I am not even sure if there is anyone that would like working on such environment. They are not designed to be productive and in fact tend to work against anyone who actually wants to get work done. But you bet that they are the first to punish workers for some perceived 'unproductivity' according to whatever random metric the consulting company came up with.
This is not solely relegated to the defense industry - the financial industry tends to come up with this sort of thing as well.
>I am not even sure if there is anyone that would like working on such environment.
I worked as a developer at a large bank and it had a very similar environment. I enjoyed it a lot, and I absolutely despise startup culture.
Some things that I personally enjoyed:
- In general older coworkers from academic backgrounds, more diverse, more grounded. The one gig I had a small startup felt like boyscout summercamp.
- no marketing, no attention seeking, no childish competition, work focussed on actual work. People left when the workday was over.
- Generally interesting technical challenges, not really consumer facing, very little fuzz about the newest frameworks or management styles or whatever, progress was measured, teamwork was valued over individualism.
- Very reliable career opportunities. If you do well you have a career to look forward to, no rapid up and down or hopping around.
I am sure people can be productive in this environment, I personally know some who currently work as defense contractors. You have some good hypotheticals, but much of the environment is driven by legal compliance rather than misguided management.
It’s not that defense is inherently toxic or good, I’d like to be clear what I’m saying. I’m saying that whatever good or bad management you have, there is a ton of legal compliance you have to deal with on top of that. So the baseline level of frustration an bureaucracy is higher than what you might be used to, even with good management. But this makes sense! Development OF COURSE slows down as soon as you are, say, building something that will affect whether somebody lives or dies.
Some amazing, skilled, productive engineers work in defense.
Same with medical technology. They tell stories of the Therac-25 to scare people away in college, and in spite of that, people are still willing to put in the work to make new radiotherapy devices, even with all the red tape.
