Lockheed has an opening for engineers with VAX experience for the F22(lockheedmartinjobs.com)
lockheedmartinjobs.com
Lockheed has an opening for engineers with VAX experience for the F22
https://www.lockheedmartinjobs.com/job/california/f-22-avionics-systems-engineer-senior/694/8842471
325 comments
I worked for Lockheed Martin for more than a decade and I have many of the qualifications listed, including VAX experience and a special access clearance. Of course, Lockheed laid me off fourteen years ago and I retired three years ago, so I guess I won't be applying.
You should apply, and demand an insanely-high salary while pointing out that almost no one has VAX experience now.
Actually I'd be surprised if they're even paying market rate for these developers, regardless of how difficult or impossible it is to find them. COBOL programmers still make about $70,000/year or so (https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/cobol-programmer-salary-S...) even though the entire world is going to collapse if they disappear. It would seem that the laws of supply and demand don't apply here.
Yes it does. If there actually was a bigger demand than there is supply, the salary would raise. The main reason why it doesn't is because a programming language or frameworks are not a barrier for any top developer. Skills usually transfer very well.
The real crux of the matter is that these companies don't want to pay top salaries and thus don't get top developers. As long as there are people who navigate themselves into such niches and are proud of it, the salary for these specialized jobs will stay where it is. Simple as that.
The real crux of the matter is that these companies don't want to pay top salaries and thus don't get top developers. As long as there are people who navigate themselves into such niches and are proud of it, the salary for these specialized jobs will stay where it is. Simple as that.
I really don't want to judge your ability, I agree with your comment about C#, Java, JS, C ,... but COBOL is a completely different animal to reason with.
Been there and ran as fast as I could.
Been there and ran as fast as I could.
I don't know. I actually personally know someone that jumped from PHP to COBOL with no significant problem. They had some gripes, of course, but it wasn't a show stopper and they were able to get to work and be productive right away.
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Sounds interesting. Can you point me to a COBOL listing that shows some of this difference?
You might want to have a look at the Rosetta Code wiki. They have a lot of COBOL code there. http://www.rosettacode.org/wiki/Category:COBOL
I don’t know COBOL though so I can’t say if this code is idiomatic or not.
I don’t know COBOL though so I can’t say if this code is idiomatic or not.
Well, it is less than 100000 lines and less than 50 years old, so no, it is not idiomatic.
Touché :)
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It reminds me of the market for rubber. It's such an essential resource that's being threatened by mold, climate change, and more profitable crops, yet prices don't seem to reflect reality.
Synthetic rubber has been invented over 100 years ago. Modern synthetic rubber is better and cheaper than natural.
That what I thought. A show on tv made me question my assumption. Airplane tires and products depend on natural rubber.
I don't believe Glassdoor has enough data to make a claim like that. I know people who can code COBOL, and they're all making significantly more (100%+) than that.
When we retired my wife and I fled Atlanta at top speed. I don't know if the job is in Marietta, GA or Ft. Worth (the job listing seems to have disappeared) but I doubt if even an insanely high salary could get us to move to either of those locations.
Well, what I was thinking is that you live in an AirBnB or other short-term rental for 6 months and then quit. Some consultants work this way: only working for 3-6 months on a gig, getting paid a fortune (plus extra for living expenses because they're not relocating, just living there temporarily), and then leaving.
If the company really needs the work done that badly and there's no qualified help willing to take it full-time, then this is a viable option. If there's no qualified help and they're not willing to go for a deal like this, then the work just doesn't get done.
If the company really needs the work done that badly and there's no qualified help willing to take it full-time, then this is a viable option. If there's no qualified help and they're not willing to go for a deal like this, then the work just doesn't get done.
A friend of mine worked for general dynamics in ft worth years and years ago and I went and visited him.
I was struck by all the apartment complexes that did not live up to their name. They were not complex at all, they were... simple (simplex?).
The apartment buildings were designed like children draw houses, sort of like shoeboxes. They had pitched roofs and rows of identically spaced windows maybe 20 wide and 3 or more stories tall. Giant parking lots to match each building.
To be clear, it was probably affordable housing, and I don't know if it's still like that, but it lacked character.
I was struck by all the apartment complexes that did not live up to their name. They were not complex at all, they were... simple (simplex?).
The apartment buildings were designed like children draw houses, sort of like shoeboxes. They had pitched roofs and rows of identically spaced windows maybe 20 wide and 3 or more stories tall. Giant parking lots to match each building.
To be clear, it was probably affordable housing, and I don't know if it's still like that, but it lacked character.
California:
Perform on-aircraft troubleshooting of the F-22 Avionics Systems in support of the F-22 flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190618050109/https://www.lockh...
Perform on-aircraft troubleshooting of the F-22 Avionics Systems in support of the F-22 flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base (AFB)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190618050109/https://www.lockh...
It's at Edwards.
why?
Where is the salary listed?
[deleted]
I knew Boeing people who came back with a raise under similar circumstances. Charge them extra for the honor, and reward yourself with something nice at the end. This is bonus money after all.
The binge-purge cycle at these places is not how I think things should be run, but I expect Congress is somewhat to blame for the cycling.
The binge-purge cycle at these places is not how I think things should be run, but I expect Congress is somewhat to blame for the cycling.
I started my career working for British Aerospace in 1989. We used VAX/VMS as our development platform (Code was CORAL 66 and then ADA). I spent some time supporting the Sea Harrier flight test operations - so I would have fitted this job perfectly about 28 years ago!).
I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus, but nothing surprises me when it comes to the use of stone-age tech in military hardware. For example, the other Harrier I worked on in the early 90s (GR-7 - same as US AV8B) still used core memory.
I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus, but nothing surprises me when it comes to the use of stone-age tech in military hardware. For example, the other Harrier I worked on in the early 90s (GR-7 - same as US AV8B) still used core memory.
> I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus...
What's wrong with 1553? It's reliable, battle-tested, and the latest revision C was published 28-Feb-2018. In contrast, the RS-232 PHY dates back to 1960, yet it's quite alive and well in modern commercial devices. As a consolation, be glad you've never had to deal with the monster that is STANAG 5516/MIL-STD-6016...if there was such a thing as a "modern" interface standard whose sheer page count (11,410 pages!) would make any sensible engineer reconsider future career prospects.
What's wrong with 1553? It's reliable, battle-tested, and the latest revision C was published 28-Feb-2018. In contrast, the RS-232 PHY dates back to 1960, yet it's quite alive and well in modern commercial devices. As a consolation, be glad you've never had to deal with the monster that is STANAG 5516/MIL-STD-6016...if there was such a thing as a "modern" interface standard whose sheer page count (11,410 pages!) would make any sensible engineer reconsider future career prospects.
As someone who has read all of 6016, doing so cost me a good chunk of my sanity.
Never mind the fact that many areas of the standard don't matter because the manufacturers of equipment that use those areas made up their own way of doing things that isn't 6016 compliant. So you can comply to the standard, or you can actually work with platforms in the real world, but you can't do both.
Never mind the fact that many areas of the standard don't matter because the manufacturers of equipment that use those areas made up their own way of doing things that isn't 6016 compliant. So you can comply to the standard, or you can actually work with platforms in the real world, but you can't do both.
I've read and nearly memorized large portions of 6016 as well and I can commiserate with you. I feel a bit of pride mixed with shame at the fact that I know how to quickly jump around in the document and follow all the threads of logic. On the whole I think it's an interesting read, though. And I'm sure knowing it so well doesn't hurt my employability in the industry.
Technically I think platforms are supposed to document the areas where they're noncompliant with 6016 and submit it for approval. The name of the process escapes me at the moment. Not sure if anybody ever does it, though.
Technically I think platforms are supposed to document the areas where they're noncompliant with 6016 and submit it for approval. The name of the process escapes me at the moment. Not sure if anybody ever does it, though.
The biggest noncompliant areas I know of are...difficult to even talk about.
Ah, that's like RFC 4210 for PKI!
I got the pleasure of writing a good chunk of the DIS standard for how to emulate the whole shebang of datalinks, so add the tadil a/b/c (6011 series) to the 6016/5516 series....that’s 10 yrs of my life!
The 1553 bus is ancient, but it's electrically and logically simple. The concepts necessary to use and incorporate 1553 into designs is easily acquired by a fresh engineer (I should know, I first used 1553 in a design as a 24 year old straight out of grad school) and it's already incorporated into all kinds of avionics and weapons. Why not use it?
That's insane. A 3d matrix of ferrite rings suspended by wire would seem (to me) somewhat sensitive to vibrations or gforces.
Military gonna military I guess.
Military gonna military I guess.
For airplanes flying at high altitudes with modern computers, random bit flips from comsmic radiation is actually a very real threat that has to be considered. IIRC there's about a factor of about 300x more radiation at 30000 ft and 900x at 60000 ft.
Core memory is a lot less sensitive to this than most memory types, so it makes some sense to store the most flight critical data in such a memory.
Core memory is a lot less sensitive to this than most memory types, so it makes some sense to store the most flight critical data in such a memory.
The sensible way to deal with bit flips is a gratuitous amount of ECC.
ECC doesn't help when you have an EMP caused by an atmospheric nuclear detonation. Those are the kinds of things the design has to consider.
But wouldn't that fuck up the processors as well as memory anyway?
Depends if the vacuum tubes are shielded. ;)
In flight reboot
Makes me why we don’t count NASA under DoD similar to DARPA to help with their funding.
The point of NASA was to create an agency for non-military aerospace development, while ARPA was supposed to handle military applications.
I think Eisenhower thought that this would insulate NASA from postwar budget cuts and make its funding more secure rather than less.
In retrospect, Eisenhower was a hell of an optimist.
I think Eisenhower thought that this would insulate NASA from postwar budget cuts and make its funding more secure rather than less.
In retrospect, Eisenhower was a hell of an optimist.
In addition to NASA's explicitly non-military nature, we do actually maintain some relationship with our USAF counterparts. When it makes sense to do so, we're happy to work on mutually beneficial projects.
NASA exists to be the civilian side of the US’s aerospace ventures. The military side is the Air Force.
> NASA exists to be the civilian side of the US’s aerospace ventures. The military side is the Air Force.
Not the Space Force?
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/trump-spac...
;-)
Not the Space Force?
> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/trump-spac...
;-)
or a lead liner? I know lead and aircraft don't mix, but a thin lead shield over just the computing boards shouldn't add too much weight, should it?
The same technology was very successfully used to fly to the moon. Cores aren’t so much suspended when they are wholly embedded in epoxy.
Stupid question, but the cores don't physically flip, do they? It's a purely electrical thing?
It's the magnetic field that flips, the ferrite cores remain in place
I think it's just clockwise vs counterclockwise.
Yes
But on the other hand core memory is very resilient against EMP and hard radiation :)
I seem to recall something along the lines of large bombers running valves as they were less prone to effects of EMP around nuclear blasts. Not sure if this perhaps something similar?
From wiki for the MiG-25:
The majority of the on-board avionics were based on vacuum-tube technology, not solid-state electronics. Although they represented aging technology, vacuum tubes were more tolerant of temperature extremes, thereby removing the need for environmental controls in the avionics bays. With the use of vacuum tubes, the MiG-25P's original Smerch-A (Tornado, NATO reporting name "Foxfire") radar had enormous power – about 600 kilowatts. As with most Soviet aircraft, the MiG-25 was designed to be as robust as possible. The use of vacuum tubes also made the aircraft's systems resistant to an electromagnetic pulse, for example after a nuclear blast
The majority of the on-board avionics were based on vacuum-tube technology, not solid-state electronics. Although they represented aging technology, vacuum tubes were more tolerant of temperature extremes, thereby removing the need for environmental controls in the avionics bays. With the use of vacuum tubes, the MiG-25P's original Smerch-A (Tornado, NATO reporting name "Foxfire") radar had enormous power – about 600 kilowatts. As with most Soviet aircraft, the MiG-25 was designed to be as robust as possible. The use of vacuum tubes also made the aircraft's systems resistant to an electromagnetic pulse, for example after a nuclear blast
Well, at least in that case it seems like a conscious design decision. Not sure how much of the state of the art design and tech was driven by "I like the colour" or "the supplier is in my state".
The Soviet design bureaus certainly had their irrationalities. They behaved like big, vertically-integrated companies, and preferred 'their' stuff over the other design bureaus' stuff.
Soviet gear was robust because robustness and repairability was priorities as a design criterion. It's not an automatic product of how they doled out work, or of their defense industry generally.
Soviet gear was robust because robustness and repairability was priorities as a design criterion. It's not an automatic product of how they doled out work, or of their defense industry generally.
In one of the documentaries about the Vulcan raid on the Falklands (1982), one of the pilots interviewed remarked that somebody flying Avro Lancasters in WWII would have felt right at home in the cockpit of the Avro Vulcan. E.g. the navigator used mechanical clocks to keep track of when to turn, and so on.
Not sure if this was a conscious decision wrt EMP, or was it just that they were in a hurry to develop a jet bomber for delivering nukes and they reused existing stuff as much as possible.
Not sure if this was a conscious decision wrt EMP, or was it just that they were in a hurry to develop a jet bomber for delivering nukes and they reused existing stuff as much as possible.
Which documentary was this? I read Vulcan 607 about ten years ago and loved it.
I'm quite sure it's this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBJ99bIhAVk
Not in the least surprising. The Vulcan prototype, the 707, first flew in 1949. They even had a mount for the old Lancaster bomb sight - though that was mostly used for a camera.
Flight engineer and radar operator in the seats behind would have got the fancy new (for the early 50s) electronic things.
Flight engineer and radar operator in the seats behind would have got the fancy new (for the early 50s) electronic things.
The Lancaster was loaded with the technology of the time by the end up the war e.g. they had radar navigation, radio navigation, (when it worked) a 'lock' detector for German night fighter radar
What was your experience switching from Coral 66 to Ada? An equivalent language in the USA at the time was JOVIAL. I heard from some old JOVIAL programmers that they thought Ada was an inferior tool for the job. When I looked at Coral 66, it seemed to be rather less polished than JOVIAL, so I have wondered whether British programmers might have welcomed the switch to Ada.
Modern is relative. F-22's first flight was 1997. F-35 development started in 1992, first flight of X-35 was 2000 and F-35's first flight was 2006.
There is absolutely noting wrong with using old technology. Being modern just for the sake of being modern is wasteful.
There is absolutely noting wrong with using old technology. Being modern just for the sake of being modern is wasteful.
I see the "there's nothing wrong with old technology" comment a lot, and in this case I disagree. There's a good chunk of this thread pointing out how hard it is to hire for this position because practically no one is familiar with these technologies. This, to me, illustrates that there absolutely is something wrong with using old technology, especially in this instance.
I will grant that there are some things that just keep working and I also would be tempted to leave them in place. But if their functioning is critical then we either need to cultivate the necessary knowledge in our organization to ensure we can manage them adequately or replace them with something that the current market of people will be somewhat familiar.
I will grant that there are some things that just keep working and I also would be tempted to leave them in place. But if their functioning is critical then we either need to cultivate the necessary knowledge in our organization to ensure we can manage them adequately or replace them with something that the current market of people will be somewhat familiar.
That it's (now) uncommon technology is only a small part of the hiring problem. Anyway, what's the alternative here? It is almost certainly not worth the effort to rewrite everything in today's common environment 30 years into the service life of the jet; whatever you do now is going to be uncommon again.
A bigger part of the hiring problem is aerospace software, specifically military aerospace software is a difficult field to hire for. Clearance requirements limits your pool. Building weapons of war limits your pool. Low salary compared to other software job limits your pool. Very high level of process / low velocity of shipping limits your pool. If you require experience in the environment, rather than training otherwise appropriate candidates, that's going to be a limit too, but if you work in a specialized environment, you really have to accept that you will need to train people.
A bigger part of the hiring problem is aerospace software, specifically military aerospace software is a difficult field to hire for. Clearance requirements limits your pool. Building weapons of war limits your pool. Low salary compared to other software job limits your pool. Very high level of process / low velocity of shipping limits your pool. If you require experience in the environment, rather than training otherwise appropriate candidates, that's going to be a limit too, but if you work in a specialized environment, you really have to accept that you will need to train people.
Bingo.
The current hiring model of "hit-the-ground-sprinting day 1" I suspect is largely the problem here and stems across many industries complaining about hiring difficulties.
Since this "best existing skillset match" hiring model businesses have widely chosen to adopt provide little-to-no on the job training, people will inherently focus on learning the most widely adopted skills of their target market(s) to increase their odds of finding a position in the labor market. Even niche skills will typically target larger proven successful niches and not target risky niches.
As a result, your business better follow industry and technology trends as they shift or you better start investing in your employees and maintain a positive relationship so you don't lose your knowledge assets that are likely undervalued by your business.
Even if Lockheed pays me double, even triple, my current rate, it's likely not worth it for me me wasting my time investing months to years in their specific architecture and fairly non-transferable skills acquired doing so since employer/employee relationships and loyalty are dead. That's a hefty investment on my side with little investment on theirs.
No thanks. It can sit empty and their project can fail for all I care.
The current hiring model of "hit-the-ground-sprinting day 1" I suspect is largely the problem here and stems across many industries complaining about hiring difficulties.
Since this "best existing skillset match" hiring model businesses have widely chosen to adopt provide little-to-no on the job training, people will inherently focus on learning the most widely adopted skills of their target market(s) to increase their odds of finding a position in the labor market. Even niche skills will typically target larger proven successful niches and not target risky niches.
As a result, your business better follow industry and technology trends as they shift or you better start investing in your employees and maintain a positive relationship so you don't lose your knowledge assets that are likely undervalued by your business.
Even if Lockheed pays me double, even triple, my current rate, it's likely not worth it for me me wasting my time investing months to years in their specific architecture and fairly non-transferable skills acquired doing so since employer/employee relationships and loyalty are dead. That's a hefty investment on my side with little investment on theirs.
No thanks. It can sit empty and their project can fail for all I care.
I was recently considering learning the SAS data stack and decided against it for exactly this reason. However, I’m not completely convinced it was the right choice. Does anyone else have experience that could shed light on this situation?
The problem is of incompatible time scales. The original studies and requirements for the F-22 were done in the 1980s, Lockheed selected to build the F-22 in the 90s, F-22 entered flight test in 1997, IOC declared in 2005, expected to be in service until the 2040s at least. And in that time the world went from the original IBM PC to iPads and graphics cards that do real time ray-tracing.
And re-doing all the avionics would be a probably decade-plus effort costing billions of dollars. Cheaper to hire some old VAX guys as consultants, pay them exorbitant rates, and have them train up a new generation of VAX people.
And re-doing all the avionics would be a probably decade-plus effort costing billions of dollars. Cheaper to hire some old VAX guys as consultants, pay them exorbitant rates, and have them train up a new generation of VAX people.
The problem is of incompatible time scales. The original studies and requirements for the F-22 were done in the 1980s, Lockheed selected to build the F-22 in the 90s, F-22 entered flight test in 1997, IOC declared in 2005, expected to be in service until the 2040s at least.
Iteration time goes down by a lot in wartime. Also, choosing technologies which have much shorter iteration times could be a disruptive game changer. I'd bet shaped charge carrying drones with a range of 4 km would be much faster to iterate on than tank guns with the same range.
Iteration time goes down by a lot in wartime. Also, choosing technologies which have much shorter iteration times could be a disruptive game changer. I'd bet shaped charge carrying drones with a range of 4 km would be much faster to iterate on than tank guns with the same range.
The technologies may have a shorter iteration time, but can the defense establishment adapt? I am skeptical but hope you are correct.
Thank you for that comment, @cmiles, I couldn't agree more!
I think that it's important to remember that there are both direct and indirect costs to "not changing something that's working".
If you don't keep abreast of change, then you're unable to be nimble enough to change when change is hugely advantageous.
Locking yourself into design decisions is usually cost-effective for the short term, but may be ultimately very harmful in the long-term.
I think that it's important to remember that there are both direct and indirect costs to "not changing something that's working".
If you don't keep abreast of change, then you're unable to be nimble enough to change when change is hugely advantageous.
Locking yourself into design decisions is usually cost-effective for the short term, but may be ultimately very harmful in the long-term.
Staying fresh has its own costs, and those would have to be made absolutely clear and transparent and clients must pay them. That's actually very difficult to do politically, especially when you have lowest-price bidding schemes.
Code is legacy the moment it's put into production. Keeping technical debt from piling up, and keeping on the bleeding edge to avoid costly maintenance of old systems is extremely expensive. And the costs escalate very quickly when you're talking about airplanes. The cost of dealing with legacy becomes acceptable very quickly.
Code is legacy the moment it's put into production. Keeping technical debt from piling up, and keeping on the bleeding edge to avoid costly maintenance of old systems is extremely expensive. And the costs escalate very quickly when you're talking about airplanes. The cost of dealing with legacy becomes acceptable very quickly.
The point is the F-22 is old technology. The testing and other tooling has been in production for a long time. And yes, it's hard to recruit people with the right skillsets to support legacy hardware and software.
> And yes, it's hard to recruit people with the right skillsets to support legacy hardware and software.
Perhaps you should not fire them, then.
Perhaps you should not fire them, then.
How often do you rewrite your existing projects?
It's in my best interest to keep moving projects forward so that they continue to build and compile under modern environments and work with modern tools. I believe the cost of sticking with outmoded products or technology is to eat the training cost when onboarding new people (thus increasing the amount of time between hiring and getting them to work). We aren't all as wealthy as Lockheed who can (apparently) pay so much that they are literally talking people out of their retirement!
That said, I'm not flying airplanes over here. It's mostly business software. So there's that.
That said, I'm not flying airplanes over here. It's mostly business software. So there's that.
Also, unless you can prove that your software is EXACTLY the same after the ground-up rewrite, it will require changes to the voluminous and very detailed training materials, necessary to turn a 19 year old with slightly above average AFOQT scores into someone who can fix a complicated airplane on 4 hours sleep a night.
No Microservices, no Kubernetes. Lame.
Think how much money we could make back selling skins for the control interfaces to pilots!
and for every 'kill' a dancing banana.
require(‘left-stick’)[deleted]
`docker pull` after a failure mid engagement
The F-35? Being wasteful? They wouldn't dare...
The program knows it's being wasteful. It is just limited in what it can do about it. Mainly because the same kinds of thinking used to get the program into this mess are what's being tried to get the program out of this mess. Einstein had the definitive quote on how well that works.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
"Einstein had the definitive quote"
I think you're thinking of Mark Twain.
I think you're thinking of Mark Twain.
Could have been Gandhi? Surely if it's clever, one of them must have said it.
No, I'm not.
It's also the F-22.
In general, I would agree. However, the longer that old technology is deployed, the more expensive support costs. Parts become obsolete, engineers retire or move on, IT has to maintain archaic devices, operating systems, and tools.
> However, the longer that old technology is deployed, the more expensive support costs.
That's true, but military logistics has adapted to mitigate some of these costs.
> Parts become obsolete
There are two ways this is dealt with. The first is an activity called Diminishing Materials Suppliers (DMS). DMS is an ongoing support activity during production where the availability of parts is monitored and alternative parts are selected and evaluated if a manufacturer announces they are stopping or modifying production of a part for which they are the sole supplier.
The second is the lifetime buy. Near the end of a production run, and sometimes earlier, engineering figures out how many of a given part is needed to complete the full production run and provide spares for rework and repair. Purchasing then gets approval under the contract to purchase the entire quantity of materials and the stock goes to a warehouse until it's needed.
> engineers retire or move on
Knowledge transfer is one of the big reasons the defense industry is so big on systems engineering and mountains of documentation. Obviously that only goes so far, but generally there is less tribal knowledge within a DOD program than in most commercial engineering efforts.
> IT has to maintain archaic devices, operating systems, and tools
In general, IT doesn't go anywhere near the software and equipment used to program, test, and troubleshoot hardware and embedded software. Those pieces are owned by specific engineering teams on the program.
That's true, but military logistics has adapted to mitigate some of these costs.
> Parts become obsolete
There are two ways this is dealt with. The first is an activity called Diminishing Materials Suppliers (DMS). DMS is an ongoing support activity during production where the availability of parts is monitored and alternative parts are selected and evaluated if a manufacturer announces they are stopping or modifying production of a part for which they are the sole supplier.
The second is the lifetime buy. Near the end of a production run, and sometimes earlier, engineering figures out how many of a given part is needed to complete the full production run and provide spares for rework and repair. Purchasing then gets approval under the contract to purchase the entire quantity of materials and the stock goes to a warehouse until it's needed.
> engineers retire or move on
Knowledge transfer is one of the big reasons the defense industry is so big on systems engineering and mountains of documentation. Obviously that only goes so far, but generally there is less tribal knowledge within a DOD program than in most commercial engineering efforts.
> IT has to maintain archaic devices, operating systems, and tools
In general, IT doesn't go anywhere near the software and equipment used to program, test, and troubleshoot hardware and embedded software. Those pieces are owned by specific engineering teams on the program.
The problem of your people being hit by a bus is much higher in the military.
What's crazy about these systems is they spend decades writing millions of lines of code, and then only put it in 200 devices.
What's crazy about these systems is they spend decades writing millions of lines of code, and then only put it in 200 devices.
> Obviously that only goes so far, but generally there is less tribal knowledge within a DOD program than in most commercial engineering efforts.
Within a well run DoD program. Most of the larger programs are not well run, in my personal experience. And DoD did this silly thing where it let contractors keep the rights to their engineering data until relatively recently, meaning that US taxpayer dollars are funding the purchase of hardware the government by definition can't understand, because the government isn't allowed to know about or look at much of the engineering data. So there's a HUGE amount of tribal knowledge in some of these programs because there's nothing else to reference.
Within a well run DoD program. Most of the larger programs are not well run, in my personal experience. And DoD did this silly thing where it let contractors keep the rights to their engineering data until relatively recently, meaning that US taxpayer dollars are funding the purchase of hardware the government by definition can't understand, because the government isn't allowed to know about or look at much of the engineering data. So there's a HUGE amount of tribal knowledge in some of these programs because there's nothing else to reference.
Correct. I ran into my share of shitshows during that portion of my career. It usually depended on what part of the life cycle the program was in.
However, practical experience suggests that second-system syndrome is very real, and the cost of replacing 'obsolete' systems is often vastly higher than just maintaining them, even taking into account the need to train people in skills that are difficult to hire for.
But there's an entire industry which exists to soothsay away these concerns and get companies to upgrade, whether or not it really makes any sense. Nobody has an interest in encouraging companies to keep using their old gear and do internal training; many companies have an interest in encouraging upgrades.
But there's an entire industry which exists to soothsay away these concerns and get companies to upgrade, whether or not it really makes any sense. Nobody has an interest in encouraging companies to keep using their old gear and do internal training; many companies have an interest in encouraging upgrades.
I wouldn't mind having a low mileage used F-16. F-4 is too old though and and is a gas guzzler.
Faster development time? Lower energy costs? Cooler? Faster?
It's a supersonic air superiority jet. The amount of energy needed and heat generated is a rounding error compared to the heat from supersonic flight and the powerplant's output (base fuel burn of thousands of lbs an hour).
In the case of war birds, newer technology does not mean faster development time. In order to qualify electronics for a weapon that needs to be stealthy and resistant to electronic warfare you need decades of operational data on all of the major electronics components. Any system that gets upgraded to newer technology has to go through risk assessments and that often requires tons of data collection before you even get started.
In the case of war birds, newer technology does not mean faster development time. In order to qualify electronics for a weapon that needs to be stealthy and resistant to electronic warfare you need decades of operational data on all of the major electronics components. Any system that gets upgraded to newer technology has to go through risk assessments and that often requires tons of data collection before you even get started.
OK, but where are you going to find engineers with experience in those archaic technologies? And stuff breaks; where are you going to find equipment to replace it? The industry has moved on and is no longer making stuff like core memory, so you may not be able to acquire it even if you are willing to spend a lot.
We literally spend tens of billions of dollars a year keeping a significant fraction of the domestic agricultural industry afloat in the name of national security. We do the same with energy, oil, raw materials, and pretty much anything logistically critical in a war.
I think you vastly underestimate the lengths our military industrial complex goes to protect operational capabilities. The F22 is as much a beneficiary of those technologies as a platform for keeping them alive for future use.
I think you vastly underestimate the lengths our military industrial complex goes to protect operational capabilities. The F22 is as much a beneficiary of those technologies as a platform for keeping them alive for future use.
If our military-industrial complex is so concerned with protecting operational capabilities, then why have they facilitated the offshoring of industries to China, especially industries concerned with the manufacture of some of the world’s highest technology? Shenzhen literally has skyscrapers of high electronics logistical heaven; in America we spend billions of dollars on fuck-all software and can’t repair broken consumer electronics circuitboards.
The military-industrial complex will throw money at things, but only in stupid ways. Are they creating jobs paying $500k for engineers to work in this sector and keep them interested in this kind of work and these ancient technologies? Of course not. So where do you think they're going to find the talent needed?
Feel free to apply for some jobs in the defense sector to find out how much they pay. You'll make more money working at FAANG companies, and you don't have to wait years for a security clearance to be approved. Jobs in aerospace, in particular, are pretty lousy paying compared to what engineers are getting elsewhere.
Feel free to apply for some jobs in the defense sector to find out how much they pay. You'll make more money working at FAANG companies, and you don't have to wait years for a security clearance to be approved. Jobs in aerospace, in particular, are pretty lousy paying compared to what engineers are getting elsewhere.
Right, we should all work for FAANG companies. Likewise, why wouldn't any person who loves sports work for the NBA instead of as a gym teacher?
You'll make more money working as an NBA player, and you don't have to wait years for a teaching certificate to be approved. Jobs in schools, in particular, are pretty lousy paying compared to what sports lovers are getting elsewhere.
The fact that FAANG companies employ about 0.1% of the software developers could have something to do with this. Practically speaking, nobody works for the NBA or for a FAANG company.
So it is a silly comparison. Defense contractors can and do beat plenty of normal companies. For example, Tesla pays software developers just $78k to $147k. Defense contractors can beat that before even adjusting for quality of life. You can work a 40-hour week, or you can have Elon Musk cracking the whip. The defense contractor positions are frequently in affordable locations, making the numbers a far better deal than they would appear.
You'll make more money working as an NBA player, and you don't have to wait years for a teaching certificate to be approved. Jobs in schools, in particular, are pretty lousy paying compared to what sports lovers are getting elsewhere.
The fact that FAANG companies employ about 0.1% of the software developers could have something to do with this. Practically speaking, nobody works for the NBA or for a FAANG company.
So it is a silly comparison. Defense contractors can and do beat plenty of normal companies. For example, Tesla pays software developers just $78k to $147k. Defense contractors can beat that before even adjusting for quality of life. You can work a 40-hour week, or you can have Elon Musk cracking the whip. The defense contractor positions are frequently in affordable locations, making the numbers a far better deal than they would appear.
>For example, Tesla pays software developers just $78k to $147k.
Citation needed. That seems suspiciously low for silicon valley.
>Likewise, why wouldn't any person who loves sports work for the NBA instead of as a gym teacher?
Your argument doesn't make much sense here. You trot out this line, but then you try to make the case that defense contractors pay well (which isn't really my experience; they pay OK (except for "cyber" positions which are paying really well currently), but nothing fantastic compared to non-defense companies in other non-silicon-valley areas), so it doesn't follow. Gym teacher jobs pay close to poverty-level wages, so accordingly, the people who take those jobs are usually people who aren't good athletes themselves, or maybe people who have a spouse with a good income and can afford to have a job for the fun of it.
Citation needed. That seems suspiciously low for silicon valley.
>Likewise, why wouldn't any person who loves sports work for the NBA instead of as a gym teacher?
Your argument doesn't make much sense here. You trot out this line, but then you try to make the case that defense contractors pay well (which isn't really my experience; they pay OK (except for "cyber" positions which are paying really well currently), but nothing fantastic compared to non-defense companies in other non-silicon-valley areas), so it doesn't follow. Gym teacher jobs pay close to poverty-level wages, so accordingly, the people who take those jobs are usually people who aren't good athletes themselves, or maybe people who have a spouse with a good income and can afford to have a job for the fun of it.
It's not suspiciously low for silicon valley. It's just normal. Your perception is miscalibrated due to FAANG people bragging.
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Tesla_Motors/S...
It is improper to declare that any company outside the highest paying 0.1% is somehow not up to standard.
It is also improper to ignore working conditions. If you end up working 60-hour weeks for $180,000 the pay is no better than working 40-hour weeks for $120,000.
It is also improper to ignore cost of living. House prices can differ by a factor of 20, not even counting the collapsing locations. Just the difference between San Francisco and a medium-small non-coastal southern city is that much.
https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Employer=Tesla_Motors/S...
It is improper to declare that any company outside the highest paying 0.1% is somehow not up to standard.
It is also improper to ignore working conditions. If you end up working 60-hour weeks for $180,000 the pay is no better than working 40-hour weeks for $120,000.
It is also improper to ignore cost of living. House prices can differ by a factor of 20, not even counting the collapsing locations. Just the difference between San Francisco and a medium-small non-coastal southern city is that much.
>It is also improper to ignore cost of living. House prices can differ by a factor of 20, not even counting the collapsing locations. Just the difference between San Francisco and a medium-small non-coastal southern city is that much.
This isn't correct at all; you're totally overstating the CoL differences. If a decent apartment in the Bay Area costs as much as $3k/month (I'm guessing here), there's no way in hell you're going to find a comparable place anywhere in the country for $150/month. In my experience, cost-of-living just doesn't differ as much between places as people like you claim it does. What does differ is price-per-square-foot, but no one realistically expects to live in a giant McMansion in the Bay Area or Manhattan as a middle-class person. The problem with "low cost" areas is that they typically don't have any actual inexpensive places for single people or childless couples, and your options are usually either a house that's much too large with huge utility costs, or a trailer park surrounded by opioid and meth addicts.
This isn't correct at all; you're totally overstating the CoL differences. If a decent apartment in the Bay Area costs as much as $3k/month (I'm guessing here), there's no way in hell you're going to find a comparable place anywhere in the country for $150/month. In my experience, cost-of-living just doesn't differ as much between places as people like you claim it does. What does differ is price-per-square-foot, but no one realistically expects to live in a giant McMansion in the Bay Area or Manhattan as a middle-class person. The problem with "low cost" areas is that they typically don't have any actual inexpensive places for single people or childless couples, and your options are usually either a house that's much too large with huge utility costs, or a trailer park surrounded by opioid and meth addicts.
Actually no, I'm understating the CoL differences. I have relatives in both types of location, so I know. I'll pick some examples from their neighborhoods. (and yes, they do have jobs, including tech jobs) It's making excuses to say that "no one realistically expects to live in a giant McMansion in the Bay Area or Manhattan as a middle-class person", because that sucks. Real houses rent for more than double your guess. Don't expect me to believe that you won't be "surrounded by opioid and meth addicts" in the Bay Area. There are needles, tents, and poop on the streets.
In the middle of San Francisco, at 200 Amber Dr, a house sold in January for $2,450,000. It isn't anything special, at just 2020 square feet. It, frankly, looks ugly and unlivable. It's some old trash from 1962 on a lot that is measured in square feet! Converting that 3149 square feet gives just 0.07229 acres. It's a joke of a little house that should have been bulldozed by 1985. BTW, it would rent for about $7,500 per month.
In much of the country 1/20 of that ($122,500) would get you a similar house on a 0.14 to 0.30 acre lot. Let's see...
You can get 3021 square feet on 0.68 acres for $130,000 in Cocoa, FL. It's older. OTOH, you get more bathrooms. Note the 50% extra floor space and nearly 10x property size.
You can get 1652 square feet for $122,900 in Melbourne, FL. It's being built in a 55+ community by a developer. It'll come with all sorts of community extras, including a lake for fishing.
You can get 4992 square feet on 0.3 acres for $150,000 in Georgetown, KY. There are 7 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It comes with beautiful wood floors, high ceilings, a partially spiral staircase, and a fireplace. It's right on Main Street.
You can get 1904 square feet on 5 acres for $89,900 in Georgetown, KY. It's a manufactured home. There is a brook (stream) on the property! You could go hunting with an AR-15 in your backyard. Again, it's 5 acres, and look at that price.
You can get 1987 square feet on 0.1436 acres for $134,900 in Fairborn, OH.
You can get 1976 square feet on 0.41 acres for $115,000 in Beavercreek, OH.
You can get 1920 square feet on 0.1015 acres for $48,900 in Dayton, OH. It does have that icky city feel, being 500 feet from a large park and 750 feet from a damn bus stop, but evidently you wouldn't object.
BTW, while looking for houses I stumbled across trash in Dayton, OH. One is a 4-unit place with the units renting for $300 to $390 per month. The whole thing can be owned for $99,900. A similar place going for $129,900 has 3 units renting for an average of $458 per month.
In the middle of San Francisco, at 200 Amber Dr, a house sold in January for $2,450,000. It isn't anything special, at just 2020 square feet. It, frankly, looks ugly and unlivable. It's some old trash from 1962 on a lot that is measured in square feet! Converting that 3149 square feet gives just 0.07229 acres. It's a joke of a little house that should have been bulldozed by 1985. BTW, it would rent for about $7,500 per month.
In much of the country 1/20 of that ($122,500) would get you a similar house on a 0.14 to 0.30 acre lot. Let's see...
You can get 3021 square feet on 0.68 acres for $130,000 in Cocoa, FL. It's older. OTOH, you get more bathrooms. Note the 50% extra floor space and nearly 10x property size.
You can get 1652 square feet for $122,900 in Melbourne, FL. It's being built in a 55+ community by a developer. It'll come with all sorts of community extras, including a lake for fishing.
You can get 4992 square feet on 0.3 acres for $150,000 in Georgetown, KY. There are 7 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It comes with beautiful wood floors, high ceilings, a partially spiral staircase, and a fireplace. It's right on Main Street.
You can get 1904 square feet on 5 acres for $89,900 in Georgetown, KY. It's a manufactured home. There is a brook (stream) on the property! You could go hunting with an AR-15 in your backyard. Again, it's 5 acres, and look at that price.
You can get 1987 square feet on 0.1436 acres for $134,900 in Fairborn, OH.
You can get 1976 square feet on 0.41 acres for $115,000 in Beavercreek, OH.
You can get 1920 square feet on 0.1015 acres for $48,900 in Dayton, OH. It does have that icky city feel, being 500 feet from a large park and 750 feet from a damn bus stop, but evidently you wouldn't object.
BTW, while looking for houses I stumbled across trash in Dayton, OH. One is a 4-unit place with the units renting for $300 to $390 per month. The whole thing can be owned for $99,900. A similar place going for $129,900 has 3 units renting for an average of $458 per month.
You're still sidestepping my argument altogether, jumping from renting prices to sale prices. I don't want to buy a house. How much does it cost to rent in the Bay Area, and elsewhere; is it a 20x difference? I don't think so.
I see this in the DC area where I live. It's perfectly possible to rent a very nice place for 1500-2000/month. It's totally impossible to rent anyplace decent in the country for $75-100/month (a 20x difference).
I see this in the DC area where I live. It's perfectly possible to rent a very nice place for 1500-2000/month. It's totally impossible to rent anyplace decent in the country for $75-100/month (a 20x difference).
So a couple of the comments here have been mentioning the high pay of people with specialties like this in the context of LM and other defense contractors. My impression from Glassdoor and general conversation with software developers has been the DCs pay pretty low for software in general compared to FAANG or even other engineering companies. Is it true that people with obscure specialties at places like LM can command high salaries? Or have I been misled that LM pay is on the lower side? Or is it all relative?
(Reposting at the top level because it makes more sense to hopefully get more discussion)
Defense contractors are similar to other companies that (strongly) do not believe that software is their product and do not value it any further than that it is a small component in the large system they are delivering. There's a lot of old-school attitudes still present: for example, I've heard software developers referred to as "software typists" a number of times.
Basically there are two entirely different paths here. For example, the person who writes all the software to drive the cockpit displays is probably called something like a "cockpit avionics engineer" and is organizationally in the department that's responsible for building such things. These people can get paid very well.
On the other hand, a "software developer" is much more likely to be a support function. Lots of maintenance of legacy stuff more than anything, and what actual development work exists might be nothing more than taking an algorithm directly from a standard and implementing it in whatever language is required by the project. These roles are not particularly well-paid and have a lot of turnover.
It is a very different world.
Basically there are two entirely different paths here. For example, the person who writes all the software to drive the cockpit displays is probably called something like a "cockpit avionics engineer" and is organizationally in the department that's responsible for building such things. These people can get paid very well.
On the other hand, a "software developer" is much more likely to be a support function. Lots of maintenance of legacy stuff more than anything, and what actual development work exists might be nothing more than taking an algorithm directly from a standard and implementing it in whatever language is required by the project. These roles are not particularly well-paid and have a lot of turnover.
It is a very different world.
> Basically there are two entirely different paths here. For example, the person who writes all the software to drive the cockpit displays is probably called something like a "cockpit avionics engineer" and is organizationally in the department that's responsible for building such things.
I don't know how Lockheed organizes, but I assume it is similar to Raytheon. Raytheon had a matrix organization where the rows are functional groups (e.g., software engineering, digital electronics engineering, RF engineering) and the columns are program teams (e.g., radar power supply, radar antenna, radar signal processor). The title you describe would align with a program group, but your "official" title would come from your functional group (which would be software engineering in this case).
> These people can get paid very well.
In the absolute. For software engineers, it's pretty average. I was writing some pretty cutting-edge embedded signal processing software when I left Raytheon in 2012, and I was getting paid $85,000/year with 9.5 years of experience. Based on my trajectory, I would have been at around $120,000 now had I stayed. This was in Dallas, so it was good money compared to the COL, but I could have made slightly more at just about any other larg-ish employer in the area. That said, I both sucked at and hated the internal political games at Raytheon, so perhaps I could have done better if those weren't true.
I don't know how Lockheed organizes, but I assume it is similar to Raytheon. Raytheon had a matrix organization where the rows are functional groups (e.g., software engineering, digital electronics engineering, RF engineering) and the columns are program teams (e.g., radar power supply, radar antenna, radar signal processor). The title you describe would align with a program group, but your "official" title would come from your functional group (which would be software engineering in this case).
> These people can get paid very well.
In the absolute. For software engineers, it's pretty average. I was writing some pretty cutting-edge embedded signal processing software when I left Raytheon in 2012, and I was getting paid $85,000/year with 9.5 years of experience. Based on my trajectory, I would have been at around $120,000 now had I stayed. This was in Dallas, so it was good money compared to the COL, but I could have made slightly more at just about any other larg-ish employer in the area. That said, I both sucked at and hated the internal political games at Raytheon, so perhaps I could have done better if those weren't true.
In one of my past jobs I was a Level 3 Electronics Engineer for LM, and I made right at the middle of the pay band. It paid okay, but lower than someone doing my same job at the same place but working for Northrop Grumman made. I saw many people jump from LM to NGC just to get a big pay bump while doing the same work.
But LM is actively trying to reduce its number of Level 5, 6, and 7 engineers (the highest paybands on the technical career track). You would typically find a Level 5 engineer serving as an engineering technical team lead, a Level 6 as a site deputy chief engineer, and a Level 7 as a site chief engineer. A few years ago, LM Aeronautics offered all Level 5 and above engineers an early buyout/retirement and got over 1000 engineers to leave the company that way. Those engineers were largely not replaced, either in skills (hard to replace that level of expertise), billets (those jobs were not re-filled), or promotions (the sudden vacuum at the top end of the technical career pyramid was not filled by promoting large numbers of level 4 engineers to level 5, etc).
But LM is actively trying to reduce its number of Level 5, 6, and 7 engineers (the highest paybands on the technical career track). You would typically find a Level 5 engineer serving as an engineering technical team lead, a Level 6 as a site deputy chief engineer, and a Level 7 as a site chief engineer. A few years ago, LM Aeronautics offered all Level 5 and above engineers an early buyout/retirement and got over 1000 engineers to leave the company that way. Those engineers were largely not replaced, either in skills (hard to replace that level of expertise), billets (those jobs were not re-filled), or promotions (the sudden vacuum at the top end of the technical career pyramid was not filled by promoting large numbers of level 4 engineers to level 5, etc).
So hang on, let me rephrase this: Lockheed has basically fired most of its most highly experienced engineering talent? Is that right?
What did Lockheed hope to accomplish by this move?
Do you know what the total realized effect was?
What did Lockheed hope to accomplish by this move?
Do you know what the total realized effect was?
Not fired, that would indicate termination for cause. This was an early buyout. Engineers at those levels were offered a severance package that included some number of weeks of pay per years spent with the company (up to a maximum of 6 months of pay) and a base amount on top of that.
This was the precursor to layoffs -- LM hoped to avoid layoffs by offering buyouts to these engineers. The wisdom of all of this... I don't see it.
Their goal was to reduce total amount spent on salaries.
This came at the time that the F-35 flight test program began its long wind-down. Other companies were hiring in large numbers because they had just begun big test programs (NGC had just won the B-21 contract and was testing its Triton UAVs), the net effect was that a HUGE amount of engineering knowledge and talent went out the door within a year. I can only speak for what it did to the F-35 test forces -- basically made them start over in terms of learning how to execute their jobs.
This was the precursor to layoffs -- LM hoped to avoid layoffs by offering buyouts to these engineers. The wisdom of all of this... I don't see it.
Their goal was to reduce total amount spent on salaries.
This came at the time that the F-35 flight test program began its long wind-down. Other companies were hiring in large numbers because they had just begun big test programs (NGC had just won the B-21 contract and was testing its Triton UAVs), the net effect was that a HUGE amount of engineering knowledge and talent went out the door within a year. I can only speak for what it did to the F-35 test forces -- basically made them start over in terms of learning how to execute their jobs.
Only 6 months max - that's cheap BT in the UK used back in the day get up to 18 months tax free and 6.5 years on your pension.
Hence a lot of experienced Mobile engineers took the buy out and went to work with the competition and got a pay rise to boot in their new jobs
Hence a lot of experienced Mobile engineers took the buy out and went to work with the competition and got a pay rise to boot in their new jobs
I have one word for it: profit
Companies do this all the time for all levels. It was basically an early retirement buyout. There’s a big Lockheed plant in my area and I’m pretty sure all managers, engineers, plant workers, etc were all offered buyouts. Everyone with 3 or so years until retirement.
The larger defense contractors have issues paying software engineers remotely close to private industry nowadays. In certain regions of the US the software market is dominated by defense though.
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).
You can get the pay increase associated with "cyber" in the name without having to live in the costly DC area. That works for me, supporting 12 kids on a single income. The work-life balance is to be appreciated as well, with 40-hour weeks (or paid overtime) and flexible hours.
Apparently RSU doesn't mean "real soon unless". It appears to mean, instead, "restricted stock unit", a form of delayed compensation.
They pay quite well if you measure that by how many hours of work you must do to pay a mortgage on a nice home. This is because:
1. It's typically a 40-hour week. They legally can't make you work 48 or more without paying overtime, and many will start paying overtime after 40.
2. You don't have to live in an expensive place like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, or New York City. The worst cases are usually the DC area and San Diego, but typical locations are far cheaper. Instead of $2,000,000 for a house, you might pay $120,000 for a better house. Everything around you is cheaper too, from food to electricity. Gasoline is half the cost.
The choice is pretty clear if you hope to raise a family.
1. It's typically a 40-hour week. They legally can't make you work 48 or more without paying overtime, and many will start paying overtime after 40.
2. You don't have to live in an expensive place like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, or New York City. The worst cases are usually the DC area and San Diego, but typical locations are far cheaper. Instead of $2,000,000 for a house, you might pay $120,000 for a better house. Everything around you is cheaper too, from food to electricity. Gasoline is half the cost.
The choice is pretty clear if you hope to raise a family.
If you just look at salary comparison websites you will think the two have comparable salaries. 10 years of dev experience will put you in the 130k range before cost of living bumps. But FANG gives a lot or even most of the compensation as something besides salary.
Defense contractors don't pay FAANG salaries. They can't, in general, because they're bound by labor categories and salaries set by the government, and the government isn't paying software engineers above what their GS software engineers get (max of about 128k in the DC area in general, if you're curious). There are a few jobs that can go a bit higher, but even they are capped around 150k as I recall.
I don't know what LM is going to pay for the skillset they ask for in that job announcement, I would bet that it's 150k or less, but the person w/ the skillset to answer it may be able to command a bit more as there aren't very many of us left.
I don't know what LM is going to pay for the skillset they ask for in that job announcement, I would bet that it's 150k or less, but the person w/ the skillset to answer it may be able to command a bit more as there aren't very many of us left.
Defense contractors set their own payscales but also compete on price. I know software engineers right now earning north of 150K. Also, overtime is paid and billed in defense. Thus, if you do work overtime, your defense contractor wants to bill it and you get paid for it. My first year out of school I made nearly 100K on a 67K salary because of billed overtime. This was in 2003.
There is also the fact that finding ways to get more ads in front of people is not inherently motivating for some engineers when compared to building space systems or solving other interesting problems like deconflicting telescope laser alignment with satellite orbits.
There is also the fact that finding ways to get more ads in front of people is not inherently motivating for some engineers when compared to building space systems or solving other interesting problems like deconflicting telescope laser alignment with satellite orbits.
> Also, overtime is paid and billed in defense. Thus, if you do work overtime, your defense contractor wants to bill it and you get paid for it. My first year out of school I made nearly 100K on a 67K salary because of billed overtime. This was in 2003.
When I worked at Raytheon (2002 - 2012) overtime had to be pre-approved (not every contract was eligible) and you had to work at least 8 extra hours in a week to get paid overtime (the 8 hours were paid if you hit the threshold; 7.5 and you didn't get anything extra). There was also an expectation, at least on my program, that you would be working overtime if it was authorized.
When I worked at Raytheon (2002 - 2012) overtime had to be pre-approved (not every contract was eligible) and you had to work at least 8 extra hours in a week to get paid overtime (the 8 hours were paid if you hit the threshold; 7.5 and you didn't get anything extra). There was also an expectation, at least on my program, that you would be working overtime if it was authorized.
Companies have different rules and expectations. I was paid for every overtime hour I worked. Early in my career I was still learning and it was worthwhile, both financially and technically, right out of school. It can simply be a 9 to 5 job which is different than the commercial world I work in now where I don't get paid for extra time.
It should be noted:
Amazon is a defense contractor. Google is/was a defense contractor. Apple is a defense contractor. Microsoft is a defense contractor. SpaceX is a defense contractor. IBM is a defense contractor. ...
Amazon is a defense contractor. Google is/was a defense contractor. Apple is a defense contractor. Microsoft is a defense contractor. SpaceX is a defense contractor. IBM is a defense contractor. ...
There’s a huge difference between having your primary business being services projects basically as an extension of the government and your revenue center being unrelated private sector funding. Your corporate structure and business incentives are completely different as a result. I know Lockheed spend many millions of dollars trying to build a DoD-centric IaaS as AWS was being built and it didn’t really matter in the end because so many projects are going to GovCloud. Sure, lots of TS projects are not ever going to be in AWS but boy are people trying. VMware was bought before to try to contain the sheer sprawl of configuration in the Pentagon (your cost is almost entirely around organizational complexities rather than compute / storage cost due to being so heavy on labor costs in most enterprise orgs so the math is fuzzier but usually results in layoffs / workforce optimizations if successful).
Not when talking about payscales. To say defense contractors don't pay FAANG salaries when FAANG companies are in the defense business is a failure of awareness. I was simply pointing this out.
None of the FAANG companies derive any significant percentage of their revenue from defense. None of them are defense contractors in the real sense of the concept. They're corporations who have a defense business on the side.
You either are or you aren't a defense contractor. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have been competing for a $10 billion dollar defense contract. Google just dropped out. Aside, Boeing is considered a defense contractor by many, but only 25% of its revenue is from defense. Where do you draw the line?
You’re don’t get to make the determination that it’s a binary thing.
You may believe that, the market doesn’t.
Boeing isn’t a defense contractor by most people’s metrics. None of the faangs are by almost any standard.
You may believe that, the market doesn’t.
Boeing isn’t a defense contractor by most people’s metrics. None of the faangs are by almost any standard.
>Defense contractors don't pay FAANG salaries.
This is also a self asnwering question of sorts. If, let's say Lockheed would pay 'FAANG' salaries then it would be 'FLAANG' since the abbreviation is meant to encompass the top paying salaries.
This is also a self asnwering question of sorts. If, let's say Lockheed would pay 'FAANG' salaries then it would be 'FLAANG' since the abbreviation is meant to encompass the top paying salaries.
The abbreviation is meant to encompass the top-performing tech stocks. It was appropriated for pay because they are also amongst the top-paying.
Well that's true. LM is known to pay lower than most of the defense industry as well though.
Wow, P&W also didn't pay very well, wonder how low LM is.
Not true. Billable labor rates are negotiated with the customer. The actual pay that an employee gets is based on market rates and the perceived value of the employee. The one may influence the other.
You are 1000% wrong. Pay scales are "owned" by the DMCA.
https://www.dcma.mil/DCMA-Pricing-Support/
A PhD with 20 years of experience = this pay band
You can pay your people whatever you want, but the gov will only pay your people what the DCMA says they are worth. If you pay higher, it comes out of profit (which is also metered by the DCMA) or some other source.
Source: A own a R&D engineering company that works for the DoD and IC.
I can pay a EE PhD $400k/year but the DoD will "only" pay me back around $175k for this person's time. I have to make up the difference.
Hence, for defense contractors, we "only" pay what the DCMA will let us charge.
In order, what matters are: tickets, experience, degrees, certs
A PhD with 20 years of experience = this pay band
You can pay your people whatever you want, but the gov will only pay your people what the DCMA says they are worth. If you pay higher, it comes out of profit (which is also metered by the DCMA) or some other source.
Source: A own a R&D engineering company that works for the DoD and IC.
I can pay a EE PhD $400k/year but the DoD will "only" pay me back around $175k for this person's time. I have to make up the difference.
Hence, for defense contractors, we "only" pay what the DCMA will let us charge.
In order, what matters are: tickets, experience, degrees, certs
Sure it is. The government is the customer, and the rates they will pay absolutely drive the rate the contracting company is willing to pay their engineers.
Defense contracting is a very different vehicle from any other. Source -- I am a DOD contract software engineer.
Defense contracting is a very different vehicle from any other. Source -- I am a DOD contract software engineer.
It is extremely difficult to negotiate labor rates above a certain threshold; the government contracting officers can and will just refuse if they think you are demanding above-market rates. Sometimes you can justify some overage, but it's not easy, and it's not negotiated on a per-project basis.
I had a job maintaining fortran code on an openVMS OS running on itanium hardware.
Itanium was intel's failed attempt at a 64bit architecture and that's the platform VMS decided to port to. That made hardware expensive and as of recently obsolete (i think hp discontinued that integrity line of servers)
VMS doesn't natively support TCP/IP, because it predates it. The VMS communication protocol was called decnet. So you can imagine that porting vms-specific fortran code to work on a modern network stack was non trivial.
Also, everyone with VMS knowledge was a hacker. No real design or plan, just go in an change a thing here and a thing there and get it working.
All that being said, it was interesting to work on an OS that is so different from linux, specifically the file system had versioning.
Itanium was intel's failed attempt at a 64bit architecture and that's the platform VMS decided to port to. That made hardware expensive and as of recently obsolete (i think hp discontinued that integrity line of servers)
VMS doesn't natively support TCP/IP, because it predates it. The VMS communication protocol was called decnet. So you can imagine that porting vms-specific fortran code to work on a modern network stack was non trivial.
Also, everyone with VMS knowledge was a hacker. No real design or plan, just go in an change a thing here and a thing there and get it working.
All that being said, it was interesting to work on an OS that is so different from linux, specifically the file system had versioning.
VMS is widely maligned today, but it really wasn't bad, and as you note the clever, native support of versions was kind of amazing. I can't believe that's not part of a modern OS.
VMS' clustering tech was also pretty great, which is the reason my late-90s employer was still on it (though on Alpha hardware at that point, not Vax).
VMS' clustering tech was also pretty great, which is the reason my late-90s employer was still on it (though on Alpha hardware at that point, not Vax).
Even in the late 90s, you'd get a lot of pushback on "VMS really wasn't bad". One manager I knew believed that the built-in versioning existed solely for DEC to sell people extra disks. I personally can easily believe that filesystems with version numbers don't exist anymore. I'm going to have to reference "The Hideous Name", Rob Pike and Peter Weinberger: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~rsc/pike85hideous.pdf
ZFS does bring in file system level versioning. Not widely adopted yet though.
>Itanium was intel's failed attempt at a 64bit architecture and that's the platform VMS decided to port to. That made hardware expensive and as of recently obsolete (i think hp discontinued that integrity line of servers)
OpenVMS x86-64 port is a work in progress: https://www.vmssoftware.com/updates_port.html
OpenVMS x86-64 port is a work in progress: https://www.vmssoftware.com/updates_port.html
That's outrageous...
1. RE: FORTRAN. VAX FORTRAN was the most awesome implementation of FORTRAN ever. FORTRAN because these systems didn't have much RAM and CPU power was limited. FORTRAN went into the background for a while when the C fad began in the early 1980s; however, academics cringed at C for reasons that the industry would eventually learn "the hard way" and FORTRAN came back along with a government knee-jerk reaction called Ada and a pile of 4GLs starting with DATATRIEVE --up until processors and RAM allowed for more productive use of more powerful "safe" language systems (Java, C#, Python, Swift).
2. RE: ITANIUM. DEC created VAX/VMS for the break-thru 32-bit VAX-11 architecture and then ported it to its break-thru 64-bit Alpha architecture and rebranded it as OpenVMS. The Alpha chip was really powerful, but it was produced only by DEC's Hudson chip plant (which also produced the StrongARM chip whose descendants are in all of the smartphones). To address the customer need for a second supplier for that chip, DEC began to shop around the Alpha architecture to other semiconductor manufacturers. One of those was Intel --which decided not to become a second source and a little while later, announced the Pentium series that revived its ALL BUT DEAD x86 architecture using patented concepts found only in DEC's Alpha chip. There was a lawsuit and the settlement was that Intel would buy the Alpha chip and Hudson plant. This resulted in the Itanium architecture, which the then owner of DEC (HP) decided to embrace for OpenVMS and its other HP operating systems. As the Pentium chip gained momentum, Intel realized it would be more profitable to use the tech to make X86_64 architecture. Meanwhile, Microsoft, which was all but ready to dump the ALL BUT DEAD x86 architecture (in favor of MIPS and PowerPC), pivoted with Windows NT and released full support for X86_64. Considering that Windows NT was developed by the original computer scientists behind VMS and considering the dominance of Windows on the desktop and the low cost of X86_64 hardware (due to economies of scale), it was no surprise that Itanium fell out of favor, and OpenVMS along with it (though there were many heroic efforts to "rescue" OpenVMS from that dead architecture, HP had no real interest --at least not in time).
3. RE: VMS TCP/IP. This cracked me up. I wrote one of the first TCP/IP stacks for VAX/VMS on a VAX-11/780 using InterLAN hardware. You are correct that VMS pre-dates TCP/IP --but dude it was only by like 1-2 years! VMS was uses with XNS/ITP (upon which TCP/IP was based). TCP/IP is le grand garbage --as the entire planet knows now and DEC had bet heavily on something called OSI to replace DECnet. But some f'n jack head named Vincent Cerf created an async implementation for TCP/IP that allowed the bazillion Windows PC to hop on the Internet (what could go wrong) and that quickly became Microsoft RAS which destroyed the universe quickly. All of the stable and secure networking systems died. Bill Gates was interviewed at one point and responded to a question about what the biggest unexpected development had been with a dumb look saying he had failed to predict the sudden end of distance-and-time based pricing for data communications. So now, dude in St. Petersburg can show off his genetic superiority by hacking the microcode in the Intel Ethernet controllers in your laptop from 8,000 miles away at virtually no cost. Enjoy!
4. VMS knowledge are hackers. This is among the most outrageous comment I've read on the Internet. VMS was all about structure and discipline. If you weren't a computer scientist (or college student) you weren't even getting a job working on one! What you probably observed had nothing to do with VMS but just maintaining legacy code in general.
5. RE: "interesting". VMS was the most powerful operating system ever created well into the modern era. You can imagine that the guys creating Windows NT at Microsoft (who previously developed VMS for DEC back East) were not being allowed to create the true successor to VMS --the idea was to get something working on small cheap PCs that would be sold to all of the small businesses, not on continuing to perfect the product of 30 years of engineering (as VMS descended from their prior RSX11 and RT11 operating systems) as they had been doing first to the 78032 "chip" and later to the Alpha processors. I think around 2015, Windows, Linux and MacOS finally began to pull away from where VMS was (back in 1990). One can only imagine how powerful VMS would have become when run on something like the MacPro 7,1 that Apple announced.
In conclusion, true industry leaders, many of whom did not support VMS back in the day (because they were forced to embrace crummy UNIX System 3, V and BSD "hacks" for lack of access to the incredible DEC engineering resources), will tell you that VMS (and TCP/IP) are stories of lost art that severely setback the pace of mankind's development. The reasons are many: Bill Gates' well known BS, Vincent Cerf's destructive efforts to advance PPP, alleged theft of intellectual property by Intel that set off the downward spiral of DEC, skyrocketing memory prices due to market manipulation and Carly "That Face" Fiorina.
Consider yoh-self schooled.
1. RE: FORTRAN. VAX FORTRAN was the most awesome implementation of FORTRAN ever. FORTRAN because these systems didn't have much RAM and CPU power was limited. FORTRAN went into the background for a while when the C fad began in the early 1980s; however, academics cringed at C for reasons that the industry would eventually learn "the hard way" and FORTRAN came back along with a government knee-jerk reaction called Ada and a pile of 4GLs starting with DATATRIEVE --up until processors and RAM allowed for more productive use of more powerful "safe" language systems (Java, C#, Python, Swift).
2. RE: ITANIUM. DEC created VAX/VMS for the break-thru 32-bit VAX-11 architecture and then ported it to its break-thru 64-bit Alpha architecture and rebranded it as OpenVMS. The Alpha chip was really powerful, but it was produced only by DEC's Hudson chip plant (which also produced the StrongARM chip whose descendants are in all of the smartphones). To address the customer need for a second supplier for that chip, DEC began to shop around the Alpha architecture to other semiconductor manufacturers. One of those was Intel --which decided not to become a second source and a little while later, announced the Pentium series that revived its ALL BUT DEAD x86 architecture using patented concepts found only in DEC's Alpha chip. There was a lawsuit and the settlement was that Intel would buy the Alpha chip and Hudson plant. This resulted in the Itanium architecture, which the then owner of DEC (HP) decided to embrace for OpenVMS and its other HP operating systems. As the Pentium chip gained momentum, Intel realized it would be more profitable to use the tech to make X86_64 architecture. Meanwhile, Microsoft, which was all but ready to dump the ALL BUT DEAD x86 architecture (in favor of MIPS and PowerPC), pivoted with Windows NT and released full support for X86_64. Considering that Windows NT was developed by the original computer scientists behind VMS and considering the dominance of Windows on the desktop and the low cost of X86_64 hardware (due to economies of scale), it was no surprise that Itanium fell out of favor, and OpenVMS along with it (though there were many heroic efforts to "rescue" OpenVMS from that dead architecture, HP had no real interest --at least not in time).
3. RE: VMS TCP/IP. This cracked me up. I wrote one of the first TCP/IP stacks for VAX/VMS on a VAX-11/780 using InterLAN hardware. You are correct that VMS pre-dates TCP/IP --but dude it was only by like 1-2 years! VMS was uses with XNS/ITP (upon which TCP/IP was based). TCP/IP is le grand garbage --as the entire planet knows now and DEC had bet heavily on something called OSI to replace DECnet. But some f'n jack head named Vincent Cerf created an async implementation for TCP/IP that allowed the bazillion Windows PC to hop on the Internet (what could go wrong) and that quickly became Microsoft RAS which destroyed the universe quickly. All of the stable and secure networking systems died. Bill Gates was interviewed at one point and responded to a question about what the biggest unexpected development had been with a dumb look saying he had failed to predict the sudden end of distance-and-time based pricing for data communications. So now, dude in St. Petersburg can show off his genetic superiority by hacking the microcode in the Intel Ethernet controllers in your laptop from 8,000 miles away at virtually no cost. Enjoy!
4. VMS knowledge are hackers. This is among the most outrageous comment I've read on the Internet. VMS was all about structure and discipline. If you weren't a computer scientist (or college student) you weren't even getting a job working on one! What you probably observed had nothing to do with VMS but just maintaining legacy code in general.
5. RE: "interesting". VMS was the most powerful operating system ever created well into the modern era. You can imagine that the guys creating Windows NT at Microsoft (who previously developed VMS for DEC back East) were not being allowed to create the true successor to VMS --the idea was to get something working on small cheap PCs that would be sold to all of the small businesses, not on continuing to perfect the product of 30 years of engineering (as VMS descended from their prior RSX11 and RT11 operating systems) as they had been doing first to the 78032 "chip" and later to the Alpha processors. I think around 2015, Windows, Linux and MacOS finally began to pull away from where VMS was (back in 1990). One can only imagine how powerful VMS would have become when run on something like the MacPro 7,1 that Apple announced.
In conclusion, true industry leaders, many of whom did not support VMS back in the day (because they were forced to embrace crummy UNIX System 3, V and BSD "hacks" for lack of access to the incredible DEC engineering resources), will tell you that VMS (and TCP/IP) are stories of lost art that severely setback the pace of mankind's development. The reasons are many: Bill Gates' well known BS, Vincent Cerf's destructive efforts to advance PPP, alleged theft of intellectual property by Intel that set off the downward spiral of DEC, skyrocketing memory prices due to market manipulation and Carly "That Face" Fiorina.
Consider yoh-self schooled.
Hard to detect sarcasm or parody here, but this is a great example of someone condemning the systems which were cheap (or license-free), widely available, worked well enough for most people, and provided huge benefits to millions, because it doesn't comply with his own narrow view of how it should be done.
> If you weren't a computer scientist (or college student) you weren't even getting a job working on one!
Exactly. A system whose priority is preventing people from ever using it.
> If you weren't a computer scientist (or college student) you weren't even getting a job working on one!
Exactly. A system whose priority is preventing people from ever using it.
> example of someone condemning the systems which were cheap (or license-free), widely available
Right!
> , worked well enough for most people
Well, with a mouse click, the Chinese can cause most of the self-balancing mobility devices (scooters, etc.) within a few miles of all military bases and schools to turn off while doing 10-20mph down the street (thus seriously injuring the rider). Goin' be tough to fight a war with ripped up ACL/MCLs and broken bones! 100% of the technology came from the fruit of Richard Stallman's religion.
Can't feel me? Okay, how about if you work for the federal government or have a credit file in the United States (or much of Europe) and all of your financial information is stolen so that the data can now be used to kill your family (either literally or financially) if you don't give them something they know you have and that want (or maybe even if you do!).
So I respectfully disagree with "well enough for most people" because impressionable tech kids didn't know any better ("everybody is doing it") and were convinced to give away their advanced technology over the Internet to people who can't or shouldn't handle it because they want to kill us (literally or financially), aren't trusted and/or don't have the proper education.
Fortunately the passage of time heals all wounds and much that free software movement was really just a bunch of knock-offs of truly new art that was created by companies that have been drifting "sideways" lately (since their founders left) and that's given the governments (barely) enough time to catch up. Soon, code will have to (by platform regulation and eventually federal law) be signed by a third-party before it can run on some unsuspecting user or business' computing platform. But also, there are the Amazing and Wonderful Services that are scooping up all of the millions of would-be idiot developers and subsidizing their lack of educations to ensure that they don't get into too much trouble (and to quickly identify and neutralize them if they are trouble). There's such a demand for this service that they're able to use the revenue to fund a fleet of friggin' spaceships and deep sea exploration platforms.
> his own narrow view of how it should be done
Right again! But note that narrow views coming from some people are far better than the consensus of many people. I know that breaks Star Trek or something, but it happens to be how American business works, for example.
Right!
> , worked well enough for most people
Well, with a mouse click, the Chinese can cause most of the self-balancing mobility devices (scooters, etc.) within a few miles of all military bases and schools to turn off while doing 10-20mph down the street (thus seriously injuring the rider). Goin' be tough to fight a war with ripped up ACL/MCLs and broken bones! 100% of the technology came from the fruit of Richard Stallman's religion.
Can't feel me? Okay, how about if you work for the federal government or have a credit file in the United States (or much of Europe) and all of your financial information is stolen so that the data can now be used to kill your family (either literally or financially) if you don't give them something they know you have and that want (or maybe even if you do!).
So I respectfully disagree with "well enough for most people" because impressionable tech kids didn't know any better ("everybody is doing it") and were convinced to give away their advanced technology over the Internet to people who can't or shouldn't handle it because they want to kill us (literally or financially), aren't trusted and/or don't have the proper education.
Fortunately the passage of time heals all wounds and much that free software movement was really just a bunch of knock-offs of truly new art that was created by companies that have been drifting "sideways" lately (since their founders left) and that's given the governments (barely) enough time to catch up. Soon, code will have to (by platform regulation and eventually federal law) be signed by a third-party before it can run on some unsuspecting user or business' computing platform. But also, there are the Amazing and Wonderful Services that are scooping up all of the millions of would-be idiot developers and subsidizing their lack of educations to ensure that they don't get into too much trouble (and to quickly identify and neutralize them if they are trouble). There's such a demand for this service that they're able to use the revenue to fund a fleet of friggin' spaceships and deep sea exploration platforms.
> his own narrow view of how it should be done
Right again! But note that narrow views coming from some people are far better than the consensus of many people. I know that breaks Star Trek or something, but it happens to be how American business works, for example.
I knew guys who ran VMS systems out of their homes, back in the 90's. It was fairly accessible.
How many of them had the manuals? Very few. The famous "Orange Wall of Manuals" was often secreted away, for the wizards to consult, but not for the masses to enlighten themselves with.
One guy, at least, had manuals.
VMS also had an excellent help facility.
Oh, sure. What was the format of an executable file?
Nostalgia is a trap. Wallowing in the idealized "good old days" blinds you to the true scope of history and cuts you off from progress.
Nostalgia is a trap. Wallowing in the idealized "good old days" blinds you to the true scope of history and cuts you off from progress.
Hah. I've forgotten.
Retrocomputing is just a hobby of mind. It's fun to play around with those old systems.
Retrocomputing is just a hobby of mind. It's fun to play around with those old systems.
As near as I could ever find, the format of a VMS executable file did not appear in the DEC manuals. I meant that as a commentary on the "VMS had great docs" sentiment.
At one point, I was convinced that understanding the format of an executable file (a.out, COFF, XCOFF, Mach-O, ELF, .com, .exe, PE, etc) was important to understanding the operating system itself. I spent a fair amount of effort and some money buying books trying to find the VMS executable file format. Couldn't find a hint.
At one point, I was convinced that understanding the format of an executable file (a.out, COFF, XCOFF, Mach-O, ELF, .com, .exe, PE, etc) was important to understanding the operating system itself. I spent a fair amount of effort and some money buying books trying to find the VMS executable file format. Couldn't find a hint.
It did, sigh. It was in the LINK'ER documentation. RSX/VMS was all about object modules being shared between concurrently running applications in separate user spaces (because RAM was crazy expensive and DISK was crazy slow and expensive).
The format for runtime libraries, executables and memory-mapped sections in general descended from the PDP11 a bit and I believe it changed radically (for the first time in decades) with the introduction of the 64-bit Alpha architecture under "Open"VMS.
The format for runtime libraries, executables and memory-mapped sections in general descended from the PDP11 a bit and I believe it changed radically (for the first time in decades) with the introduction of the 64-bit Alpha architecture under "Open"VMS.
Alas, the LINKER documentation (https://www.itec.suny.edu/scsys/vms/ovmsdoc073/v73/4548/4548...) I can find only includes a description of the "object language" for VAX (https://www.itec.suny.edu/scsys/vms/ovmsdoc073/v73/4548/4548...) and Alpha (https://www.itec.suny.edu/scsys/vms/ovmsdoc073/v73/4548/4548...). It does say that Itanium VMS used ELF format executables. So I think it's still an open question as to whether VAX/VMS or Alpha/VMS executable file format ever had documentation.
How did ELF format files play in VMS' idea of process-as-elaborate-address-sapce, where running a command involved reading or mapping in an executable, and then jumping to the entry point? Or did I64 VMS abandon the unusual VMS process model?
How did ELF format files play in VMS' idea of process-as-elaborate-address-sapce, where running a command involved reading or mapping in an executable, and then jumping to the entry point? Or did I64 VMS abandon the unusual VMS process model?
Thank you! I'm serious, I bought several books and inquired of VMS experts (on usenet, that long ago) looking for anything about VMS executable format. This is the first hint I've gotten.
I have a friend who converted a coat closet in his house into a datacenter large enough for a MicroVAX II with air-conditioning. He had run terminal lines to every room in the house to plug-in VTs. That said, he had a legit reason for doing it. Basically writing code 24x7 a day for his customers in those pre-laptop days.
Cool! I'm looking to pick up a VAX or AlphaStation on EBay.
You sound a lot like some of the people I worked with, hey Tim :).
1. The codebase that I was working on was not awesome, it was a mix of Fortran (while i am a fan of and would much rather use that than C for scientific code) and DCL. Lots of stuff that was clearly a design afterthought, but with decades of momentum and an attitude of "just keep it working"
2. There's a lot of history in VMS, but unfortunately it's primarily used to support legacy projects, and with intel not making anymore itanium doesn't seem like there is a future. I couldn't even get a working version of the netbeans plugin to work with it. Basically I got the plugin with no support, despite having a service contract, because there was no engineering supporting fixes.
3. Could have been that the way we wrote out networking was a mess, but I do believe that TCP/IP was an add-on feature that was not part of the kernel.
4. That statement was exclusive to the people i worked with. They were not CS guys, they were support people that had enough experience with the system to get a spot in engineering. They knew how "that" system worked, but not how to solve problems without relying on legacy code that was based on obsolete ideas. I shit you not there were delays in the code because the network was "too fast" and the process couldn't handle it.
5. Solaris is the bomb too.
Take a chill pill, boo
1. The codebase that I was working on was not awesome, it was a mix of Fortran (while i am a fan of and would much rather use that than C for scientific code) and DCL. Lots of stuff that was clearly a design afterthought, but with decades of momentum and an attitude of "just keep it working"
2. There's a lot of history in VMS, but unfortunately it's primarily used to support legacy projects, and with intel not making anymore itanium doesn't seem like there is a future. I couldn't even get a working version of the netbeans plugin to work with it. Basically I got the plugin with no support, despite having a service contract, because there was no engineering supporting fixes.
3. Could have been that the way we wrote out networking was a mess, but I do believe that TCP/IP was an add-on feature that was not part of the kernel.
4. That statement was exclusive to the people i worked with. They were not CS guys, they were support people that had enough experience with the system to get a spot in engineering. They knew how "that" system worked, but not how to solve problems without relying on legacy code that was based on obsolete ideas. I shit you not there were delays in the code because the network was "too fast" and the process couldn't handle it.
5. Solaris is the bomb too.
Take a chill pill, boo
For #3, you are correct. VMS originally required a separate third party product to support TCP/IP. MultiNet was one of the more popular stacks: http://www.process.com/products/multinet/
Newer releases (6.0 and above, I think?) do have DEC's TCP/IP layered product included. I believe it was called "UCX"...
Newer releases (6.0 and above, I think?) do have DEC's TCP/IP layered product included. I believe it was called "UCX"...
Bless Your Heart.
BTW, this will give you the warm fuzzies:
https://www.vmssoftware.com/updates_port.html
BTW, this will give you the warm fuzzies:
https://www.vmssoftware.com/updates_port.html
In your shoes, I would ask Larry Ellison to acquire you and then boot it on a MacPro 7,1 to be released with every layered application that DEC ever sold, plus ORACLE for VMS and the whole documentation suite on readthedocs --oh and a VSL (sort of like WSL2 in Windows10) with one of the nicer window managers from the Linux world. I know his current plan is to take on Werner's cloud but he doesn't have enough heartbeats left to see that through, whereas this plan legitimately does for ORACLE what buying Next Inc. (and switching to Intel processors) did for/to Apple. Peace.
Wow, that's recent!
I hope they are optimizing the design to run in a VM, with drivers only for fake VM devices, one of each kind.
I hope they are optimizing the design to run in a VM, with drivers only for fake VM devices, one of each kind.
Err...why? VMS has dealt with real hw for years.....
Because chasing behind current hardware is a massive waste of time when your only legitimate real purpose is to provide a stable, performant place to run legacy software systems. Let Linux or BSD do the endless, thankless job of rewriting drivers.
> As the Pentium chip gained momentum, Intel realized it would be more profitable to use the tech to make X86_64 architecture.
...which they didn't make but licensed from AMD, no?
...which they didn't make but licensed from AMD, no?
5. This brings up something interesting, I wonder how many other good systems/designs/code were killed because they were proprietary and got steamrolled by something open source? It's like in nature, survival of the fittest is a lie, it is survival of those who ended up reproducing.
>If you weren't a computer scientist (or college student) you weren't even getting a job working on one!
This isn't remotely true.
This isn't remotely true.
I forgot about the Field Service techs hah. Straight (outta DeVry) programmer analyst types like https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/superman-iii/27817/what-sup... were pretty much considered users in the DEC world. That is, there was a distinction between systems programmers and applications programmers (who might use a DEC-specific forms-management library or a database API but didn't really even necessarily know what model their harmless-to-the-other-users code was running on).
Agreed. Our high-school had a microVAX for back Office. 100% bespoke software in COBOL, replete with a FTE software engineer. High school me learned COBOL and helped out at lunchtimes / after school (it was boarding school near the equator - so an air conditioned VAX room was wonderful!) Got a free place in uni for my trouble :-)
Must feel bad to be Betamax.
VMS had some really nice features - mostly forgotten now that it's all 'nix, all the time.
Not totally ;) https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/a-raspberry-pi-vax-clu...
You know, I should apply for that Lockheed job just to get shutdown for being in my 50s and not having touched a VAX since my 30s (because, you know, it's changed so much since then rofl)
You know, I should apply for that Lockheed job just to get shutdown for being in my 50s and not having touched a VAX since my 30s (because, you know, it's changed so much since then rofl)
I was a data wrangler for a large retail company that put a microVAX in each store for pricing and stock tracking, about the same time as scan guns were first introduced.
It helped me get that job that my dad had worked at DEC for years and I had an RT-11 system sitting on my bedroom desk for years. Knew VAX ops fairly well then. Also about 30 years ago.
It helped me get that job that my dad had worked at DEC for years and I had an RT-11 system sitting on my bedroom desk for years. Knew VAX ops fairly well then. Also about 30 years ago.
Would not using a Gateway (in osi speak) have been a solution?
And IO completion ports!
Here's the backstory: http://web.archive.org/web/20100310163744/http://www.stsc.hi...
The way that the fine article was worded, it seems that the engineering team knew that they needed approximately 1.5M LOC before they has started. How could they have known that? Or is it simply poorly worded?
> The ATF Team planned to develop approximately 1.5 million source lines of code, across more than 20 software development companies located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
> The ATF Team planned to develop approximately 1.5 million source lines of code, across more than 20 software development companies located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Used to work in missile defense at LM as a Systems Engineer, and seen similar estimations done for cost, schedule, LOC, FTEs, etc.
To get to the total 1.5M LOC, it's after decomposing the system into lower level black boxes and doing some modeling/simulation.
How many lines of code has it taken in the past to build our navigation systems, radios, weapon system A, weapon system B, etc. How much integration work is there? If its a CAN bus, the last project had X LOC for the bus architecture. Add em up, and add a big fudging factor.
To get to the total 1.5M LOC, it's after decomposing the system into lower level black boxes and doing some modeling/simulation.
How many lines of code has it taken in the past to build our navigation systems, radios, weapon system A, weapon system B, etc. How much integration work is there? If its a CAN bus, the last project had X LOC for the bus architecture. Add em up, and add a big fudging factor.
There is a school of thought that says rather than look at the requirements and make your best guess at the amount of work needed to implement them, you will get more accurate results by making your best guess at the number of lines of code required, then using a formula to estimate the amount of work needed to write that many lines of code. I personally am not convinced this is really more accurate, but it does have serious adherents.
The variation I was taught (and it works rather well), is to look at the Requirements and estimate them in terms of T-Shirt sizes of LOC (Small, Medium, Large, XL). Then baseline your S/M/L/XL sizes into LOC. e.g., Small is 20 LOC, Large is 750, etc. From that, use your historical data (you have been tracking closely how long it takes to implement a feature vs its LOC size, right?) to estimate that say, a Small feature (20 LOC) will take 2 days at a rate of 10 LOC/Day.
It takes a lot of discipline and planning, but in the end it's the most accurate method of size and time estimation I've ever seen.
It takes a lot of discipline and planning, but in the end it's the most accurate method of size and time estimation I've ever seen.
I'm sure that works reasonably well in most cases, but it is a bit of a fallacy that it take a similar amount of effort to write each LOC.
You are correct. For reasons of expediency I did not mention that there's a "difficulty" factor which is usually expressed by a variable LOC/hour rate. e.g., Server backend code might be estimated at 100 LOC/day whereas code for an 8-bit embedded controller might be 10 LOC/day.
I think the idea is that, when you're measuring in units of many thousands of LOC, those differences roughly average out.
Whether that's true across widely differing parts of such a huge system I'm not convinced, but within a single more typical software project it seems believable to me.
Whether that's true across widely differing parts of such a huge system I'm not convinced, but within a single more typical software project it seems believable to me.
In either case, there is a final fudge factor applied to the bottom line number that upper management applies to arrive at a cost that is acceptable to them.
Somebody had a development budget, they looked up how much software developers cost, and how many lines of code per day they write, and BINGO! we have a contractual business requirement for ((budget + 20%) / dev-day-rate * LOC-per-day) lines of code.
System engineers in the defense industry have an insidious infatuation with SLOC metrics. To the detriment of many a development engineer, CMU SEI hasn't developed a better way to keep them preoccupied.
Believe it or not, there are still cost-estimation methodologies that use LOC. You somehow go from the problem, to an estimated number of lines of code that will need to be written, and then you divide and multiply that out by the number of developers per hour and their hourly rate.
Someone decided that the task was about 1.5 MLOC and used that to drive the total contract value.
Someone decided that the task was about 1.5 MLOC and used that to drive the total contract value.
Not a bad way to evaluate effort, if you believe in COCOMO (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COCOMO). Some (most?) big defense groups maintain some metrics for past projects. LOC/man-month, complexity/cost. LOCs from COCOMO is a way to check your estimation within an order of magnitude.
The way that the fine article was worded, it seems that the engineering team knew that they needed approximately 1.5M LOC before they has started
It's possible, with highly detailed design documents. You could use something like "cyclomatic complexity" which is an older estimation methodology which is just a laundry list of small granularity features with point values attached. You add those up, while multiplying some weighted numbers together to account for interlinked complexity, then use a figure for the implementation language to come up with an estimated LOC figure. Error bars on that kind of thing are something like +/- 100%/50%. (I'm pulling numbers out of my @ss here, but I'm talking about a highly ritualized and systematized way of doing just that.)
You can get better estimates, usually by asking shops that have written the same sort of product many times before.
It's possible, with highly detailed design documents. You could use something like "cyclomatic complexity" which is an older estimation methodology which is just a laundry list of small granularity features with point values attached. You add those up, while multiplying some weighted numbers together to account for interlinked complexity, then use a figure for the implementation language to come up with an estimated LOC figure. Error bars on that kind of thing are something like +/- 100%/50%. (I'm pulling numbers out of my @ss here, but I'm talking about a highly ritualized and systematized way of doing just that.)
You can get better estimates, usually by asking shops that have written the same sort of product many times before.
Cyclomatic complexity is a measure of complexity not an estimation technique (although some people do use it as part of estimation).
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity)
Calculating this involves working out the number of branches through the code, nothing to do with estimation. It is also very much in use today to analyse codebases, finding hotspots, etc.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclomatic_complexity)
Calculating this involves working out the number of branches through the code, nothing to do with estimation. It is also very much in use today to analyse codebases, finding hotspots, etc.
Also seems pretty low for a team that size. I would love to know their cost per line...
In aerospace, a hyphen might well be worth $80 million.
https://priceonomics.com/the-typo-that-destroyed-a-space-shu...
https://priceonomics.com/the-typo-that-destroyed-a-space-shu...
Why is the URL referring to a space shuttle, when the vehicle lost was an expendable Venus probe (Mariner I)? It wasn't even the probe that failed, but rather the Agena (second stage on top of the Atlas) that failed.
Wow. Reminds me of a joke my dad repeated to me many years ago:
Software saved the aerospace industry. Every other way of adding cost to an airplane also adds weight.
He spent most of his career at Lockheed and Rockwell.
Software saved the aerospace industry. Every other way of adding cost to an airplane also adds weight.
He spent most of his career at Lockheed and Rockwell.
I guess storing all those 1's also adds some weight. It costs on the order of antimatter if you think of it. What's it like, $50 million per 1 billionth of a gram, or so?
This is why I always advocate for the use of specialized negative binary using 0 and -1 for weight-sensitive embedded products. For optimum weight characteristics you flip all unused storage space to -1. Careful though, too much empty space formated this way will result in negative gravitational pull and something like an Arduino with a high capacity SD card will float away.
The only storage medium I can spontaneously think of where 1s are heavier than 0s is punch cards. I hope that is not the current primary storage method in the aerospace industry.
Nit-pick: 0s (no hole) are heavier than 1s (hole).
http://www.punctum.com/interest/punch/index.en.html
http://www.punctum.com/interest/punch/index.en.html
True, I should have said “weight difference”.
Well... technically most hard drives should change weight depending on their contents: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/31326/is-a-hard-...
Hard disks use a run-length limited encoding, so the number of magnetic 1s and 0s remains roughly constant no matter what logical 1s and 0s you store.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_limited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-length_limited
Oh wow. And now that I read this, it dawned on me that any memory technology that is based on storing charge (like DRAM) will have actual, albeit also very very theoretical, mass differences depending on bit value as well...
The internet weighs about 50 grams: https://youtu.be/WaUzu-iksi8
Some storage systems work by holding a charge, and electrons have mass.
In practical terms it night as well be 0 but in silly discussions on the internet terms it's a very small non-zero value.
In practical terms it night as well be 0 but in silly discussions on the internet terms it's a very small non-zero value.
Now you've got me thinking about a hash checking algorithm by weighing the punch cards hah
Weighing would only be slightly better than a simple parity check (a one-bit hash). It misses common errors like transposing two adjacent characters.
However, you can get any number of additional bits by suspending the punch card from various locations along its perimeter, and measuring the angle at which it hangs.
However, you can get any number of additional bits by suspending the punch card from various locations along its perimeter, and measuring the angle at which it hangs.
Interesting thought. Weighing can add an extra level of indirection ! Thinking a bit more... the same can be done in software too ?
No but it’s a good... punch... line haha
Is there any kind of energy, (and thus mass) associated with the decreased entropy of structured data files on a data storage device vs random noise? I don't recall the thermodynamics of data storage being covered during my college physics class.
> punch cards
Is hanging chad a 0 or a 1?
Is hanging chad a 0 or a 1?
[deleted]
Contrasts with "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." - Bill Gates
Reminds me of my first job out of uni, 18 years ago. I was working on the SPARK toolset, and one of our customers was the Eurofighter, who still used VAX VMS for their development.
We had to maintain an old Micro VAX box in the office to periodically test that the toolset still worked on it. I seem to remember that the massive regression test suite that would run in a few hours every night on a PC would take days on this box.
Our main worry was that one day we'd turn it on and the drive would fail to spin up. I seem to remember there being a periodic reminder to just turn the damn thing on and let it boot every so often, then shut it down, just to make sure the drive was still ok.
We had to maintain an old Micro VAX box in the office to periodically test that the toolset still worked on it. I seem to remember that the massive regression test suite that would run in a few hours every night on a PC would take days on this box.
Our main worry was that one day we'd turn it on and the drive would fail to spin up. I seem to remember there being a periodic reminder to just turn the damn thing on and let it boot every so often, then shut it down, just to make sure the drive was still ok.
You should have left it on 24/7 this is what we did for our Pr!mes (a VAX competitor) disk drives.
Development of F22 started in 1980's. Last VAX machines were manufactured in 2005. There is quite a lot of VME bus based legacy (but speciallized and working) measurement and test equipment still around. I have no involvement in the project, so can not tell for sure; yet would be surprised if any of this is part of the flight hardware.
Up until the mid 1990s similar machines (TurboChannel DECs) were required as personal workstations for my university.
Apple used to use VME bus, I think. It was Advanced, then. Now it's, technically, Retarded.
ISTR that the avionics code is written in Ada, and runs on top of Intel i960 processors, and that the Ada compiler for that target only runs on VAX/VMS (not even OpenVMS, but specifically VMS on the VAX).
ISTR?
Anyway, the processors in the F-22A are a mix of different cores. The power supply in the Gen 3 radar used a MIL-STD-1750A processor. The PICC[1] processor modules also used the MIL-STD-1750A originally, but moved to a newer processor in a refresh (if I remember correctly). I don't know what the non-Raytheon components of the plane were using.
As for the compiler, you are spot-on. We had a MicroVAX in a vault (it was a cleared computing system) just in case we needed to recompile the embedded software for the power supply controller.
[1] Unfortunately, I don't remember what this acronym expands to.
Anyway, the processors in the F-22A are a mix of different cores. The power supply in the Gen 3 radar used a MIL-STD-1750A processor. The PICC[1] processor modules also used the MIL-STD-1750A originally, but moved to a newer processor in a refresh (if I remember correctly). I don't know what the non-Raytheon components of the plane were using.
As for the compiler, you are spot-on. We had a MicroVAX in a vault (it was a cleared computing system) just in case we needed to recompile the embedded software for the power supply controller.
[1] Unfortunately, I don't remember what this acronym expands to.
PICC stands for Processor, Interface Controller and Communication (PICC) Programs Manager
"I Seem To Recall"
Huh never seen that before. Seems like a upmarket version of the more common (to me) IIRC (If I Recall Correctly).
[deleted]
They're moving rapidly away from ADA, as the mandate to use it has been rescinded. C++ 11 is the new standard.
A particularly miserly subset of C++11.
(Or does "MISRA" stand for something else?)
(Or does "MISRA" stand for something else?)
Lol. Yeah, misra is what it is.
Is misra as safe as ada? C++ for safety critical systems sounds vaguely concerning
MISRA is just a set of regulations. C++ can be fine for safety critical systems, if it's done correctly. You just have to do it right and enforce the standards.
And MISRA doesn't have much intersection with safety; it mainly enforces archaic usage patterns. But there is not just one MISRA; it evolves, and might be getting more useful. But very, very slowly.
Just a nitpick, VAX/VMS was renamed to OpenVMS around version 5.5 right around when they started porting it to Alpha. It still ran on the VAX.
Did I use DEC and VAX stations? Yes I did.
Would I want to relive that period of time? No I would not.
Is that muscle on my face twitching due to PTSD? Yes, Yes it is.
Is that muscle on my face twitching due to PTSD? Yes, Yes it is.
This is surely about VME industrial bus, not about VAX processors or computers.
The only mention of VAX/VME from the job post:
> Experience with troubleshooting equipment such as Pass1000/5000 1553 bus monitor, fiber-optic test equipment, digital storage oscilloscopes, and familiarization with the VAX/VME based computing environment.
Seems apparent to me that the context is development+ATE environment; VME is likely VXI interface to ATE instrumentation. In any case, the VMS and/or VME angle to this job post is the least of any prospect's concerns.
> Experience with troubleshooting equipment such as Pass1000/5000 1553 bus monitor, fiber-optic test equipment, digital storage oscilloscopes, and familiarization with the VAX/VME based computing environment.
Seems apparent to me that the context is development+ATE environment; VME is likely VXI interface to ATE instrumentation. In any case, the VMS and/or VME angle to this job post is the least of any prospect's concerns.
I wondered if that was a typo and they meant VAX/VMS (DEC's OS that ran on the Vax)
VAX? Like - what? The one introduced on October 25, 1977??
Hmm, makes me wonder why I let that experience drop off my resume.
Oh yeah ...
Oh yeah ...
Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science or related technical focus.
• Experience in COMM and Navigation.
• Avionics experience
• Experience with aircraft operations.
• Microsoft Office
I love the MS Office req at the end. "Yes, we see you've got a BS in engineering, you're an expert at avionics and COMM control systems, but do you know anything about MS Word?"
• Experience in COMM and Navigation.
• Avionics experience
• Experience with aircraft operations.
• Microsoft Office
I love the MS Office req at the end. "Yes, we see you've got a BS in engineering, you're an expert at avionics and COMM control systems, but do you know anything about MS Word?"
If his resume didn’t say anything about MS Office, then he’d be screened out by HR and the managers would never get to consider him. So, that conversation would never happen.
Knowing to put ms office on your resume to get by HR’s stupidity is exactly the kind of skills needed to work in a big company
[deleted]
They are probably just sick of having photos in documents that have been stretched horizontally, or documents with bloody manually created tables of contents because the last person didn't know how to use heading styles.
>twitch<
>twitch<
What kind of impression that leaves with your customer when your studies are so badly formated? And you need a lot of people to properly format the thousands upon thousands of documents...
I, absolutely, positively reacted to that requirement as well! What a wonderful addition to the qualification requirements!
Maybe 1/5 is enough for someone to apply? Makes you wonder what superhuman will get the job.
Maybe 1/5 is enough for someone to apply? Makes you wonder what superhuman will get the job.
It indicates that writing and editing thousands of pages of documentation will be contractually required. Word proficiency can save a lot of pain for everyone on that team.
An acquaintance who worked in QA for a foundry producing alloy castings for the aerospace industry swore they shipped a greater weight of paper than metal.
More like: "We ended up hiring the guy most competent at MS Word at the expense of everything else, because out of the five requirements it was the only one the managers doing the interview knew anything about".
"Johnson! We're promoting you to head technical flight operations. We can't believe the level of your MS Word skills!"
"Senator, we have no idea why the F-22 inexplicably crashed. That software was designed by the best people we could find!".
"Johnson! We're promoting you to head technical flight operations. We can't believe the level of your MS Word skills!"
"Senator, we have no idea why the F-22 inexplicably crashed. That software was designed by the best people we could find!".
More like:
The guy that designed the flight control surfaces of the F-22 did so using an elaborate Excel spreadsheet powered by 4,000 lines of uncommented VBA filled with aerodynamics equations, and he retired 3 years ago.
The guy that designed the flight control surfaces of the F-22 did so using an elaborate Excel spreadsheet powered by 4,000 lines of uncommented VBA filled with aerodynamics equations, and he retired 3 years ago.
I've seen non-professional programmers write the most amazing
things in VBA.
Excel is a great proof-of-concept tool where non-programmers can prove their point.
Unfortunately proof-of-concept tools often end up being the end result because .... it works good enough.
Unfortunately proof-of-concept tools often end up being the end result because .... it works good enough.
This happens.
That is so much more likely than you know...
They're also concerned about your PowerPoint skills
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywq5zy/the-pentagon-has-t...
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywq5zy/the-pentagon-has-t...
"I see you're trying to shoot down an Irani F-14. Would you like help with that?" [Yes] [No] [Cancel]
Such a beautiful warbird, and such a shame they were all cut to pieces just to cut Iran off from black market parts.
It's funny because it's true. It's also sad because it's true.
apexalpha(2)
I actually had a phone interview (for a government-contract IT support position....basic call center/help desk type stuff, I just needed a job) that went pretty much just like that.
I explained to the recruiter "while working on my Masters I did some General-Purpose GPU coding using CUDA, as well as software-defined radio systems using GNU Radio". I could tell she had no clue what any of that meant. She then asked me to revise and resubmit my resume because it didn't list 6 years of experience with MS Office. -_-
EDIT: My resume had my experience as a commissioned officer on it, and any DoD recruiter worth a damn should know that all officers are Black Belts in PowerPoint Slideology.
I explained to the recruiter "while working on my Masters I did some General-Purpose GPU coding using CUDA, as well as software-defined radio systems using GNU Radio". I could tell she had no clue what any of that meant. She then asked me to revise and resubmit my resume because it didn't list 6 years of experience with MS Office. -_-
EDIT: My resume had my experience as a commissioned officer on it, and any DoD recruiter worth a damn should know that all officers are Black Belts in PowerPoint Slideology.
Perhaps the F22 runs on VBA
I don't see much point in asking for an office package in a job advert. But a lot of jobs do require use of these packages and the level of skill can be terrible in otherwise highly trained people. If you use the apps a lot you should learn how to use them properly, and a lot of people just can't be bothered.
I know it's kinda trivial, but I strongly agree with this. For example, inheriting a set of Word/Google docs where all the formatting is applied locally without the use of styles. So I can't turn on the outliner or generate a table of contents. Or not including a proper footer with page numbers in n/nn format so that if I print them out and drop them I know how to put them back together. Or having decent metadata in so you can find them on file system searches. Ugh.
One time, I was given an Excel doc with a bunch of numbers and totals and averages in. I updated some values, only to find none of the calculations changed. The creator simply hadn't used any formulas, or had pasted it all in as plain text from some other place!
One time, I was given an Excel doc with a bunch of numbers and totals and averages in. I updated some values, only to find none of the calculations changed. The creator simply hadn't used any formulas, or had pasted it all in as plain text from some other place!
Who's more likely to know (or be able to figure out, in 3.5 minutes) how to use Word text styles? The candidate who has room in the "skills" section for MS-Word, or the candidate who has actual skills to list?
Yeah - you're right. Well, assuming they have the motivation to know why they need to use styles in the first place.
Knowing word and excel REALLY well brings tons of value in the Aero industry. There is a reason that, in general, excel runs the world.
You're reading the job description all wrong...you've got to think like a hiring manager in the defense industry to make any sense of it, i.e. reverse qualification priorities and the actual job you'll be hired to perform will become crystal clear.
AS a Systems Engineer in the Defense industry I completely agree. It is only because we talk about a maintenance role that DOORS doesn’t come on the list with Word.
I'll bite. What is DOORS and how can I specialize in it to put my skills in high demand?
DOORS the standard tool for requirements management that combines the worst technologies IBM has to offer in order to provide you with a way of entering hypertext into a database.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOORS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOORS
Oh of course it's a "Rational" product
The makers of many point and click puzzle games disguised as development tools.
Is this similar to Jama?
part of the IBM suite of bullshit job creation tools
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSYQBZ_9.5.2/...
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSYQBZ_9.5.2/...
DOORS is probably the reason I can't go back to the Aero industry. It still haunts my dreams. I would rather work on maintaining Excel VBA scripts rather than go back to DOORS. DXL was a goddamn nightmare.
> ...DOORS doesn’t come on the list with Word.
Got to give the hiring manager some credit. Listing DOORS as a proficiency requirement is a sure way to prolong vacancy.
Got to give the hiring manager some credit. Listing DOORS as a proficiency requirement is a sure way to prolong vacancy.
Exactly, if you really want to work on the engineering bits you'll get hired by one of Lockheed's sub contractors.
Also:
• Matlab and MS Excel experience is a plus.
The req has been open since July of last year.
• Matlab and MS Excel experience is a plus.
The req has been open since July of last year.
They claim this is for the F22, but I wonder if some enemy tech has been 'obtained' and they want to backward engineer it?
The wiki page shows some stats of a plane that is (publicly) 22-23 years old and VAX is 42 years old. To me, that math does not add up.
Just a curious thought.
The wiki page shows some stats of a plane that is (publicly) 22-23 years old and VAX is 42 years old. To me, that math does not add up.
Just a curious thought.
[deleted]
Security through obfuscation. Lockheed, good morning!
Wow. It takes tens of system engineers writing hundreds of requirements to do something as crazy as write a new 1.5 Mloc software system on VAX in the 90s. Any smaller team wouldn’t have considered it.
Do the job requirements really need to list ms excel and office three times?
"What I tell you three times is true"
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
You better know your pivot tables, son.
And you need to be a "self starter"....
I hate those HR phrases for reasons that I believe are my own, maybe others share them.
Sure, it's a meaningless phrase and no one is going to say, "I'm not a self-starter, I hate figuring out what to do with my time I wish someone would just hand me a list of things". Or maybe very few people are going to do that.
What upsets me the most about phrases like 'self-starter' or 'motivated' or all that other HR shit, is that somewhere, someone (or more likely several someones) sat in a room and decided, consciously, that if they didn't say those words, that if they didn't flat out state that they wanted a self-starter, then the outcome would logically be they would only get lazy applicants.
Phrases like that are treating the world like it is full of people who would swallow their own socks, on accident, if only we were given the chance.
Sure, it's a meaningless phrase and no one is going to say, "I'm not a self-starter, I hate figuring out what to do with my time I wish someone would just hand me a list of things". Or maybe very few people are going to do that.
What upsets me the most about phrases like 'self-starter' or 'motivated' or all that other HR shit, is that somewhere, someone (or more likely several someones) sat in a room and decided, consciously, that if they didn't say those words, that if they didn't flat out state that they wanted a self-starter, then the outcome would logically be they would only get lazy applicants.
Phrases like that are treating the world like it is full of people who would swallow their own socks, on accident, if only we were given the chance.
There are lots of places where self-starters are absolutely not wanted. "We'll tell you what to do next, and if we don't, you'll sit and wait until we do."
Self-starters are boat-rockers and troublemakers, and generate dissatisfaction among the other, obedient, personnel, and management.
This is not to say that places advertising for self-starters actually want any, or would know what to do if they ever got one.
Self-starters are boat-rockers and troublemakers, and generate dissatisfaction among the other, obedient, personnel, and management.
This is not to say that places advertising for self-starters actually want any, or would know what to do if they ever got one.
>Phrases like that are treating the world like it is full of people who would swallow their own socks, on accident, if only we were given the chance.
I'm guessing those people went into HR and are projecting.
I'm guessing those people went into HR and are projecting.
[oops]
From right at the top of the article, in the easiest place to find: "Date posted: Jul. 31, 2018"
It looks like the opening was posted in 2018
I think all engineers with VAX experience are extinct ...or retired.
Hope you're prepared to swallow; I can think of several dozen young engineers across 5 states (California, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, and New Jersey) with VAX/OpenVMS domain expertise, myself included. Legacy systems with 30-year lifecycles are a thing...they're just not what most of commercial industry is accustomed to supporting. If you think LM would have an issue filling this position internally (for the right price), you'd be mistaken.
So a couple of the comments here have been mentioning the high pay of people with specialties like this in the context of LM and other defense contractors. My impression from Glassdoor and general conversation with software developers has been the DCs pay pretty low for software in general compared to FAANG or even other engineering companies. Is it true that people with obscure specialties at places like LM can command high salaries? Or have I been misled that LM pay is on the lower side? Or is it all relative?
I don’t work in the space or DC, but have worked with people who are in this industry. It’s a career job usually, and many of these folks work in out of the way places. If you’re pulling down $120k in some suburb of Omaha, you’re doing very well.
The career path and security is important as well. A FAANG won’t hire a 45 year old technical SME.
There’s also an academic/industry connection. You may wear multiple hats if you're affiliated with the university, a lab, or a company. I met at least one person who was a professor at a major school, did work at a sponsored lab or think tank (ie. MITRE, RAND Corp, etc), and did some work over a sabbatical for a big name-brand defense contractor.
The career path and security is important as well. A FAANG won’t hire a 45 year old technical SME.
There’s also an academic/industry connection. You may wear multiple hats if you're affiliated with the university, a lab, or a company. I met at least one person who was a professor at a major school, did work at a sponsored lab or think tank (ie. MITRE, RAND Corp, etc), and did some work over a sabbatical for a big name-brand defense contractor.
I'm 46, and my first real job was as a computer operator (sysadmin-lite) for VAX/VMS systems back in 1991. At the time, VAX/VMS systems were computing powerhouses. In comparison, almost all Unix-based systems outside of AT&T were toys or performed light computing work (even DEC's own VAX/Ultrix). VAX systems were still high-end mainframe computers well into the 90s. VMS had some great features back then which Unix only adopted later.
Similar story - I'm 53 and was a VAX/VMS sysadmin during my apprenticeship years working for a flight simulator company in the UK; that would be around 1984. I miss my 11/750.
I'm 56, and my first job out of college was at General Dynamics Fort Worth Division, which is now part of Lockheed Martin. I did not work on the F-22, aka Advanced Tactical Fighter, but I did work on avionics software for the A-12, aka Advanced Tactical Aircraft, which got cancelled by Dick Cheney in January 1990. I had some contact with ATF engineers because at that time (I can't speak for later), ATF and ATA both used IBM's Common Module computing hardware and the Ada '83 language. We used MicroVAX workstations for our Ada compiler as well as our CASE (Computer-Aided Software Engineering) and documentation software. I was not on the program when the software tools decisions were made. I do know that other programs at General Dynamics used Apollo and Sun workstations, which were Unix based. I can only assume that either someone thought the VAX environment was better, or DEC made them an offer they could not refuse. I was a Unix fan at the time and would have preferred Sun, but the VAX was not a bad system.
A-12 is super hard-core.
Cheney has plenty else to rot in hell for, but canceling A-12 has to count more per unit victim.
But Apollos at the time would not have been running Unix. They had Aegis, which was much better. In some ways. (It took inspiration from Multics.) Some excellent features of Aegis have still not been mainstreamed. But Dragonfly BSD finally got variable expansion in symbolic links! Sort-of.
Cheney has plenty else to rot in hell for, but canceling A-12 has to count more per unit victim.
But Apollos at the time would not have been running Unix. They had Aegis, which was much better. In some ways. (It took inspiration from Multics.) Some excellent features of Aegis have still not been mainstreamed. But Dragonfly BSD finally got variable expansion in symbolic links! Sort-of.
Or very much not admitting to it ever. Like their Cobol experience. cough
(I write Pascal for an obsolete VAX11/780 in around 1985... I wrote COBOL in a WANG VS in the mid 1990s. No _way_ am I ever gonna let recruiters or employers know any of that...)
(I write Pascal for an obsolete VAX11/780 in around 1985... I wrote COBOL in a WANG VS in the mid 1990s. No _way_ am I ever gonna let recruiters or employers know any of that...)
One day you might respond to an ad like this but insist on a corp-to-corp and/or 1099 arrangement and charge $350 per hour.
If you have the right specialty, attitude, and connections in Federal Government contracting, you can make FAANG money. Only with good w/l balance.
If you have the right specialty, attitude, and connections in Federal Government contracting, you can make FAANG money. Only with good w/l balance.
Well, I'm forty and sadly not yet able to retire and spent some considerable time working on VMS clusters. I even run one at home for fun, very civilised operating system.
I also have VAX experience, but definitely not in recent decades, and I am neither extinct nor retired.
Still look back at how some aspects of VAX/VMS were so much better than what followed. Aware that Windows NT was written by Dave Cutler as a (poor) clone of VMS.
Also looked up some stuff about running VMS cluster nodes on a Raspberry PI setup, interesting view of how things were.
Not remotely, assuming you mean VMS and not VAX (ie vs. Alpha).
Lots of places were using them into the 20th century, so folks with VMS experience don't even need to be especially old. I have a friend here in Houston who works at $BigNameOilCorp, and they had VMS in production until 2005 or 2006.
Lots of places were using them into the 20th century, so folks with VMS experience don't even need to be especially old. I have a friend here in Houston who works at $BigNameOilCorp, and they had VMS in production until 2005 or 2006.
My first job out of college and I was put on assignment using a VAX -- this was 2005 in Cambridge, MA.
It's a weird feeling when you are in your early 30s and encounter a personally familiar piece of hardware in a history museum.
It's a weird feeling when you are in your early 30s and encounter a personally familiar piece of hardware in a history museum.
But I'm sure some would agree to the job. At $500/h
Nope. I don't have much, but my first language was FORTRAN 77 on a PDP 11/70.
I have PDP experience and that predates VAXEN