Pros
**This is team dependent** * Contract/hourly based pay + needing to be onsite actually helped to maintain a healthy work-life balance; never worked more than 50 hours per week, since we were not allowed to take overtime due to budget cuts * You get to see jets take off every day * People were generally friendly here * Lots of retirements potlucks * Somewhat solid engineers * Really great place if you want to just coast
Cons
* Lack of good tooling and up-to-date software; * Lack of new (software) technology stack being used * Lots of bureaucratic issues (using "AgileFall"; basically they tried to adapt an agile methodology inside a contract-based system, resulting in the classic "overpromise and underdeliver" (or in this case plan to deliver years late) * Security Clearance comes with a lot of work and caveats (ex: must record travel, must name any foreign contacts, all known associates, etc) * Huge age gap in demographics; either very new (1-3 yrs) or very old (20+ year veteran); company is currently undergoing a cultural shift * Huge legacy codebase, with many of the original authors retired (see above point) or left the company