsibility to interrogate what the side effects are of the paycheck you accept (even if you don't agree with it), you're going to have a very difficult time participating in public discourse.
You could risk giving the impression that you'd rather ignore any negative externalities of your own work due to your own selfish motivations, even if it comes at the expense of society at large. And many members of society at large may deem you a coward and a liar by omission (I can't say I'd blame them). Some of those members may be people you'll never work with, but some of them may be companies that are interviewing. It won't matter if you want to hand-wave that away by saying "maybe they just have different opinions from you" -- when you're taking the money, you're either taking the responsibility that comes with taking that money or not.
Your vocation is part of your civic duty because it forms the basis for how you materially contribute to the taxes that fund society. If the path by which you earn those funds is compromised, then incrementally, so too is your little equity slice of society. Do you think it's reasonable to accept your desire to bow out from that conversation altogether? Or do you think that such a request will sound immature, evasive and tone deaf, that it will only succeed in drawing suspicion and ire?
Rather than accuse me of undercutting your point, I'd ask you to consider whether your point undercuts itself.
It's understandable, but I still can't agree that it leaves you without some amount of ethical culpability. Maybe significantly less than an executive. But still, some. It's more understandable for roles that don't have as strong a position in the labor market as engineers, but I find it a little bit less so for myself, as someone who works in engineering.
I think you (and anyone else downvoting) should read Eichmann in Jerusalem [1]. It's about this exact ethical quandary. I would hope it would change your opinion on these things, but if it doesn't, agree to disagree. And certainly don't expect any sympathy from me or the rest of society.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.