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.
I knew Boeing people who came back with a raise under similar circumstances. Charge them extra for the honor, and reward yourself with something nice at the end. This is bonus money after all.
The binge-purge cycle at these places is not how I think things should be run, but I expect Congress is somewhat to blame for the cycling.
I started my career working for British Aerospace in 1989. We used VAX/VMS as our development platform (Code was CORAL 66 and then ADA). I spent some time supporting the Sea Harrier flight test operations - so I would have fitted this job perfectly about 28 years ago!).
I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus, but nothing surprises me when it comes to the use of stone-age tech in military hardware. For example, the other Harrier I worked on in the early 90s (GR-7 - same as US AV8B) still used core memory.
> I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus...
What's wrong with 1553? It's reliable, battle-tested, and the latest revision C was published 28-Feb-2018. In contrast, the RS-232 PHY dates back to 1960, yet it's quite alive and well in modern commercial devices. As a consolation, be glad you've never had to deal with the monster that is STANAG 5516/MIL-STD-6016...if there was such a thing as a "modern" interface standard whose sheer page count (11,410 pages!) would make any sensible engineer reconsider future career prospects.
The 1553 bus is ancient, but it's electrically and logically simple. The concepts necessary to use and incorporate 1553 into designs is easily acquired by a fresh engineer (I should know, I first used 1553 in a design as a 24 year old straight out of grad school) and it's already incorporated into all kinds of avionics and weapons. Why not use it?
What was your experience switching from Coral 66 to Ada? An equivalent language in the USA at the time was JOVIAL. I heard from some old JOVIAL programmers that they thought Ada was an inferior tool for the job. When I looked at Coral 66, it seemed to be rather less polished than JOVIAL, so I have wondered whether British programmers might have welcomed the switch to Ada.
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 just keep working and I also would be tempted to leave them in place. But if their functioning is critical then we either need to cultivate the necessary knowledge in our organization to ensure we can manage them adequately or replace them with something that the current market of people will be somewhat familiar.
In general, I would agree. However, the longer that old technology is deployed, the more expensive support costs. Parts become obsolete, engineers retire or move on, IT has to maintain archaic devices, operating systems, and tools.
So a couple of the comments here have been mentioning the high pay of people with specialties like this in the context of LM and other defense contractors. My impression from Glassdoor and general conversation with software developers has been the DCs pay pretty low for software in general compared to FAANG or even other engineering companies. Is it true that people with obscure specialties at places like LM can command high salaries? Or have I been misled that LM pay is on the lower side? Or is it all relative?
(Reposting at the top level because it makes more sense to hopefully get more discussion)
Defense contractors are similar to other companies that (strongly) do not believe that software is their product and do not value it any further than that it is a small component in the large system they are delivering. There's a lot of old-school attitudes still present: for example, I've heard software developers referred to as "software typists" a number of times.
Basically there are two entirely different paths here. For example, the person who writes all the software to drive the cockpit displays is probably called something like a "cockpit avionics engineer" and is organizationally in the department that's responsible for building such things. These people can get paid very well.
On the other hand, a "software developer" is much more likely to be a support function. Lots of maintenance of legacy stuff more than anything, and what actual development work exists might be nothing more than taking an algorithm directly from a standard and implementing it in whatever language is required by the project. These roles are not particularly well-paid and have a lot of turnover.
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 on the technical career track). You would typically find a Level 5 engineer serving as an engineering technical team lead, a Level 6 as a site deputy chief engineer, and a Level 7 as a site chief engineer. A few years ago, LM Aeronautics offered all Level 5 and above engineers an early buyout/retirement and got over 1000 engineers to leave the company that way. Those engineers were largely not replaced, either in skills (hard to replace that level of expertise), billets (those jobs were not re-filled), or promotions (the sudden vacuum at the top end of the technical career pyramid was not filled by promoting large numbers of level 4 engineers to level 5, etc).
The larger defense contractors have issues paying software engineers remotely close to private industry nowadays. In certain regions of the US the software market is dominated by defense though.
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).
They pay quite well if you measure that by how many hours of work you must do to pay a mortgage on a nice home. This is because:
1. It's typically a 40-hour week. They legally can't make you work 48 or more without paying overtime, and many will start paying overtime after 40.
2. You don't have to live in an expensive place like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, or New York City. The worst cases are usually the DC area and San Diego, but typical locations are far cheaper. Instead of $2,000,000 for a house, you might pay $120,000 for a better house. Everything around you is cheaper too, from food to electricity. Gasoline is half the cost.
The choice is pretty clear if you hope to raise a family.
If you just look at salary comparison websites you will think the two have comparable salaries. 10 years of dev experience will put you in the 130k range before cost of living bumps. But FANG gives a lot or even most of the compensation as something besides salary.
Defense contractors don't pay FAANG salaries. They can't, in general, because they're bound by labor categories and salaries set by the government, and the government isn't paying software engineers above what their GS software engineers get (max of about 128k in the DC area in general, if you're curious). There are a few jobs that can go a bit higher, but even they are capped around 150k as I recall.
I don't know what LM is going to pay for the skillset they ask for in that job announcement, I would bet that it's 150k or less, but the person w/ the skillset to answer it may be able to command a bit more as there aren't very many of us left.
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 you can imagine that porting vms-specific fortran code to work on a modern network stack was non trivial.
Also, everyone with VMS knowledge was a hacker. No real design or plan, just go in an change a thing here and a thing there and get it working.
All that being said, it was interesting to work on an OS that is so different from linux, specifically the file system had versioning.
The way that the fine article was worded, it seems that the engineering team knew that they needed approximately 1.5M LOC before they has started. How could they have known that? Or is it simply poorly worded?
> The ATF Team planned to develop approximately 1.5 million source lines of code, across more than 20 software development companies located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
Reminds me of my first job out of uni, 18 years ago. I was working on the SPARK toolset, and one of our customers was the Eurofighter, who still used VAX VMS for their development.
We had to maintain an old Micro VAX box in the office to periodically test that the toolset still worked on it. I seem to remember that the massive regression test suite that would run in a few hours every night on a PC would take days on this box.
Our main worry was that one day we'd turn it on and the drive would fail to spin up. I seem to remember there being a periodic reminder to just turn the damn thing on and let it boot every so often, then shut it down, just to make sure the drive was still ok.
Development of F22 started in 1980's. Last VAX machines were manufactured in 2005. There is quite a lot of VME bus based legacy (but speciallized and working) measurement and test equipment still around. I have no involvement in the project, so can not tell for sure; yet would be surprised if any of this is part of the flight hardware.
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).
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 (it was a cleared computing system) just in case we needed to recompile the embedded software for the power supply controller.
[1] Unfortunately, I don't remember what this acronym expands to.
> Experience with troubleshooting equipment such as Pass1000/5000 1553 bus monitor, fiber-optic test equipment, digital storage oscilloscopes, and familiarization with the VAX/VME based computing environment.
Seems apparent to me that the context is development+ATE environment; VME is likely VXI interface to ATE instrumentation. In any case, the VMS and/or VME angle to this job post is the least of any prospect's concerns.
Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science or related technical focus.
• Experience in COMM and Navigation.
• Avionics experience
• Experience with aircraft operations.
• Microsoft Office
I love the MS Office req at the end. "Yes, we see you've got a BS in engineering, you're an expert at avionics and COMM control systems, but do you know anything about MS Word?"
Wow. It takes tens of system engineers writing hundreds of requirements to do something as crazy as write a new 1.5 Mloc software system on VAX in the 90s. Any smaller team wouldn’t have considered it.
[+] [-] inetsee|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magduf|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hinkley|6 years ago|reply
The binge-purge cycle at these places is not how I think things should be run, but I expect Congress is somewhat to blame for the cycling.
[+] [-] urban_winter|6 years ago|reply
I'd like to say that I'm astonished that modern aircraft still use the 1553 bus, but nothing surprises me when it comes to the use of stone-age tech in military hardware. For example, the other Harrier I worked on in the early 90s (GR-7 - same as US AV8B) still used core memory.
[+] [-] metaphor|6 years ago|reply
What's wrong with 1553? It's reliable, battle-tested, and the latest revision C was published 28-Feb-2018. In contrast, the RS-232 PHY dates back to 1960, yet it's quite alive and well in modern commercial devices. As a consolation, be glad you've never had to deal with the monster that is STANAG 5516/MIL-STD-6016...if there was such a thing as a "modern" interface standard whose sheer page count (11,410 pages!) would make any sensible engineer reconsider future career prospects.
[+] [-] euler_angles|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Phlarp|6 years ago|reply
Military gonna military I guess.
[+] [-] wrp|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|6 years ago|reply
There is absolutely noting wrong with using old technology. Being modern just for the sake of being modern is wasteful.
[+] [-] cmiles74|6 years ago|reply
I will grant that there are some things that just keep working and I also would be tempted to leave them in place. But if their functioning is critical then we either need to cultivate the necessary knowledge in our organization to ensure we can manage them adequately or replace them with something that the current market of people will be somewhat familiar.
[+] [-] hestefisk|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keeganjw|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sizzzzlerz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m463|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwayEngineer|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvdbloc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] structural|6 years ago|reply
Basically there are two entirely different paths here. For example, the person who writes all the software to drive the cockpit displays is probably called something like a "cockpit avionics engineer" and is organizationally in the department that's responsible for building such things. These people can get paid very well.
On the other hand, a "software developer" is much more likely to be a support function. Lots of maintenance of legacy stuff more than anything, and what actual development work exists might be nothing more than taking an algorithm directly from a standard and implementing it in whatever language is required by the project. These roles are not particularly well-paid and have a lot of turnover.
It is a very different world.
[+] [-] euler_angles|6 years ago|reply
But LM is actively trying to reduce its number of Level 5, 6, and 7 engineers (the highest paybands on the technical career track). You would typically find a Level 5 engineer serving as an engineering technical team lead, a Level 6 as a site deputy chief engineer, and a Level 7 as a site chief engineer. A few years ago, LM Aeronautics offered all Level 5 and above engineers an early buyout/retirement and got over 1000 engineers to leave the company that way. Those engineers were largely not replaced, either in skills (hard to replace that level of expertise), billets (those jobs were not re-filled), or promotions (the sudden vacuum at the top end of the technical career pyramid was not filled by promoting large numbers of level 4 engineers to level 5, etc).
[+] [-] devonkim|6 years ago|reply
Back in the early 2000s I know of some J2EE architects that pulled $200k as defense contractors once they got a Sun certification. The certification and diploma mill market in the US is driven squarely by big federally funded institutions that value paper over experience because they don’t know how to measure ability any better than SV Leetcode questions would assess.
Of defense contractors I’ve seen pay tables for in the DC area, LM and Raytheon paid worse for senior engineers than slightly smaller, more specialized companies but they certainly had a lot more overhead and administrative positions available that were possible to reach just by having a PhD even if it’s not related to engineering or STEM in general at all (political science obviously makes sense here as valuable, for example).
But under DHS you can hit $200k+ as a contractor for anything that has “cyber” attached to its name these days. But for the most part, the high payout days for software engineers in defense are over which is what led me to leaving the DC area years ago to stick with better pay and work environment with private sector. A TS is a pain and the pay bump is a joke compared to RSUs. I’ll take leetcode grinding for months to get a stack of RSUs and marketable engineering skills over the demonstrably useless charade of the DoD security theater practices with none of the employment benefits besides some smug, self-assured sense of patriotism.
Most of the higher paid contractors in DoD aren’t engineers - they’ve usually been intelligence officer trainers and skilled and experienced warfighters (well past $400k, much of it untaxed).
[+] [-] burfog|6 years ago|reply
1. It's typically a 40-hour week. They legally can't make you work 48 or more without paying overtime, and many will start paying overtime after 40.
2. You don't have to live in an expensive place like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Mountain View, or New York City. The worst cases are usually the DC area and San Diego, but typical locations are far cheaper. Instead of $2,000,000 for a house, you might pay $120,000 for a better house. Everything around you is cheaper too, from food to electricity. Gasoline is half the cost.
The choice is pretty clear if you hope to raise a family.
[+] [-] galangalalgol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jki275|6 years ago|reply
I don't know what LM is going to pay for the skillset they ask for in that job announcement, I would bet that it's 150k or less, but the person w/ the skillset to answer it may be able to command a bit more as there aren't very many of us left.
[+] [-] oldsklgdfth|6 years ago|reply
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 you can imagine that porting vms-specific fortran code to work on a modern network stack was non trivial.
Also, everyone with VMS knowledge was a hacker. No real design or plan, just go in an change a thing here and a thing there and get it working.
All that being said, it was interesting to work on an OS that is so different from linux, specifically the file system had versioning.
[+] [-] aosmith|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dotancohen|6 years ago|reply
> The ATF Team planned to develop approximately 1.5 million source lines of code, across more than 20 software development companies located throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe.
[+] [-] stickfigure|6 years ago|reply
Software saved the aerospace industry. Every other way of adding cost to an airplane also adds weight.
He spent most of his career at Lockheed and Rockwell.
[+] [-] noneeeed|6 years ago|reply
We had to maintain an old Micro VAX box in the office to periodically test that the toolset still worked on it. I seem to remember that the massive regression test suite that would run in a few hours every night on a PC would take days on this box.
Our main worry was that one day we'd turn it on and the drive would fail to spin up. I seem to remember there being a periodic reminder to just turn the damn thing on and let it boot every so often, then shut it down, just to make sure the drive was still ok.
[+] [-] walshemj|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IndrekR|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lallysingh|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ch_123|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vonmoltke|6 years ago|reply
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 (it was a cleared computing system) just in case we needed to recompile the embedded software for the power supply controller.
[1] Unfortunately, I don't remember what this acronym expands to.
[+] [-] jki275|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Damogran6|6 years ago|reply
Is that muscle on my face twitching due to PTSD? Yes, Yes it is.
[+] [-] eccbits|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metaphor|6 years ago|reply
> Experience with troubleshooting equipment such as Pass1000/5000 1553 bus monitor, fiber-optic test equipment, digital storage oscilloscopes, and familiarization with the VAX/VME based computing environment.
Seems apparent to me that the context is development+ATE environment; VME is likely VXI interface to ATE instrumentation. In any case, the VMS and/or VME angle to this job post is the least of any prospect's concerns.
[+] [-] ProxCoques|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Isamu|6 years ago|reply
Oh yeah ...
[+] [-] chrisco255|6 years ago|reply
• Experience in COMM and Navigation.
• Avionics experience
• Experience with aircraft operations.
• Microsoft Office
I love the MS Office req at the end. "Yes, we see you've got a BS in engineering, you're an expert at avionics and COMM control systems, but do you know anything about MS Word?"
[+] [-] g00s3_caLL_x2|6 years ago|reply
The wiki page shows some stats of a plane that is (publicly) 22-23 years old and VAX is 42 years old. To me, that math does not add up.
Just a curious thought.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bhaavan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalmes|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snowwindwaves|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gumby|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunting_of_the_Snark
[+] [-] anilakar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] audiometry|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IloveHN84|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]