Working for defense company?

[elias001]

I don't know if anyone on here works for any of the well known defense companies of your country, whichever country you are from??

Also, if you choose to work in one, do you think the engineering education provide from your school would adequately prepare you for the job. What do I mean by that? Well if you work at say Lockheed Martin and you work in the latest iteration of a missile or if you work at Pratt & Whitney, they assign you to work in the team helping out with building the jet engine for the up coming hypersonic aircraft, or in some other defense company where you are tasked with how to increase the power output of some fibre optics laser, even better, help with designing the next generation of nuclear attack submarine.

Many of these projects, you might never have a chance to get to work on them at your own university since whatevervyou propose have to pass those pesky bureaucratic ethics committe. Also you will be saving lives, by giving the soldiers of your own country the tools they need to execute their mission and coming home to their families.

 

[Baluncore]

If anyone here does work for a defence company, then they should not identify themselves. That would constitute a security breach and could lead to all sorts of problems if your account was then hacked. Keep your head below the parapet. Loose lips sink ships.

I don't know if anyone on here works for any of the well known defense companies of your country, whichever country you are from??

It seems like you are casting a net, looking to recruit spies. What country or political group are you now working for?

 

[elias001]

@Baluncore I am not asking if anyone disclose too much details. I ask specifically if they work in one, whether their education helped prepare them for it.

 

[Baluncore]

I ask specifically if they work in one, whether their education helped prepare them for it.

Why do you need to know? What could you do about it?
So if they reply, they identify that they work for a defence contractor. They will then need to identify their nationality to explain the context of their reply.

You have not yet identified your nationality.

By getting members to talk freely, you are grooming them. In these interesting times, that is an insecure or a naïve request. If you were in my country, you would be arrested and held for 48 hours while you were interrogated, to identify your spy master and network.

 

[elias001]

@Baluncore I am in North America. There are lots of people that for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, they even list it on LinkedIn. I am not asking them to get into specifics. There are also hundreds of defense contractors in the world.

 

[DaveE]

I used to. The security issues mentioned would depend entirely on what your role is at the company. They employ a whole bunch of people, many of whom don't have any sensitive information. The simple fact that you work there really doesn't matter much.

Anyway, I don't know what you are really asking. But yes, I was as prepared as any recent college graduate. I don't see what the connection is to defense work though. Most defense work is just a job, it's usually not sexy or secret.

 

[elias001]

@DaveE Thanks for answering. I always wonder like if one works for a defense company, and you work on one of their product development, say working in new bomb or missile development. That is different if one is working say for an automotive company designing cars. In the former case, isn't it learning how to do something completely new. I mean there are no scientific journals devoted to solely to missiles or munitions research. I read books about Lockheed Martin and also development of various military vehicles in defense companies. When they push out something completely new, is it like similar to doing research in a university.

 

[Rive]

if you choose to work in one, do you think the engineering education provide from your school would adequately prepare you for the job.

I've never, ever seen any serious engineering work where just (school) education would suffice. It's always a long ride along senior staff to get the experience, knowledge, and in special cases: clearance needed for the job.

help with designing the next generation of nuclear attack submarine.

As a a fresh graduate, you may be involved in doing the toilet there.
I would opt for getting experience in a less demanding environment first.

 

[elias001]

@Rive ah kk. So basically you get eased in.

 

[Rive]

Yep. It may speed up things if you start accumulating actual experience during university years, but as a fresh graduate anywhere where it's an engineering team you'll start at the bottom, and you'll do it with supervision (help).

(It is not about the defense sector. It's about any serious job. )

 

[elias001]

@Rive ah kk thanks for the explanations.

 

[jbriggs444]

I've never, ever seen any serious engineering work where just (school) education would suffice.

This aligns with my experience as well. The principle useful skill I obtained in college was in learning how to learn. Secondarily, I learned some terminology and fundamental principles in various fields.

I ended up wearing about ten hats over time. Most of those hats involved learning new disciplines from scratch. Mostly without formal training. The pattern was: It looks like we need a guy to do X. Let me see what it takes to do X. OK, I'll start doing X. I am an expert in X now.

It does not take much to rise above the level of the average slobs in the workplace.

 

[gmax137]

This aligns with my experience as well. The principle useful skill I obtained in college was in learning how to learn.

Exactly.

 

[sbrothy]

I did work for the defense as a consultant after being cleared by military intelligence. I can talk about it in vague terms, though, as I never signed any kind of NDA (at least to my recollection), and the project was ultimately cancelled as the hardware at the time wasn't up to the task as laid out in the NATO design documents.

Also, due to the crazy protocol complexity with more than triple redundancy and off the charts verification of sending / receiving signals, the application turned into a mastodont (here was a real occasion for using my newly learned word "brobdingnagian") almost immediately.

I was brought in late in the project where whole brigades of mechanized infantry units sometimes just disappeared from the maps. Needless to say debugging this mess was a nightmare!

EDIT: Hah! I was too quick there. It seems they never gave up:

DACCIS

EDIT2: Welp. I'll just sit here and wait for the police then.

And yeah, that was all I had to say.

EDIT2: Oh, one final thing. No, my education didn't help me one bit as I don't have one. You'd be surprised where you can end up being autodidact.

 

[sbrothy]

I did work for the defence as a consultant after being cleared by military intelligence. I can talk about it in vague terms, though, as I never signed any kind of NDA (at least to my recollection), and the project was ultimately cancelled as the hardware at the time wasn't up to the task as laid out in the NATO design documents.

Also, due to the crazy protocol complexity with more than triple redundancy and off the charts verification of sending / receiving signals, the application turned into a mastodont (here was a real occasion for using my newly learned word "brobdingnagian") almost immediately.

I was brought in late in the project where whole brigades of mechanized infantry units sometimes just disappeared from the maps. Needless to say debugging this mess was a nightmare!

EDIT: Hah! I was too quick there. It seems they never gave up:

DACCIS

EDIT2: Welp. I'll just sit here and wait for the police then.

And yeah, that was all I had to say.

EDIT2: Oh, one final thing. No, my education didn't help me one bit as I don't have one. You'd be surprised where you can end up being autodidact.

It’s been replaced with this I think. And don’t worry, there are no military secrets here.

Historie agreement will see Danish Armed Forces C4ISR systems supported for next 20 years.

EDIT: Dunno how a simple copy-paste could go wrong?

Historic agreement will see Danish Armed Forces C4ISR systems supported for next 20 years​

 

[boneh3ad]

Just remove the question from "defense contractors" and think about it for any job in engineering. The engineering challenges at, say, Ford, are still going to be more complex than what a student typically sees in school. I don't know of any mechanical engineering programs that have required courses involving students designing a real suspension system from scratch.

In school, the problems are largely (not entirely) based on the fundamental concepts with known solutions. In the real world, most problems have no solution manual and are more open-ended and complex. This is true of any industry, not just defense.

Engineering degrees prepare students for industry by giving them a broad understanding of the fundamentals of their field. There's still plenty of on-the-job learning for any student entering the workforce.

(Note: there are certainly projects and design clubs and such that, to varying degrees, expose students to more open-ended complex problems, but no degree program is going to be able to cover every possible student outcome with those.)

 

[bryantcl]

I may be late to the party here but my first job out of college was working at Boeing at an Air Force Base in the USA. The defense contractor company's know what they're getting when they hire a new graduate. Usually they will know the kinds of course work you had (some may have you submit a transcript) so they'll know how your coursework applies. Also, as far as security clearance, you wouldn't have been hired if there were a chance you couldn't pass at least a secret clearance. Receiving clearance (secret or top secret) doesn't automatically get you access to everything. If you're assigned to a project you'll be read in and you'll know what you can and cannot say.

Best of luck