191–200 of 330 posts
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>Defense contractors don't pay FAANG salaries. This is also a self asnwering question of sorts. If, let's say Lockheed would pay 'FAANG' salaries then it would be 'FLAANG' since the abbreviation is meant to encompass the top paying salaries.
Well that's true. LM is known to pay lower than most of the defense industry as well though.
ISTR that the avionics code is written in Ada, and runs on top of Intel i960 processors, and that the Ada compiler for that target only runs on VAX/VMS (not even OpenVMS, but specifically VMS on the VAX).
ISTR? Anyway, the processors in the F-22A are a mix of different cores. The power supply in the Gen 3 radar used a MIL-STD-1750A processor. The PICC[1] processor modules also used the MIL-STD-1750A originally, but moved to a newer processor in a refresh (if I remember correctly). I don't know what the non-Raytheon components of the plane were using. As for the compiler, you are spot-on. We had a MicroVAX in a vault (…
I had a job maintaining fortran code on an openVMS OS running on itanium hardware. Itanium was intel's failed attempt at a 64bit architecture and that's the platform VMS decided to port to. That made hardware expensive and as of recently obsolete (i think hp discontinued that integrity line of servers) VMS doesn't natively support TCP/IP, because it predates it. The VMS communication protocol was called decnet. So yo…
VMS' clustering tech was also pretty great, which is the reason my late-90s employer was still on it (though on Alpha hardware at that point, not Vax).
I had a job maintaining fortran code on an openVMS OS running on itanium hardware. Itanium was intel's failed attempt at a 64bit architecture and that's the platform VMS decided to port to. That made hardware expensive and as of recently obsolete (i think hp discontinued that integrity line of servers) VMS doesn't natively support TCP/IP, because it predates it. The VMS communication protocol was called decnet. So yo…
That's outrageous... 1. RE: FORTRAN. VAX FORTRAN was the most awesome implementation of FORTRAN ever. FORTRAN because these systems didn't have much RAM and CPU power was limited. FORTRAN went into the background for a while when the C fad began in the early 1980s; however, academics cringed at C for reasons that the industry would eventually learn "the hard way" and FORTRAN came back along with a government knee-jer…
This isn't remotely true.
I think all engineers with VAX experience are extinct ...or retired.
Lots of places were using them into the 20th century, so folks with VMS experience don't even need to be especially old. I have a friend here in Houston who works at $BigNameOilCorp, and they had VMS in production until 2005 or 2006.
I worked for Lockheed Martin for more than a decade and I have many of the qualifications listed, including VAX experience and a special access clearance. Of course, Lockheed laid me off fourteen years ago and I retired three years ago, so I guess I won't be applying.
You should apply, and demand an insanely-high salary while pointing out that almost no one has VAX experience now.
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In one of my past jobs I was a Level 3 Electronics Engineer for LM, and I made right at the middle of the pay band. It paid okay, but lower than someone doing my same job at the same place but working for Northrop Grumman made. I saw many people jump from LM to NGC just to get a big pay bump while doing the same work. But LM is actively trying to reduce its number of Level 5, 6, and 7 engineers (the highest paybands…
So hang on, let me rephrase this: Lockheed has basically fired most of its most highly experienced engineering talent? Is that right? What did Lockheed hope to accomplish by this move? Do you know what the total realized effect was?
This was the precursor to layoffs -- LM hoped to avoid layoffs by offering buyouts to these engineers. The wisdom of all of this... I don't see it.
Their goal was to reduce total amount spent on salaries.
This came at the time that the F-35 flight test program began its long wind-down. Other companies were hiring in large numbers because they had just begun big test programs (NGC had just won the B-21 contract and was testing its Triton UAVs), the net effect was that a HUGE amount of engineering knowledge and talent went out the door within a year. I can only speak for what it did to the F-35 test forces -- basically made them start over in terms of learning how to execute their jobs.
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The sensible way to deal with bit flips is a gratuitous amount of ECC.
ECC doesn't help when you have an EMP caused by an atmospheric nuclear detonation. Those are the kinds of things the design has to consider.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In one of my past jobs I was a Level 3 Electronics Engineer for LM, and I made right at the middle of the pay band. It paid okay, but lower than someone doing my same job at the same place but working for Northrop Grumman made. I saw many people jump from LM to NGC just to get a big pay bump while doing the same work. But LM is actively trying to reduce its number of Level 5, 6, and 7 engineers (the highest paybands…
So hang on, let me rephrase this: Lockheed has basically fired most of its most highly experienced engineering talent? Is that right? What did Lockheed hope to accomplish by this move? Do you know what the total realized effect was?
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I see the "there's nothing wrong with old technology" comment a lot, and in this case I disagree. There's a good chunk of this thread pointing out how hard it is to hire for this position because practically no one is familiar with these technologies. This, to me, illustrates that there absolutely is something wrong with using old technology, especially in this instance. I will grant that there are some things that j…
That it's (now) uncommon technology is only a small part of the hiring problem. Anyway, what's the alternative here? It is almost certainly not worth the effort to rewrite everything in today's common environment 30 years into the service life of the jet; whatever you do now is going to be uncommon again. A bigger part of the hiring problem is aerospace software, specifically military aerospace software is a difficul…
The current hiring model of "hit-the-ground-sprinting day 1" I suspect is largely the problem here and stems across many industries complaining about hiring difficulties.
Since this "best existing skillset match" hiring model businesses have widely chosen to adopt provide little-to-no on the job training, people will inherently focus on learning the most widely adopted skills of their target market(s) to increase their odds of finding a position in the labor market. Even niche skills will typically target larger proven successful niches and not target risky niches.
As a result, your business better follow industry and technology trends as they shift or you better start investing in your employees and maintain a positive relationship so you don't lose your knowledge assets that are likely undervalued by your business.
Even if Lockheed pays me double, even triple, my current rate, it's likely not worth it for me me wasting my time investing months to years in their specific architecture and fairly non-transferable skills acquired doing so since employer/employee relationships and loyalty are dead. That's a hefty investment on my side with little investment on theirs.
No thanks. It can sit empty and their project can fail for all I care.