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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

I think that it's complicated. Military service always looks like a bad deal on paper yet my military service is probably what I'm most proud of. I think we are fixated on $ to an unhealthy degree.

Where is Anduril getting that money? They're paid the same rate for govt contracts as everyone else no? Do they boost that with investor cash?

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Nobody is denying that many people find military service fulfilling. But certain roles have extremely limited talent pools. The odds that you'll find someone willing to take a position primarily for fulfillment when the starting salary for a contractor is double/triple/quadruple/quintuple what government offers, the public service role is immediately starting at a significant disadvantage.

Besides hiring talent, it carries through to career advancement and development (which plays heavily into personal fulfillment!) which on turn affects retention. If you're thinking of starting a family and settling down, being able to have more flexibility and significantly more money is a highly attractive option.

> They're paid the same rate for govt contracts as everyone else no?

No. Where did you get the idea the government pays the same rate for every contract/contractor?

Defense procurement is notoriously complicated, and there are myriad ways contracts can be structured. There is definitely no single rate.

When in defense I logged my time to 10ths of an hour. The govt pays my employer for those hours, employer skims some for themselves, then gives me the rest. The amount the govt gives my employer for labor is a specific amount. I'm just curious how Anduril can seemingly pay 2x what defense contractors pay if the govt pays for that labor the same.

I worked on 3 different projects at two different defense companies and it worked the same.

The amount the govt gives an employer is a specific amount… negotiated between that agency and that employer, which may or may not be related to (via competitive bid) what any other contractor gets paid.

Anduril, I assume, charges the government the 2x or whatever it pays for its labor. And the government pays because Anduril has convinced them they have something no other contractor can provide.

That sounds like a cost-plus contract[1], where they pay for allowable expenses plus some amount of profit. It is a common way of structuring government contracts, but it is not the only way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost-plus_contract

> Where is Anduril getting that money?

A mix of VC funding, foreign defense sales, and private sector deals, because their products are dual use. Also, as a private company, they don't have the same kinds of expenditures that a service has (pensions, capex on infra, etc)

> I think that it's complicated

Yep! Esprit de corps does play a role in retention to a limited extent.

Also, after this hearing happening in 2018, all the branches began pushing heavily for Cyber Reserves branches because it's the easiest way for them to remediate the skill and pay gap.

They also get a ton of money from the US DoD.

> Unlike most defense companies, we don’t wait for our customers to tell us what they need. We identify problems, privately fund our R&D and sell finished products off the shelf.

The idea is to be more like Microsoft or SpaceX. The government doesn't micromanage Microsoft's R&D, they simply purchase licenses for Windows off the shelf. Same thing happens for SpaceX rocket launches at this point.

Anduril doesn't generally sell hours to the government like most defense contractors.

because the military can't retain talent, they pay through the nose for contractors who don't enforce their "standards"...

But military doesn’t and shouldn’t retain talent.

You should go there for 5-10years if you are a poor shmuck so they train you, get some value from you and that’s it.

What the hell, man. How would any entity function if the institutional memory was 5-10 years tops?

The military's staff retention is relatively long. 5-10 years is an eternity in a tech company, and very few people hang around that long.

Maybe in the FAANG/SV startup bubble where the companies have barely existed that long to begin with. Apple has lifers. Microsoft even more so.

People hand over the knowledge all the time. It is not like everyone quits at the same time.

>"if you are a poor shmuck"

Sounds like you are really proud of your military. Well it might reflect how the things really work anyways. They should put it on their recruitment offices: "if you are a poor shmuck - come to us"

I’m really happy that my military is a team of professionals that are there because they want to be.

Most of 18-25 year olds are poor shmucks. Ask around who has their own apartment at 20-something and what their prospects are.

Military is one of valid options to improve their lives .

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