Do not ever go into government contracting as a software engineer
Pros
You get generic company benefits that you can get pretty much anywhere else. Most of my team members are nice and will answer your questions to the best of their ability, but will not go out of their way to help you further than that. Specific to my team only, my scrum master was very encouraging and was good with interpersonal conflicts/issues
Cons
You are pretty much worthless to Raytheon IIS until you obtain a government clearance, which means you will be sitting in an awaiting clearance area anywhere between 6-24 months (or possibly more) doing pretty much nothing (unless you get lucky enough to be pulled onto an unclassified program that is not labeled GPS OCX.) Your salary is embarrassingly low as a software engineer at Raytheon. You will be using old technology/outdated tools that are really slow and hinder your ability to do any real software development. The team size in M2C2 is way too big, and all the more interesting/critical work are given to more senior members of the team who don't have time to really mentor you into the role. Work flow is very unsteady. You may get a lot of work for a time period, and then go 1-2 weeks just twiddling your thumbs at your desk. Upper management doesn't know anything about software or testing, but know how to stress out developers by constantly asking for work statuses. There is very little collaboration among team members and many single points of failure in the team. The work office space set-up really hinders collaboration and growth, and learning/growth is very slow. It is difficult to move up and progress in your career working in this kind of environment that does not embrace innovation or enthusiasm.
