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Somebody please hire me before I take a job in weapon development

48 points by python_guy ↗ HN
Hello fellow HNers.

I am posting this from a throw-away account. I tried to anonymize most of the details here; I will of course give my full details to serious people who will contact me privately.

I'm a Python developer, and I live in a famously aggressive little country. I'm currently being offered to work in a big governmental firm responsible for weapon development for our military. Military power is a very high priority for my country, thus a lot of resources are given to these kind of companies, and thus I'm being offered very good salary and benefits for this job.

I don't really want to work there. Incidentally, I'm not a pacifist, but I would really prefer to avoid working with these kind of people. Also I wouldn't want to do all the security checks and be exposed to secret military information, etc.

Will anyone here be interested of hiring me? I'd be interested in working as a telecommuting freelancer.

About myself: I'm in my twenties, I've been programming Python for a few years, and I'm the developer of two open-source projects, whose code you could inspect freely when you'll contact me privately. I have some experience with Django and I can maintain a LAMP stack. I am also interested in scientific computing.

Here's my anonymous contact email: anonymous.python.guy@gmail.com

Thanks.

90 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 165 ms ] thread
kurtosis
The standard advice I've heard is: Work for defense companies to learn the technology, and then leave to transfer this technology toward peaceful (and often lucrative) applications. Swords into Ploughshares.
levesque
Not all knowledge obtained by working in a defense organism would be transferable. You get probably less useful real-world knowledge by working there rather than any other place.
erikpukinskis
OK, who installed the laser turrets in the server room?
Qz
I would disagree with that -- as just one example, modern chemotherapy is derived from the development of mustard gas circa World War I.
python_guy
These companies are really set up to prevent people from doing this.
ephermata
Speaking for the U.S. context only: once you have a security clearance, which will become necessary at some point for defence work, it becomes difficult to move out to non-classified work. On one hand, the pool of people with clearances is smaller than the general labor pool, so you can have a higher salary & benefits, therefore it's more attractive to stay at that kind of work. On the other hand, prospective employers outside defence likely do not have clearances and so cannot learn anything about what you did - this makes it difficult to leverage your experience when seeking to move to a new job.

I don't work in defence. That is just what I've heard from people who do as one of the reasons why it's hard to "rotate in, rotate out."

anamax
> Speaking for the U.S. context only: once you have a security clearance, which will become necessary at some point for defence work, it becomes difficult to move out to non-classified work.

Huh? None of my friends with clearances seem to have that problem. Do they have the "wrong" clearances?

varaon
Not sure that it would make a difference whether your employer has a security clearance or not. If you're following "need-to-know" doctrine, then you still wouldn't tell them.
Kadin
You are correct (IME) in your first point, about the difficulty of moving away from the high salary and benefits associated with cleared jobs, but not really on the second one.

Doing secure work means you can't take any confidential information with you when you leave, and it might slightly limit what you can talk about, but it doesn't mean you can't say anything about the work you did. You can still talk about your role and skillset, usually about the languages and technologies (and COTS products) used.

Many government IT projects mandate security-cleared developers because the systems touch classified information, but that doesn't mean that the systems themselves (their existence, basic design, etc.) are classified. There's really no difference between having a project like that on your resume, and any other commercial-sector project that's internal use only.

If you're working or considering working on a clearance-required project, it's not unreasonable to ask to talk with the security officer beforehand to clear up exactly what you'll be able to put on your resume and discuss after the fact ... and price yourself accordingly.

MichaelSalib
My experience in the aerospace/defense industry suggests that this isn't really practical. Organizations that make aircraft and rockets and weapons tend to be incredibly conservative: they don't really innovate much. They have incredibly risk averse institutional cultures...no one wants to be the guy that decided to launch Challenger.

I know of one aerospace company that occasionally has its rockets explode on the launchpad because they use battery designs from the 1970s that are known to explode with fairly high probability. They could easily get much cheaper much more reliable batteries with more modern designs but they don't because the exploding batteries "have flight heritage". This particular aerospace company is considered agile and nimble and innovative compared to its competitors.

Estragon
You should hire me instead of him. I've been using python to do statistics and machine learning in a bioinformatics context for the last 15 years. Plus, if you don't, I'll kill this puppy. Isn't he cute? You wouldn't want to be responsible for his death, would you?
python_guy
Your criticism is right, this is a sensationalist appeal. Do you think I shouldn't have made it?
Entlin
I think ones personal ethics are non-negotionable. Once I have set my limits, I will never work in a field that is off limits.

Additionally, I believe you can always get a job without dropping your personal ethics. The market is huge - just keep looking.

I once had an offer like you do. I declined, and I'm happy now I did.

Good luck!

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Estragon
Do you think my satire contains a moral judgment?

(I hear you like to answer questions with questions over there.)

python_guy
Touche. Your satire was pretty funny.
keefe
If it works, nothing wrong with playing sensationalist games and since you anonymized yourself, well kudos for having balls to take a shot. I personally can't imagine it being particularly effective vs just talking about your skills, but if you went this far did you post it on craigslist in SF, LA, NYC as well?
nearestneighbor
I'm trying to think of "famously aggressive" and "little", and all I can come up with is one of them Koreas.
CapitalistCartr
Or Venezuela. But most likely Israel.
Sukotto
Or Iran, or one of the [blank]-istans. There are a LOT of aggressive little countries.
forinti
Venezuela aggressive?? Chavez speaks a lot, but that's about it. And it's not really a little country either, at nearly 1 million square kilometres.
maukdaddy
Israel?
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tiki12revolt
Not necessary. It depends on your perspective. Israel, the Koreas, Cuba (from an American perspective), etc...
aidenn0
Yeah, aggressive and little is a recipe for disaster without larger allies.
rdtsc
That's why Israel has US.
thumper
My first thought was "US" and "Halliburton", but then I suppose we fill in the blanks with the protagonists we know best. The one thing that has me stumped is the python angle...
squidsoup
Clearly the OP is referring to New Zealand, renowned globally for our military might and political strong arming.
cdibona
Or australia (with under 30 million people, quite small), as they have that whole drop bear problem to deal with.
melling
I've never worked in defense. Can someone explain what "these kind of people" means?
levesque
These kind of projects would be military equipment (weapons, trucks, armors) efficiency, troops efficiency (either training techniques or planning algorithms/strategies) and other retarded stuff like that.
m0nastic
I don't know exactly what the poster meant by "these people", but my own experience having worked at a defense contractor was that the facility I was at (which designed and made missles), all of the managers were upset that there wasn't presently a war going on. I suspect that the past few years have been better for morale there.

Every day they would have meetings going over global hot spots and assess whether there was any chance that the U.S. would have to intervene, and therefore purchase more armaments from them. This was not an objective, collective discussion, but a pleading.

I found that at least at that particular company, by and large, "these kind of people" were shitbags.

I will say, that contrasted with work I've done with other defense contractors in the ensuing years, they are not all uniform.

krschultz
Strange, since most of the US big money spending is mostly unrelated to the wars. They didn't start the F-22 when the war in Iraq broke out, the new aircraft carriers are rolling out to replace ones that are getting old, not ones that got sunk ... etc.
m0nastic
That's less true of "perishable" items like munitions.

Generally, the US Government has a set stockpile (which may increase or decrease based on policy changes, but is usually static).

This company made guided missiles (very expensive, medium to long range), and needed the existing stockpile to be depleted (which is a nice way of saying that they needed things to be blown up).

Other divisions of the company I'm sure were working on different kinds of projects, the contracts for which weren't as contingent on being in a skirmish.

There's a difference between having a contract to develop and design an F-22 (which thankfully occurs before they are needed in warfare) and to actually build replacement F-22's (such as when they are shot down).

tkahn6
If this is Israel, I believe the OP means right-wing pro-settlement ex-military. And by ex-military, I mean they served in combat units and likely went on to become officers and stayed on after their 3-year mandatory service term was up.
mkramlich
How's Israel this time of year?
lenni
Hmm, I was thinking about 'aggressive little country' too but the penny didn't drop until this post.
ImFatYoureFat
Don't think it's Israel, he would have already spent time in the military if he was Israeli.
tkahn6
If he's in his twenties, he already done with his mandatory military service (apart from being in the reserves).

He would be doing this as a civilian just like an American citizen can get a job at the CIA out of college.

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ImFatYoureFat
The down voting is really strange.

If he is Israeli, and in his mid twenties then he has already served in the IDF, likely in a CS capacity. Also if he was Sherut Leumi, then I wouldn't think he would apply for a military contract job in the first place. Furthermore, its especially difficult for people with highly desirable backgrounds like CS or engineering to get Sherut approval.

My only point was that an Israeli in their mid twenties has already served in the military and if they have, or plan to get a degree in CS, they have served in the military in a capacity relating to CS or engineering.

Of course it's totally possible that I'm wrong and he is from Israel.

Just out of curiosity, anyone have any explanations of the down voting? Don't really mind, I just find it kind of bizarre.

adbge
The only explanation I can think of for you being downvoted is, well, ignorance. Perhaps HNers are not familiar with Israel's policy of mandatory military service and thought your remark was somehow prejudiced.

As far as small aggressive countries that _aren't_ Israel, how about Georgia, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, or Greece?

sprout
I read "famously aggressive little country" with 'little' as a diminutive, not necessarily a literal description of size.

I could easily see myself referring to my native USA with that phrase.

hifastius
wait, Saudi arabia is a small & aggressive country? who was the last guy they attacked?
SkyMarshal
Was trying to figure it out too. The problem is the dual criteria:

famously aggressive + develops their own military technology.

Who is known for developing their own military technology? US, Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Israel, North Korea, Iran, Iraq (the last two only if WMD accusations are true)...?

Pretty much everyone else buys their military technology from China, Russia, US, France, or Israel, be it AK47s, F15s, or silkworm and exocet missiles.

So, which among the countries that manufacture military hardware are famously aggressive? Well, lately that's pretty much the US and Israel. Maybe Russia with the Chechen and Georgian thing, and maybe China with Tibet and threats vs. Taiwan. North Korea, but is anyone there actually allowed to learn English much less programming?

'Little' I also took to be diminutive, not literal.

someperson
I'm fairly certain Pakistan also develops its military hardware in house, it is a a large weapon exporter after all.
ImFatYoureFat
see those were my two guesses: Taiwan or Pakistan.
nandemo
I don't think this is reason enough for downvoting, but I'm not sure how "he would have already spent time in the military if he was Israeli" is relevant. Nothing that he says implies that he hasn't spent time in the military.
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person
if someone gives you a better offer, can i have your defense job? sounds pretty cushy to me
python_guy
It is pretty cushy, and you don't need to wait for me to abandon it. But you must be a native of my country and a reasonably able Python programmer. If you are, send me a mail.
dotBen
well what is your country? If this is a throw-away account I can't understand why you can't disclose that?
drivingmenuts
Here's a question: how do we know you haven't already been co-opted by your military establishment?
isamuel
I wouldn't want to hire someone who was willing to compromise his ethics simply for a "very good salary and benefits."
biotech
I don't know the whole story, but I have known very good, moral people who worked for companies that they didn't completely agree with ethically because they put their family or their health first. Ethics isn't always so simple. If "a very good salary and benefits" is the difference between being very sick or getting that surgery you need, or if it's the difference between sending your kids to a good school or a bad one.... Let's just say that I wouldn't be so quick to judge.
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skinnymuch
I completely agree with you and don't think you can just call a person 'bad' for working at a 'bad' company. But technically speaking, a lot, if not most, of the 'very good, moral' people you described don't leave the companies even when they are in a more stable and comfortable situation.
python_guy
I agree. But, as I said, it's not an ethics issue for me. I just want to avoid the military culture.
dotBen
Not sure what country you live in but in US and UK it wouldn't be legal to discriminate on a job applicant because they previously worked for in a military-related employer.

I know what you're saying, but as big proponent for anti-discrimination in the work place I fear statements like yours settle in the backs of people's minds and then re-appear the day they find themselves in a hiring position.

hifastius
he seems ethical enough calling out for help..
ohashi
Is it the UK?
jarek
Aggressive maybe, but by which standards is the UK "little"?
sjf
Area? Population? It's certainly not large.
adbge
I thought the same thing, by what standards would the UK be considered _large?_ I'm from the states, though, so I tend to think of most European countries as small.
jarek
By world standards it's not large, but among its immediate neighbours it's one of the largest countries: third by population in the EU and one of the larger by area.

I'd think places like Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, or even Austria would get called little much before UK, to say nothing of the smaller countries like Iceland or Luxembourg. I don't think many people in the UK would describe it as little either.

ImFatYoureFat
Guys, it obvious he's from the Vatican.
moolave
Of course! The particle accelerator.

But the morals? This would have to be the biggest weight on this matter.

pier0
"but I would really prefer to avoid working with these kind of people"

Priest paedhophiles ?

werrett
Is this an intellectual exercise? Hmmm, how about large when consider by Economic Efficiency (as measured by output / land use)?

GDP / Land mass.

  UK: ~8,780,428 (  2,139,000,000,000 /   243,610 ) [1]
  US: ~1,450,745 ( 14,256,000,000,000 / 9,826,675 ) [2]
Both end up being considered massive in comparison to my "piddly" little country:

        ~111,732 (    851,170,000,000 / 7,617,930 ) [3]
[1] UK 2009 PPP GDP estimate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom

[2] US 2010 PPP GDP estimate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

[3] AUS 2009 PPP GDP estimate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia

varjag
OK, below is my honest, if a bit blunt, opinion.

You're not a rocket scientist, your skillset as described won't make a difference for Israel (?) military power. Either go for it and enjoy your pay, or if you have your principles, don't go for it and try finding a boring civilian job as all other non-rocket-scientists do . But the drama, it's not there.

dublinclontarf
Heh, when he said an aggressive little country the first thought that came to my mind was Georga.
paylesworth
Really? My first thought was Switzerland.
loewenskind
I assumed it was the US and "little" was sarcastic.
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dRother
Good move. I had a girlfriend whose father worked designing guidance systems for rockets. He couldn't speak a word about his job to his family, and it was apparent that his conscience struggled with the fact that his engineering handiwork was only good for killing people.
slavak
I have a problem believing this is about Israel since:

a) Defense companies in Israel _do not_ offer "very good salary." In fact, it is a generally accepted fact that they universally offer lower salaries than civilian companies. This is offset somewhat by the benefits that stem from being a large and influential enterprise as well as the inherent governmental bureaucracy.

b) Engineers at Israeli defense firms don't tend to be particularly militaristic or in any way "these kind of people," and I know quite a few...

kimfuh
Maybe Taiwan, Korea or Singapore.
lowglow
Hire me. I have no morals.
azzret
Python and Django for missile control? For real?

  import sys, missile_lib
  destination = sys.argv[1]
  controller = missile_lib.Missile_control()
  controller.fire(destination)
justin_vanw
So, in order to do the 'right' thing, we have to make you a counter offer? Is that how this works?

Everyone! Mail me money so I don't have to enable murder!

sac
2 things first, you sound like a german during WW2. (hold the anger) I mean really, your saying you don't want to get paid to kill jews, but you want to get paid well for that skill set and no one else in your market will pay you what your 'worth 2nd /later