We had an intern at a previous employer who worked with us for two summers. Last I spoke to him, he was gonna go work for weapons company. I told him that was a morally terrible decision. As far as I know, he went there and might be making a lot of money. No respect from me if that happened.
Well someone has never read the bible.
The Bible didn’t even invent the concept of hell
The Bible didn’t invent anything.
Son of God, return from the dead, Heaven and Hell, Garden of Eden, Noah’s ark, nothing
Stapled “ancient mythology’s greatest hits” together and rebranded it.
I seem to recall the “promised land” was inhabited back then too, according to the bible. What was it “god” commanded again? Oh right, genocide.
Even got after them for not genociding hard enough once (1 Samuel 15)
I keep saying to myself, at least I am not in “defence” or AI. Pay is bad, career is practically impossible, and positive impact on the world is near zero, but at least I am not making things worse with my day job.
The world would be a much better place if only our enemies had any weapons.
No, you see, we need to design new and exciting kinds of bombs for the country with a larger military budget than the next ten largest national military budgets on Earth put together which we know they will drop on children, because if we don’t, you see, then another country like China with a fifth of our defense spending might build a newer bomb and drop it on someone we do like. Which we would be powerless to prevent.
You think that’s bad, how about using your law degree to lobby on behalf of oligarchs.
That definitely puts them at the bottom with fraud and treachery. While working for a defense contractor merely falls under wrath and avarice, a slightly less severe circle of hell.
Psh, just spec into a religion that doesn’t have a hell 😎💰
used to work with someone that designed the circuits in missiles. he couldn’t do it anymore and left the field.
Are retail (grocery) laborers that serve defense contractors culpable? Punching down at laborers seems counter-revolutionary.
Are you actually trying to compare someone scraping by from stocking shelves at their local grocery store to someone building bombs with the explicit intent to bomb brown children?
Unironically, yes.
Scraping by is par for the course for laborers under capitalism. Bombs don’t differentiate based on melanin. Stop being rascist. The laborer is alienated from the product (bomb) and it’s application (whoever the powerful decide to target).
Clutching pearls is hard when there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Keep playing football with sweatshop balls. Laborers need to fight the class war and not each other.
If basically all jobs enrich the ruling class, then that isn’t what makes working for defense contacters evil. There are many different jobs people can have, so building devices that kill impoverished children is a choice. It’s class reductionism to think that the only problem a job can cause is working for oligarchs.
There will always be plenty of jobs getting basic necessities to people, regardless of economic system. Hell, as societies becomes more peaceful and prosperous, there are probably even more jobs feeding people as food becomes more about living than surviving. On the other hand, weapons only exist to kill, and that industry has more opportunities the more fucked up the system is.
If you want to claim weapons can be used for liberation, consider that most weapons created by that industry are funded for imperialist purposes. Most of those weapons only end up in the hands of those fighting for liberation because it benefits their rivals. Most arms are used against those fighting for freedom, and many of those fights only start to make those very manufacturers richer.
It’s not like cops are on our side simply for doing labor for oligarchs. If they are class traitors for enacting violence on behalf of the capitalist state, then those who arm them are as well.
Jokes. It’s the only way you can make a living from your engineering degree.
It’s literally not though?
You can fantasize about imaginary punishment realms and guillotine.webp or you could punish them while they yet live and learn some carpentry skills.
“defense” industry when it’s about turning children into ash
I was gonna say, it’s always called defense even when it’s obviously offense.
It’s defending US interests from hostile foreign parties, specifically, liberating natural resources from the people who live above them.
Also the US defends its interests when a state’s government wants to regulate US factories, there, say by requiring them to pay workers a minimum wage, make the work environment safe, don’t pay women and children less, allow them a weekend and so on.
I think it’s actually called the department of testosterone now
The only people who are having an easier time getting gender-affirming care.
Average job title at a defense company: Lethality Engineer
That’s actually an important part of a weapon. It would look bad for the company if they left the civis suffering and able bodied enough to say something about the attack.
I swear I thought the drone guiding system would only be used for small drones used to film YouTube videos.
Legitimately a large part of why I’m currently unemployed 😓
One of my cousins worked for Raytheon right out of college. He didn’t last long there though. My aunt and uncle are conservative and he lived in a conservative area, so I imagine he went in with a positive view of the defense sector and then soured on it when he saw what was actually being done. All of those cousins were mad at their parents when they voted for Trump, and he attempted to block Fox News from the tv when he moved back in with them
Better late than never I suppose.
Can confirm it’s the same with all the other one’s, like CGI, NorthropGrumman, GDIT, Leidos, CACI, etc.
Never met a person that’s said they treat them right in any of these places. I’ve had experience with at least 2 of them and I personally did not like working with these companies. They don’t treat you like a human being, which is not exclusive to these companies, but it really stands out with these guys when comparing with other kind of environments and employers.
The whole defense space in general is pretty toxic, at least where I’ve been at. I would say they mostly lean conservative just by how the culture is in this sector.
As someone in cybersecurity, don’t fall for the claims that they pay more and the money is somehow worth it.
They pay a competitive salary just like everyone fucking else. They will not shower you in money. Companies like Google, OpenAI and Meta will pay way more than the average company, and defense contractors are generally average.
Check https://levels.fyi/ if you doubt me. Check Raytheon software eng salaries. It’s like $70k to $200k. Companies like Meta are literally something like twice that. $70k might sound nice but software engineers make twice that easy in tech centers like San Jose, San Francisco, or Seattle.
They get a lot of applicants because people fall for this, and thus don’t have to pay as much as you think.
There are plenty of dipshits who just need a job who don’t care who they work for. You will not get rich working for them. you will just compete with other fucks like yourself that have no morals, and somehow think they’re special and that the company is less evil with them there.
Your salary is mostly tied to the company, what they’re willing to pay, and how hard you’re willing to negotiate. You will find high salaries elsewhere if you know how to play this game.
Well put.
“$70k might sound nice
but software engineers make twice that easyintech centers likeSan Jose, San Francisco, or Seattle.”If you like eating scraps out of a trash can and counting
penniescoins.I gave up on c-sec. I only wanted to do it because of all the scamming these days. Then one day I realized, fuck it. The amount of stupidity and neglect is incredible. The classes are so far behind that I joked that I was taking computer history classes. I learn on my own and oh boy do I hate college. I give them a real world solution and they want someone to parrot the shitty outdated textbook (ebook). Like this book is outdated the moment it was released, maybe even written.
Then none of these classes prepare you for anything without independent study. Over the time of taking several semesters, I kept bringing up that the school website is very vulnerable. Yeah they got hacked twice. That’s when I realized that this is likely what working in c-sec will be like. You get ignored and then blamed and then told to go fix the problem.
So I’m going to just sit back and watch the embers. There’s plenty of other stuff I can do.
Trust me you’ll go to hell working for OpenAI or Google too.
Was just about to say, tech companies are increasingly taking defense contracts so that’s a distinction without meaning.
be fair, Google amd OpenAI are defenae contractors (and Facebook might as well be one too)
