How to transition from defense to tech
Hi Blind, I graduated in 2019 with a BS in comp sci and through a weird series of events ended up working at a defense contractor straight away. Earlier this year I went from 80k to 190k TC but I'm sick of defense. I feel like I don't have much experience in tech stacks that tech companies look for. I'm good with linux stuff, Python, C/C++, Rust, Lisp, even did some JS/HTML/CSS stuff a year ago working through an online react course, but all of my professional experience is C++ and Python. I'm currently at JPL NASA as a contractor. Should I put JPL on my resume or my subcontractor company? Will they dig deep for relevant tech stack experience or is leetcode enough? YOE: almost 3 #tech #defense #interview
As long as you are able to code decent in coding rounds you should be ok. You should be proud about working on defense projects. Leetcode should help you. Try bigger companies which don’t care for what all languages you know. Hope that helps. To be frank I have interviewed lot of candidates who prefer to code in python during interviews because it is faster to code in it.
What’s your pedigree and background
Thanks that does help. I think the biggest hurdle will be actually getting interviews since I've heard that defense experience is looked at negatively at big tech because a lot of defense people struggle with whiteboard questions
Write jpl via subcontract company. Or whatever sounds better, but be sure to somehow put/hide subcontractor in the resume so you arent lying when they do background check
Would you recommend being a contract employee at JPL? I just got asked to interview for a contract position there but I have no idea what a contract position would look like in terms of benefits/job stability.
It seemed to be very stable, although I left earlier this year to join a startup. Benefits depend on the contract company, but generally speaking the contractors get paid a lot more than JPLers even with their cushy benefits. My benefits were good healthcare insurance, a decent 401k, and 0 PTO. I was paid hourly. Other contractors I knew there got PTO but when you're paid hourly it really doesn't matter
So were you never allowed to take time off or was it you could take off what you wanted you just wouldn't get paid?
What tech stacks do you think tech companies look for? C++/Python is good enough. Keep Leeting.
I guess I think they look for web dev experience and experience in massive scale projects. All the work I've done has been for desktop apps, simulation work, scripts here and there for various things. Never done anything with a database or docker
I actually find it relieving to hear that at least FAANG mostly cares about the leetcode song and dance, idk about other tech companies though