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

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31–40 of 91 posts

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

#32
post #8

I've never worked in defense. Can someone explain what "these kind of people" means?

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.

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

#33

How's Israel this time of year?

Don't think it's Israel, he would have already spent time in the military if he was Israeli.

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.

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

#36
post #28

I wouldn't want to hire someone who was willing to compromise his ethics simply for a "very good salary and benefits."

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.

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

#39
post #2

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.

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.

I would disagree with that -- as just one example, modern chemotherapy is derived from the development of mustard gas circa World War I.

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

#40
post #2

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.

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."

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