vashydoom

a defense contractor before?

UCLA Band Mom

Hogwash. Working for any defense contractor is always good on your resume

ken285

Where did you hear this?

mrego

The only hint of truth about this is that some odd thinking HR gatekeepers are biased against anyone who has ever been a contractor for any kind of company even if you've also been an employee many times before as well. They would consider you tainted if you've ever worked as a contractor because you would supposedly be forever disloyal to a company as an employee. Naturally this very rare opinion makes no sense either.

ExplorerCY

^^^ not what he meant by "contractor." he means the defense industry i.e. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.

sakky

Mrego, I think the OP is actually talking about somebody working for a firm that is in turn contracting with the government, not that the person is himself working as a contractor.

Well, I wouldn't dismiss the notion completely. While I don't know of any examples myself, I can certainly see some people who might be hostile to your affiliation with, as they see it, the 'Dogs of War' and choose not to hire you strictly on that fact alone. Surprisingly, most such discrimination is perfectly legal as long as it does not invoke a highly circumscribed list of protected categories - such as race, gender, or religion - which does not include the industries of former employers.

As a case in point, I know a guy who used to work for an online porn company, and encountered grave difficulty in finding other employment afterwards. Note, he wasn't a performer - in fact, he had nothing to do with the front-end creative process whatsoever. He was just a simple IT guy, which meant that he installed and configured the back-office computer servers, networks and databases. Yet the reputation of his industry hindered his ability to find new work. He was much more successful when he began to omit that job from his resume entirely.

BCEagle91

The valuable piece is that you went through the background check which can cost your employer a lot of money.

Canadian_EE

Sakky, a friend of mine got offered a job in the pron business out of college (he majored in Computer Engineering, so I guess it was a similar job to what the guy you know did). He refused the job and accepted another one that paid nearly $10k/year less... mainly because of the reputation of the field like you described.

toadstool

There are a lot of knee-jerk liberals in the northeast who automatically assume the worst of anyone associated with the military or defense research.

We still are wondering if an internship with Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Office of Naval Reseach will be the death knell of Ivy league applications.

Hawkwings

Honestly, working for a defense contractor is probably one of the better jobs in engineering, not only is the work rather long-term and more stable since the government is the customer, but you get to work on cutting-edge cool stuff as well.

And yes, having a security clearance already should look good to potential employers if they do any kind of work that involves it.

sakky

Yet ironically the northeast also features some of the deepest ties between the defense industry and academia. One of MIT's more poignant nicknames is "Military-Industrial Technology".