Oh hey this is one of the reasons I don't speak to my parents. That genocide paid for 300h therapy and a nursing degree.
this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2026
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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.
"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.
I think it’s actually called the department of testosterone now
The only people who are having an easier time getting gender-affirming care.
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.
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
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.
I worked at/with Northrup Grumman for a few years, not directly but for a company that did contract consulting for them at their shipyards on the gulf coast. That place was basically staggering levels of corruption combined with staggering levels of incompetence. The actual NG employees did not see much of that money, though, although what they did make was pretty good for that part of the country.
That place was universally conservative, no doubt about it.
As someone who has worked at these places, most of the criticism about the type of work is fair enough. But they are actually some of the most liberal work environments you will find. The are tons of minorities at defense contractors, including trans people. They've tried to tone down their vocal embrace of minorities to please Hegseth, but they take all comers.
Better late than never I suppose.
You can fantasize about imaginary punishment realms and guillotine.webp or you could punish them while they yet live and learn some carpentry skills.
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.
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.
Used to be a tool designer in US SE. Left $20/hr 60hr/week automotive job for $21/hr 40hr/week defense job temporarily while waiting for a tech support job. Now I moved to NZ and got a really cushy job in the architect sector and make double.
What's really weird to me able that defense job was no-one has filled it for so long because of lack of pay the due dates for the designs on my desk ranged from the 90's to early 2010s.
In automotive you couldn't be a single day late, doesn't matter how many hours you have to work or how many warm bodies to cram into a single office. Architecture you can be a couple weeks late, but no more. But to have designs 2 decades late and still be wanted/required and valid is so wild; and not a penny extra for overtime or if they can't hire anyone at that rate.
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)
Well put.
"$70k might sound nice ~~but software engineers make twice that easy~~ in ~~tech centers like~~ San Jose, San Francisco, or Seattle."
If you like eating scraps out of a trash can and counting ~~pennies~~ coins.
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.
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.
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.
Hey man, the bay area had too many salad restaurants and wanted me to live in a condo. I just want to live in a single family home, run air conditioning 24/7, and eat from drive thru restaurants, while shopping at Walmart. The system works for some.
/s
I once worked for a defense contractor as a programmer. 😬
...but I didn't have a degree yet (it was an internship while I was still in college) so it's fine, right? 😅
I had occasion to freshen up my resume recently and did some research on said defense contractor. They'd changed their name (is that an oddly-common practice among defense contractors?) and pivoted into "agentic AI" bullshit for the private sector. It's good that I never sought a full time position there.
used to work with someone that designed the circuits in missiles. he couldn't do it anymore and left the field.
I swear I thought the drone guiding system would only be used for small drones used to film YouTube videos.
These micro plastics aren't gunna make themselves
Psh, just spec into a religion that doesn't have a hell 😎💰
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.
Jokes. It’s the only way you can make a living from your engineering degree.
It's literally not though?
True. You can also work as a post-doc doing research funded by a defence contractor.
You will need to be selective. "Dont work on anything that requires a clearance" is a good rule to start with.
But even that is a low bar.
"Dont build tech for the countries with the largest militaries" is closer to my new goal.
Its a great big beautiful world out there. Still a lot to choose from and be able to sleep at night.
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.
Yes, like Taiwan.
Remember, kids, there's no such thing as defense, only offense. The only thing you can do to stop yourself being bombed is threaten to send anyone who upsets you back to the stone age 👍
And you gotta be scared of Taiwan. It's a real scary threat. A tiny island nation with a military budget nearly 2% the size of ours! There's no such thing as radar and anti-missile countermeasures, you know. If we don't have enough bombs to drop on children to make a worldwide show out of what happens to anyone who offends us, there's absolutely nothing stopping a country like Taiwan from wiping our biggest cities off the map!
Oh what's that? Taiwan makes most of our semiconductors and all they would have to do to cripple our economy is stop selling them to us? Well that's all the more reason to need bombs then, isn't it? Just as as something to... how you say... "align incentives".
No, silly, I meant China would bomb Taiwan 😂
Seriously, though, read a newspaper or something.
Be a liability, not a asset.