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Your comment was very inspiring. At the risk of saying too much, I find myself in a similar situation, where the culture of my workplace doesn't seem to jive with productivity or the way I work. I think another danger of a workplace is the idea that appearance is more important that quality of character.

Anyone can put on a suit and tie, but the ability and desire to fix problems isn't inherent in everyone. I've been at government contracts where they overvalue the employees who dress well and don't value those that look them straight in the eye, tell the truth and deliver in a timely manner.

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It's probably not coincidence that the former environment I spoke of was also a government contract.

Government work is hard for the reasons you mentioned, and also because generally, contracting pays well enough to price you out of other markets.

My exit strategy was to find a government vendor (e.g., that makes products for government / enterprise consumption) vs. a government contractor. The services side of the house is still pretty much a suit-and-tie affair, though we pride ourselves on being much more meritocratic than our customers, but on the engineering side, pretty much anything goes.

The one thing I will say about gov contracting is that as a result, I interfaced with much more than would have been in my normal comfort zone, and I came away from it MUCH more knowledgeable than I would have had I not done it at all, and the work was very rewarding. My advice is to hold out for the good parts as long as you can while quietly looking for a way out that seems fulfilling.

Thanks for the advice. I've slowly been moving to the more technical side of the house since I graduated school, because I got hired on as an "Systems Engineer" that wrote power points. It was great in that I learned to deal with customers and push my comfort zone, but it also left my coding experience woefully insufficient for a time.

Luckily, I'm a step closer to what I want to do now, and I can fill my time with Udacity/Coursera classes when there is an abundant amount of downtime. I do have my eyes on the prize (which would be working in a faced paced and supportive environment) but I'm still building my skill set. It's just good to know that other people have been where I am and approached the problem logically to finally get somewhere that there was a better fit for them.

I plan on moving away from government contracting in general soon. I find that while they do pay well the constraints they put on the work just isn't worth it. If the company doesn't own the system that they work on then they don't tend to care about it in the same way.

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