I am leaving the government contract defense world for private sector consulting.
The job I have held for the last year has been nice to me, but I am tired of “live by the contract, die by the contract.” Writing SBIRs and funding proposals and getting one approved out of every 10 or 15 submitted.
I’ve come to discover that the world of government contracts is more “who you know” than “what you know.”
I’ve seen some contractors get big-money contracts, then subcontract the whole thing out because they can’t do the job but knew the brass handing out the money.
If you know the players and have the connections, life is cheddar. My boss did his 20 for a big-name outfit then went out on his own. I’m new to this world so don’t have any connections. I’ll either have to put in the next 20 years making them just to start making real money as I near retirement, or I’ll spend the rest of my life as a cog in someone else’s money printer.
I have connections in the private sector world and can build myself a reputation there.
In addition, given all the political shaking up going on right now, not being a contractor has its perks. I know more than a few people who are starting to get antsy about if or when the government decides to do its ideological purge of the contracting world. This administration is stupid enough to do that.
I’m moving to North Carolina.
I’m still pursuing my second master’s degree. I eventually figure out how to use it.
I took my last exam tonight. I think I did alright on it.
I’m pretty sure I aced Shockwaves in Solids. It’s just dynamic materials science and materials science is intuitive to me.
Shockwaves in Air was a little tougher. All my previous fluids experience was as a chemical engineer and it was all highly viscous shit in pipes. When they train you to pump crude oil around a refinery, it’s very different physics than determining the velocity of a Mach stem when you set off an airburst charge of TNT so many meters above the ground.
I’m not taking classes over the summer but I am moving, so I just traded one difficulty for another.
This is just the next adventure in life.
To Miguel:
I’m going to be disappointed if you don’t see me once in Huntsville before I move. I assume you’re going to have to do one house hunting trip before you relocate. If you drive up from Miami to Nashville, you need to stop by.
SBIR… I remember that from the early 90s; the company I worked for back then tried to get a few of those fun-sounding contracts. We put in a lot of time working up proposals, but nothing came of it.
Back around 2010-ish, I was working for a little consulting company that did get some of the contracts earmarked for small businesses… indirectly. Seems there was a Beltway company that acted as a broker, snagging contracts for Intersectional-owned pseudo-businesses that checked a lot of boxes on the diversity form and then subcontracting out the actual work to real companies that had the ability to do it.
Oh, yeah. Another thing about those early-90s SBIRs: many of them seemed oddly specific. Almost like the requirements were written to match a proposal already drafted by a pre-selected company.
When Germany was looking at replacing the MG3, a small gun company I know wanted to submit a design: The guy at the BWB (Bundeswehrbeschaffung, procurement ofd the army) laughed at him. They would not even look at anything that did not came from Heckler & Koch and Rheinmetall.
I have worked with the BWB for 4 years. I know that they are corrupt and don’t care about qulaity but only about connections.
I’ve seen some contractors get big-money contracts, then subcontract the whole thing out because they can’t do the job but knew the brass handing out the money.
Been there, seen that.
I left the defense electronics world in 1996, but vividly recall we were in tough competition for a big contract with another company and they won. Within a couple of months they had subcontracted us to do the job they won. I had worked on the proposal of how we’d do it, and they preferred our proposal over their own.
One would assume you’re moving roughly to the Research Triangle area of NC, but don’t comment if you’re uncomfortable with that.