Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government

I don't think so. I've lost intern candidates to one of these outfits, and have had subcontracting conversations from another, and I think "top young talent" needs to be ignorant about the market to wind up in the middle of nowhere working for some bloated defense giant.

Raytheon and Lockheed are, I'm sure, making a mint off these initiatives. But the talent can, from what I'm seeing, do more than 2x better working in industry.

It's simple to see why: even the largest penetration test requires minimal project management overhead, and that overhead actually gets less as the work gets more complicated (software -> hardware -> math) --- the work is more specialized, the outputs are more discrete and measurable, the work cycles are longer, the workers more senior. And yet a typical project run under a DoD subcontract will likely have more than 8 layers of management.

There are people who really do "hack for the government" and make real money doing it; their work predates Obama, isn't public, and has more to do with http://www.nomorefreebugs.com/ than with Raytheon.

I'm quite glad we nabbed that particular hire (your potential intern), and I think he's very happy with his decision as well. Ironically, he was probably one of the better informed people we've hired lately in terms of being aware of what his options are.

I seriously doubt I could do 2x better in industry, especially considering cost-of-living calculations. And our location is an asset, liability. Seriously; a gorgeous beach across the street from the office? And you can actually afford a place on the water if you want? You can't beat that.

I think you're basing your opinions on a mental image you have (and most people have) of who we are and what we do that is inaccurate.

As mentioned in the article, we were a separate company purchased last year. We still operate fairly independently from our corporate overlords (someone actually used that reference when we were first meeting them). We have exactly one layer of management for any given project. Our customers work with a PM at most, but usually also directly with the engineers.

While I'm sure your criticisms are quite accurate for many large government jobs, for us (and a number of others I know of doing some similar work), the situation is quite different.

In regards to people working here because they don't know their other options, let me put it this way -- in the company's entire existence, we've had exactly two employees leave for another job, and it was to another small contractor, not the commercial sector. I'd suggest it's unlikely that the retention rate is so high just because we're all so ignorant of our options. There's a lot of reasons for it -- I'd be happy to talk about it more at Defcon if you're there this year.

When was this piece written? I feel like the writer didn't include enough cliches.