Pros
- typical benefits - light to medium work load - no one ever gets fired
Cons
As others have stated: - Senior Software Developers are basically ignorant of modern software design, development, delivery practices. You will learn nothing from them. They routinely make short-sighted, poor decisions, but continually defend/deflect criticism citing irrational reasons. - EDD (Ego Driven-Development) and NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome dominates. No one allows changes to the underlying design because it reflects poorly on the original developers ego, yet Senior developers get to poorly write/re-write software that already exists to boost their ego and gain credentials. - The software quality is obviously poor as a result. Maintenance (bug-fixing) to Development ratio ranges from 4:1 to 10:1. - High turn-over in lower positions and no advancement because senior devs have been there forever. - Managers and Directors are political appointees: family, friends, brown-nosers instead of being skilled developers with strong training and experience with modern technology. - Whatever training you get is trivial and non-transferrable, mostly oriented towards following procedures. - HR exists to protect manager and directors instead of addressing the root cause of conflict, which is their technical deficit. - Business outlook is poor. Demand for Predator/Reaper products is low because the software is so bad. Pentagon budget requested 0 Reapers in 2020-2023 budgets, but Congress forces USAF to by 4 more each year to subsidize the defense industry. In 2022, USAF actually proposed getting rid of 250 out of 330 Reapers. Foreign Military Sales are not panning out because of poor software performance.