…would you be praying for more war everyday for more business?
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Little bit
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Nah.
I’d want to do whatever you make as much money possible allowed by the law and use every and any bit of lobbying and political influence as possible. Without any shit given about the human cost be it employees, the environment or innocent civilians.
Now realize that this is every single Fortune 500 company inside of the US.
It would be my fiduciary duty!
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Please think of the shareholders 
No, I’d rather get gigs as a celebrity bodyguard so I could show off my samurai sword.
As someone who works for a defense contractor by proxy, fuck no. We’re behind as fuck right now as it is and can’t get the people to fill the jobs. When that happens deadlines get missed and contracts get taken away.
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I did contract work for KBR in Iraq for the better part of 2.5 years in the late '00s.
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Some of the stuff I could tell you…lol
Like the “70” hour work weeks wink wink
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I am. Lol
Based on the things I work on, more or less war is largely irrelevant.
Lots of things are technology related and just trying to stay ahead of the enemies. That portion of defense will never go away.
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70? What - did you take a couple days off?
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We did 84…90-95 with OT. lol
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And that’s nothing. I’m talking some of the shit KBR talked the govt into paying for…completely legally…was absolutely mind bottling.
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It’s funny because under Trump, even without new wars and a more streamlined defense budget, there were more contracts to bid on. With the possibility of new wars, we still have a shitload of contracts to build on. It really doesn’t matter, the work is going to be there.
It’s still going on too.
There is a missle system by one of the big names in a place where they are setting up new operations somewhere in the middle East.
They don’t use it nor will have much use at all but it’s in a tent city. The company engineer has to be there with the system. In order for him to be there, they had to build him a house in the tent city. He doesn’t do a thing, they aren’t use that missle system but he is just chilling making 200k every 3 months. Who knows what the Fed is paying the company that pays him.
I’ve been offered a few IT jobs out in Romania, Poland and Saudi as of recent but they ain’t paying shit and jobs stateside are paying more than if my ass camped out in Kuwait or Saudi now. They are now only getting bottom of the barrel shit people there nowadays for IT.
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For most no, if we’re in war many of the research and development projects get put on hold for daily needs.
Oh I 100% believe that.
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When I first went out there (Oct '05), everything was still under a “cost plus” contract…meaning they didn’t have a set budget, per se. It was all about they’d front their money, “justify” it to the govt, then the govt would reimburse them what they spent + 6%.
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So basically, the more they spent, the more they made.
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They did so much useless shit, it’d blow your mind. And HOLY FUCK were they overstaffed - since labor was one of their biggest expenses. You’d have a department that needed 2-3 people tops, and it’d have 7-9 easy. All expats for max payroll.
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Of course, once contracts actually started coming up for bid a few years later, they had to start cutting costs. They would do whatever they could to get expats to quit. They started replacing them from people from Eastern Europe at about 1/3-1/2 the pay. Then they started replacing them with people from Africa for a fraction of that.
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They also pulled one on the govt that was so slick, I actually admired it.
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They told the govt they could process shit faster and it’d be cheaper if they didn’t have to front their own $$$. Because they didn’t use their own $$$ - they’d borrow money and have to pay interest. Then that interest was something else the govt had to reimburse.
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So when they bought materials, they’d actually order the material, get it in, get the material approved for payment, then submit the invoice to the govt for payment. The govt would pay the company the invoice amount + 6%. They’d keep their 6%, then turn around & funnel the actual payment to the vendor.
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Except this was war zone Iraq and they’d still go 60…90…120 or more days without paying the vendor.
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So they’d have the material, have gotten reimbursed from the govt., gotten their fee from the govt, and were STILL holding onto the $$$ for months before paying the vendor.
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You have no idea how many times irate vendors came in looking to get paid (which they only did by wire transfer which would route through Dubai, then Jordan, then finally Iraq) and left pissed off when we had no info for them.
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Never knew if they were gonna go back into town & get their militia member cousin to lob rockets or mortar rounds at us that night as payback. lol
Gotta imagine defense contractors are more diversified than “if there’s no war, I don’t get paid”.
I’m done with it. New war meant better pay. I missed the boom for Iraq and Afghanistan, but I understand that they made shitloads when it kicked off.
This is aerospace, I read in Erik Prince’s book he paid his blackwater guys 550 a day. (Iirc) I’ve worked with guys on 900+ a day.
I’m sure that many here earn lots more than that, but that’s a fucken fortune to me, I left school at 15, getting paid shit money, to earn six figures seemed kinda cool.