Pros
- Very flexible work schedule and timekeeping - Good vacation hours - Challenging software development tasks that help advance your programming and problem-solving skills - A good focus on the career and skills development of the employee - Free off-work learning courses on variety of topics, from programming languages to specific military products and technologies - Most of the co-workers are friendly and supportive on helping with assignments - Work on interesting technologies such as complex embedded systems
Cons
- Expect strict security processes and restrictions due to this company being a federal contractor that produces military equipment and services. - As a federal contractor, the company is at the mercy of the US government. Politics in D.C. can greatly affect the availability of work opportunities here in the company. (One time, some harsh disagreements at D.C. led to the cancellation of a selloff of one of the company's products to the government, which led to loss of work.) - Short contracts with the government which leads to short-term work. You will be hopping from one project to another depending on how well the contract is progressing and how well the politics is at D.C. - Very little development and focus on new technologies - Little to no room for creating new software and innovation: you will mostly work with troubleshooting and tweaking existing software - Middle management can micro-manage at times. - Hard to advance to higher positions in the technical area - Can sometimes focus more on finishing a product within a budget rather than working carefully to create a quality product