Day: August 18, 2011

This is a mixed blessing, and a long time coming.

I wasn’t going to go in until next week. But I noted that a paper check had been cut paying me a lump sum for my vacation, and unused holiday time. So it’s convenient and profitable for me to drive down there to hand in my shit.

It’s also a nice form of closure I will no longer have anything that I have to be responsible for and with few exceptions the company and I will be done with each other.

In hindsight, I took the position for all the right reasons. There was no way I could have known just how screwed up the project would become. Bad management is as likely in one industry as it is in any other. That there is a concentration of crappy management in the aerospace industry shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

These people have existed within a culture of obscene overruns for decades. Most of them have the attitude that no matter what, they can always go back to the government for more money and in many cases they have built systems and procedures where that assumption is integral to any project they bid.

The movie Pentagon Wars was a comedy. Sadly, it is also surprisingly accurate in it’s depiction of how government projects work.

It’s a real pity that the bureaucratic red tape necessary to become a government contractor is so arduous that many companies simply refuse to even try. I think that it’s time for the government to reduce the bureaucracy in favor of better, more modern, less expensive goods and equipment.

The old guard contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop, Raytheon, and TRW need a good solid kick in the pants in terms of competition. Lessening the red tape and allowing new players and new ideas into contract bids would serve the nation well.

That’s just my opinion.