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aqutalion · 8 years ago

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Day Job Implosion, part 4: In which everything old is new again and both RockeTech and Missiles-R-Us continue to be awful

This really isn't an implosion... yet. Or maybe it's a series of several small implosions. But the latest job search incarnation just seemed to bring together all the weirdness this industry has to offer. I probably mentioned earlier about how "cross-pollinated" (or "incestuous", as I prefer to call it) the defense industry in Aquville is. I don't know if it's endemic to the industry, or just a result of being in a smallish city dominated by a single monolithic industry.

At first glance, it looked like there were piles and piles of open jobs. But after digging a little deeper and talking with more people, most of them turned out to be for maybe 3 or 4 projects. One of the things large companies here like to do, in addition to using multiple recruiters for a single position (ARGH!), is subcontract out to smaller ones. This results in several companies looking for the same thing. Sometimes this can be a good thing, like on Labyrinth, where one sub turned me down and another hired me the next week. Other times, you end up wasting your time unknowingly applying for things you've already been submitted for.

And what were these big projects? One was none other than Labyrinth. Apparently, they've somehow managed to resurrect it. I have no idea how. This was probably the most frustrating one. I guess they'd run off all their subs from before (Mom-n-Pop certainly wasn't touching it), as they'd brought on a slew of new ones. At least half a dozen contacted me. The first one went ahead and submitted my resume, only to have it turned down because I'd "been on the project before". As for the others, it was frustrating getting my hopes up, only to find out it was just another Labyrinth sub.

I just realized I haven’t written about Labyrinth or Mom-n-Pop, yet. I’ll be writing about them, soon, once I finish up the stories from Wasteland and Stonehenge.

I bumped into a former coworker from Labyrinth at a job fair. He wouldn't touch it, either. Speaking of that job fair, it had the exact same companies as the one six months before. The exact same. Two were Missiles-R-Us and NotRockets. NotRockets always seems to be hiring, and it makes no sense to me. I went to a larger job fair a few months after they laid me off, and there they were, looking for more people. Another project came to light at that job fair. It was a "software engineer" job at a NASA contractor. That one, I have to admit, gave me a bit of a pang. I'd moved to AquVille because of the NASA facility, and this just reminded me that I'd be giving up that possibility if I left as planned. Yes, I know working for a NASA contractor would have all the same bullshit I've dealt with on the missile projects- Implosion Part 3 proved that- but… still… ya know? Looking at the job description, it was apparent that I had little chance of getting the position, anyway, as there was only a little overlap between my skillset and the set they wanted, and the duties described didn't really match what I'd been doing. I applied, anyway, as did three or four recruiters from the project's various subcontractors. One of them actually got me an interview, and there I found that the overlap was even smaller than I thought, and it was more of a dev-ops position than a developer one, hence the quotes. So no chance at all. The third project was with Missiles-R-Us. And yes, it's the same project that laid me off the first time (Defense contractors have no qualms about letting you go when the budget tanks, but will gladly hire you back if the budget returns). SpiffTek sent me on an interview there, soon after leaving Sideline, but that wasn't the only position I applied to. In one case, the recruiter handling the position was none other than my former "dedicated placement rep" from before. Perhaps they've had another mass exodus. The "research lab" position mentioned in Fun With Recruiters part 2 is still looking for people willing to relocate to their city. They've gone through several recruiters and staffing firms, and I think every one of them has called me. Seriously, guys- REMOTE! Consider it! With the salary you're offering and the job market where you are, you'll have to! A recruiter submitted my resume to what I later found out was Wasteland. According to him, they said I didn't have the right skillset for it, but apparently made a point of saying they'd be open to having me apply again in the future. That's a but surprising, as Wasteland and I didn't part on good terms. Wasteland HR must have forgotten me. But eventually, AwesomeTech (see Fun with Recruiters, part 1) came back out of the woodwork, with a project with a company I'll call Vector-Sigma. It was still defense, but it wasn't missiles, and that's at least a little improvement. I interviewed. They offered me the job. It was a short-term thing and not a great fit for my skillset, but I took it. I hadn't recognized the name, and thought I'd maybe found the one defense contractor in Aquville that I'd never interviewed with, before. However I later found out that I had, in fact, worked for them. Before a series of buyouts and mergers, Vector-Sigma was Qubefarm, where I'd had a short-lived stopgap position (through SpiffTek), just before joining Labyrinth. This, too, was a short stopgap, but it was better than nothing. And who turns out to be the prime contractor for this project? RockeTech! I can't get away from these guys! My first day on the job, someone recognizes me from Wasteland. Qubefarm had occupied a pair of identical office buildings next to each other. Vector-Sigma still has one (the second floor of it, anyway, leaving the first floor empty and very creepy). The other former Qubefarm building, the one I used to work in, is now occupied by Wasteland. A week into this job, a recruiter from MinComp (also from Fun With Recruiters, part 1) contacted me. Still looking for people, still expecting them to relocate. Two and a half weeks in, Missile-R-Us calls for an interview, for something I thought they'd already rejected me for a couple of months ago. Yes, months. As we've already found out, large defense contractors move only slightly faster than glaciers. I have no idea how they manage to hire anyone, moving that slowly. By way of comparison, I interviewed with a non-defense company, at least as large as Missile-R-Us, between Implosion Chapter 3 and now. They had an answer for me two weeks after my interview- and the recruiter apologized for taking that long.

Three months later, the VectorSigma gig ended. Labyrinth, Missiles-R-Us and RockeTech were still hiring. RockeTech (again) brings me in for an interview for… wait for it… Monolith! Fucking MONOLITH! I was sort of hoping to get this, even though I knew the chances were slim (My skillset had evolved, since then, while their requirements have stayed exactly the same). It would be like bookends. Monolith was what brought me to AquVille, and it would finance my escape.

A newcomer (sort of) brought a ray of hope. About a month after the events in Fun With Recruiters #1, MinComp had been acquired by a larger company, Snorlax. Snorlax had a facility in AquVille, built probably around the same time. The position wasn't at that facility, but on the base. Yes, at the same super-secret-classified facility I'd had to go to for Stonehenge. The recruiter assures me that they can move quickly, unless other defense contractors.

But they're only the subcontractor on this project. Who is the prime? Take a guess. Go ahead. Guess.

Surprise! It's RockeTech! Seriously, RockeTech, either stop following me or just goddamn hire me, already. (Actually, don't. Your health insurance sucks and I have literally never had a positive interaction with you.)

Or not. Snorlax pulled a bit of a bait-and-switch. Between the first and second interviews, they changed their minds about the position. What had been a development position was now a IV&V position, "temporarily". Their definition of "temporary" was a year. Since I was still planning to leave as soon as I finished my dissertation (at the time, about six more months), that was basically permanent. But the money was significantly higher than I expected, so I figured I could put up with it. They made an "unofficial" offer, but they wanted me to talk to the prime, first. RocketTech? No, he's from Missiles-R-Us! The hell? I have no idea.

It goes well, and their local person says they'll contact me "soon". And then... nothing. I contact my recruiter for an update, and he says he'll call me back. He doesn't. Nor does he answer his phone.

I take the hint and start looking elsewhere. It's been nearly a month since I started the process with Snorlax (hence the name), and I'm tired of waiting. As coincidence would have it, Missiles-R-Us was having a hiring event, so I went. Other recruiters call, and I set up another interview. RockeTech calls again, in another case of the right hand not seeing what the left is doing. The recruiter sounds enthusiastic, but I never hear from her again.

The next week, the Snorlax recruiter emails me back, saying he'll call me that morning. He doesn't. I fantasize about getting an offer from Missiles-R-Us and taking it just to spite them. The "unofficial" offer is two weeks old, at this point, well past stale. I guess they have a different definition of "quickly" than the rest of us.

A couple of days later, he finally gets back to me. They're still waiting on word from RockeTech, apparently still the prime. Ugh. Fuck you, RockeTech. Fuck you.

Three weeks in, he calls and says RockeTech wants another interview. Sigh. I get my hopes up, even though I shouldn't have.

Another three weeks pass. The recruiter is apparently getting as annoyed with this as me. He says he's checking for updates daily, but RockeTech is ghosting him- not just about me, but several others. Is this true? Don't know and at this point, don't care. I give up on them.

So, is RockeTech just stupidly inefficient, or is there something else going on? My money's on both.

Interestingly, my mother dealt with a company with he same name as RockeTech when she worked for a research lab. This was 20 years ago and in a completely different industry, but the name is uncommon enough that I suspect it's the same company, or at least a subsidiary. They were stupidly inefficient when she dealt with them, too. "Laziness and managerial incompetence", she called it.

And there's another possible explanation. The contract structure for this project was especially weird- When I first interviewed, RockeTech was the prime and Snorlax a sub, but that was supposedly to flip. In a few months, Snorlax would become the prime and RockeTech a sub. No, I don't know why. Contracting is just weird, that's all. But anyway, it was suggested to me that they were stalling because they were miffed about this situation and decided to be assholes. If that's true, they can go fuck themselves with a THAAD missile sideways.

But now it's Missiles-R-Us's turn to be awful. A week or two after I gave up on Snorlax, multiple recruiters start calling. Another huge project has just dropped, apparently rivaling Monolith and Stonehenge in size, and like its predecessors, every decent-size contractor has a piece. I'll call it Menhir, since I'm pretty sure it's an offshoot of Monolith. And in true defense contractor fashion, they've all hired a dozen or so staffing firms and have another dozen or so subcontractors (some of which hired their own staffing firms).

This brings up something I need to address. When trying to gauge the quality of a city's job market, do not rely on the quantity of job listings! Lots of job listings does not necessarily equal lots of actual jobs! Companies hire multiple recruiters to work on the same position (STOP DOING THIS!). In the world of contracting, things are further complicated by non-compete agreements and such. In the case of Menhir, the various companies involved have agreements that they can't poach each other's staff. That means if one gets an offer from one company, no other company is allowed to even consider them unless they completely back out of the first. So, no real chance for potential employees to shop around.

The first company that finally bit was some El-Cheapo contractor I've never heard of, working for Missiles-R-Us. They make an offer, not a great one but not terrible, and I accept. But there's a problem- they can't give me a start date, yet.

The hell? They give me some excuse that it's the defense industry and there's paperwork. There's something to that, but every other company I've worked for- even Missiles-R-Us- gave me a start date with the initial offer. Granted, in Missiles-R-Us's case, the date was a month later, but it was still a firm date. This is NOT normal, despite the BS they keep trying to feed me.

But whatever. I get the paperwork done and turned in and wait and wait and wait. Every time I ask what's going on, it's 'Oh, we're still waiting for word from Missiles-R-Us'. Two and a half weeks go by, and I finally hear from M-R-U, wanting some more paperwork. No word on the start date, though. They're trying to get in contact with El-Cheapo, supposedly.

It's now been three weeks, and I'm finally done waiting. No, I don't have a start date, yet, and both El-Cheapo and Missiles-R-Us are still claiming paperwork delays on the part of the other. But I'm done, and I let them know this. I'm taking the first firm start date I get, be it from them, Snorlax, or someone else. And yes, I am looking again. This gets their attention and all of a sudden management is burning up my phone to "discuss". The only thing I'm interested in "discussing" is when I start work, though, and neither El-Cheapo nor M-R-U has an answer.

Only three months left, until I defend my dissertation and can finally get the fuck out of this city and away from this shithole industry. Only three months.

#day job implosion #defense contractors #rocketech #missiles-r-us

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aqutalion · 8 years ago

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Reblogging because HOLY SHIT I HAVE A HAMMER DOPPELGANGER!

It really is like a matryushka doll. Alas, it’s too soft to actually hammer things.

I recently found my “gold” hammer after misplacing it. It’s my favorite tool ever because it looks like a regular hammer trying to be fancy,

but then you twist both halves and unscrew it to find a flat-head screwdriver in the middle.

BUT, if you twist the very end and unscrew that

you find a phillips screwdriver.

BUT DON’T THINK THAT’S ALL THERE IS! THERE’S MORE!! unscrew the very end again to find a smaller flat-head screwdriver!

BUT THAT’S STILL NOT THE END!!

unscrew the end of this screwdriver to find a final, teeny tiny, flat-head screwdriver

look at how cute it is!

it’s like a matryoshka doll of tools.

#hammer #doppelganger #what are the chances?

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aqutalion · 8 years ago

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Reblogging to signal boost. I took the survey and it only took about a minute. Go take it!

Also, just wanted to add that even if your app doesn’t make it into the competition, there’s (probably) nothing stopping you from releasing it independently. I’ve done it, myself. I can’t speak for how the iOS store does things, as I’ve never released anything there, but Google Play doesn’t care who made the app or why, as long as it doesn’t violate content rules. I would encourage you to investigate this. There is a need for resources like this, even if the perceived need isn’t big enough to satisfy the contest.

Hey there.

I need you to stop and read this for a second.

My best friend and I are creating an app to help closeted LGBTQIA+ kids in abusive situations.

The app is finished, and we plan on submitting it to the Technovation competition in April.

But there’s one problem.

We can’t get the app to help people if we don’t have the data.

The competition states we must source our own data through a survey, and if we don’t get enough participants, we can’t submit or release the app until we prove that there’s a need for it.

We already polled our school’s relatively small GSA, but that gave us biased answers that weren’t enough to successfully draw a conclusion.

Please, take this survey. No matter your sexuality, gender, preference, race, or anything of that matter. We need data to make this work.

More importantly, we need you to make this work.

The difference between this app helping people, and sitting in a trash folder on my computer is the amount of data this survey collects.

If you can, please help us out.

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aqutalion · 8 years ago

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T - 3 Months

Dissertation defense target date: June 15. Three months and I’m free, you guys! FREE! Of school and hopefully this damn city!

#grad school #aqu rambles #dissertation

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Bergen the Archaeologist

Bergen was an archaeologist at the University of New New Woolloomooloo, and he was having a good day.

It had only been 56 years since the radiation had dropped to safe levels and humankind had finally been able to return to their home planet. Since then, people like Bergen had been frantically trying to piece together the culture and daily lives of there ancestors from the scattered scraps that were left. Physical documents were vanishingly rare, but The University of New New Woolloomooloo was the world leader in Digital Archaeology, and that meant that any time an expedition found a device like a "esdee card" or a "stiff drive", it was sent to the University for analysis.

An expedition to a site near Old New Woolloomooloo had uncovered a "server ranch", which had proved to be a jackpot. The technicians had dated it to around Year -5600 (somewhere in the early 21st century, by the old count). This meant Bergen took charge of it, as Early-Period Internet was his specialty. The research was going well, and he was heading to his boss, Professor Jaxon's office to report on the latest findings. He was quite excited. He'd been following a very interesting thread- even more interesting than the fabled "gates mystery".

He knocked on the Professor Jaxon's door, and it quietly slid open. Jaxon looked up from the notes on his desk. "Bergen! Good show. How's the research going?"

"Wonderful, sir. Very interesting." Bergen smiled, casting a glance at a signed picture hanging on Professor Jaxon's wall. "You're going to love this, sir. It seems that game shows were every bit as popular with our ancestors as they are, today."

"Oh?" He turned to look at the same picture. "Did they have World's Next Top Radar Agent?"

"I don't know about that, sir, but... I've been tracking a particular piece of news. It seems that around Year -5605, a country in Old North Americus elected a game show host as president."

Professor Jaxon again looked at the picture, this time with disbelief. "Someone like Mic Venuta?"

"Well… he was described as being orange and having small hands, so… yeah, very much like Mic Venuta."

"Goodness. WNTRA was great, but… Mic Venuta as president?"

"It seems to have been some kind of protest, sir. I uncovered numerous messages about 'monkeys' in the presidential residence. The presence of these monkeys apparently had them so angry that they chose this game show host to run instead of an actual politician."

"Monkeys?" Jaxon's face brightened. "They elected animals to government office?"

"No, I believe it's just a colloquialism."

Jaxon turned to his heavily-stocked shelves, searching for a particular journal. "Are you sure about that? There was a paper last year by someone at University of New St. Loois about a country in the southern end of Old Europia that had a horse for a senator. Very credible…"

Bergen grimaced in disgust at his colleague at St. Loois being called 'credible'. They'd gotten into a heated argument at the last conference. His St. Loois counterpart had insisted that the fabled 'Gamers Gate' was not an actual gate, at all, while Bergen had definitive proof that it had been located near Old New Woolloomooloo. His paper on the subject had gotten him his post at the University.

"I'm sure, sir. The references to monkeys were almost entirely confined to the game show host's supporters. I believe it's some kind of colloquialism specific to the game show community, but I haven't been able to trace the meaning." Jaxon turned back to Bergen. "And how did this game show host's rule pan out?"

"Badly, it seems." Bergen shuffled through his notes, before scanning a particular page. "I've only traced through the early stages, so far. It seems that within a week of taking power, he'd declared war on the… ah… the national park service."

"The park service? How do you declare war on a park? What do they even use for weapons? Ferns?"

"Birds, sir."

"Birds?"

"Yes. sir. I found a large number of references to something called 'rogue tweeting'. I believe this refers to weaponized birds. Sort kind of guerilla tactic."

"So the parks recruited the monkeys?"

"What?"

"For the gorilla tactics?"

Bergen gritted his teeth, regretting his choice of words. "No, sir. Not gorilla, the animal. G-U-E-R-I-L-L-A."

"You sure it wasn't monkeys?"

"Positive, sir. There was a paper in Old Europia Journal a year ago detailing records of birds being used as war messengers around Year -5700. I find it very likely they'd upgraded the technology to full weaponization by Year -5600."

Bergen handed his stack of notes to Jaxon, and the older man looked through them with an increasingly confused expression. "This is good work, Bergen. Very thorough. But…"

"But?"

"It's just… Are you sure this isn't an example of… what was the word?" Jaxon snapped his fingers, trying to remember. "That thing Steevenson did her graduate thesis on. Ogring?"

"Trolling, sir."

"Right. Trolling. You sure it wasn't that? Steevenson said it was very common in -5600."

"As sure as I can be, sir. There are multiple data sources for all of this." Jaxon handed the notes back to Bergen. "Have a chat to Steevenson, anyway. She's been working on something from the same time period. Something about people worshipping a gorilla by showing it their genitals. Might be related to your monkeys."

Bergen reluctantly took the notes and headed back into the hallway. As fascinating as his ancestors were, he couldn’t help but wonder if Jaxon was right.

#short story #comedy #political humor #because there's no way our ancestors won't think we're trolling them

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Closed Area Tales, part 7: Wasteland and Six Sigma

If I ever meet the person responsible for Six Sigma, I will kick them in the shins. I will kick them in the shins so hard.

For those of you who have avoided dealing with this nonsense, a little background. It's meant to be a sorta-crowd-sourced system for increasing efficiency in the workplace. The idea is, someone sees some process or system that could be improved, develops a way to improve it, and submits it. The company then adopts the change and becomes that much more efficient. On paper, this seems great. Everyone's doing little improvements, and they all add up. Awesome, right?

The problem is that this system is used by large companies, full of red tape and bureaucracy. Processes must be followed, and trying to push through all these little changes just creates more red tape to wade through.

Wasteland had a rule that all their employees had to have at least one Six Sigma project under their belt within a certain period of time, and my deadline was approaching. I was on the lookout for something- anything- that I could improve on. Inspiration finally came when I was updating some test data. I was doing basically entering the same data for all the tests, by hand since there was no tool to do it. The programmer in me figured that this nonsense ought to be automated.

So I submit this. My boss thinks it's a good project, but I have to follow the Six Sigma process. First is writing up a proposal, stating the problem, my solution and how my solution was to be implemented and tested. Standard stuff, so far. My solution was to write a script that would do the duplicated data automatically. But I couldn't write the actual script, because the database used a proprietary programming language, and only the DB developers were allowed to program stuff for it. So what to do? I wrote up the algorithm I had in mind is pseudo-code and submitted it with the proposal, but procedure required that I test it somehow.

Yes, I had to officially test whether doing something by hand was slower than automating it. For efficiency. But how to do this if I couldn't program something for the actual database? The answer turned out to be "fake it". I mocked up a fake DB on my local machine, and wrote a fake program to do the fake updates to my fake DB.

And how to time it? My boss, who was probably as irritated with this nonsense as I was, said to time it with my watch and they'd just take my word for it. Apparently, efficiency needs to be tested, but not verified. Had I not been mostly honest, I could probably have faked the whole thing, but I actually went through with it. I ran my update program, then did the exact same updates by hand, and timed them both. I wrote up these times and submitted them with my report. For efficiency.

So the project was accepted, and now it was time to implement it. As I said earlier, only the DB developers were allowed to program actual DB scripts. I begged and pleaded to be able to write the thing. It would have taken me maybe 10 minutes, 15 if we leave time for testing. But it was not to be. Policy had to be followed, and policy stated that only the DB devs could make this change. All I could do was submit the project and hope it eventually made it to the right people.

Six months later, I was still updating the test data manually. I don't know what happened to my project, and eventually I stopped caring. Once it was submitted, I got credit for it and was rewarded with a Wasteland Six Sigma polo shirt and a certificate that I probably lost. Wasteland didn't care whether your change was implemented, only that you submitted it and followed procedure. Essentially, it was busy-work for its own sake, the exact opposite of what Six Sigma claims to be.

I could have fixed it in ten minutes, but because we had to follow the Six Sigma process, it was drawn out for at least a year, and may have fallen through the cracks, resulting in wasted work and time. Yay, efficiency.

#closed area tales #defense contractors #six sigma

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Closed Area Tales, part 6: Wasteland and the Security Glitches

A few teething troubles are to be expected with a new building. A few. Wasteland's new building had more than a few.

Our closed area had two exits, the main one and the emergency exit. They were only about 50 feet from each other and on the same hallway, so I'm not sure what advantage there was to this arrangement. For the first few days, the security company kept getting alerts that people were going through the emergency exit. All our cubicles had a good view of this door, and that wasn't happening. Eventually, they determined that the wires had been crossed up with the door next to it, the main entrance to another project's closed area.

But the main door had problems, too. By this time, I'd been at Wasteland long enough to finally have the ability to lock the closed area, myself. The first time I tried to close up the lab, the lock wouldn't arm, no matter what I did. That meant I couldn't leave, as we're not allowed to leave the lab unlocked and unattended. I asked the security guard, and even he didn't know what to do about it. Apparently, he'd tried to get his boss to tell him how to work the alarms, but got yelled at for "trying to tell the customer how to do their job". Maybe I'm clueless, but I'd think that knowing how to lock the doors and arm and disarm the alarms would by an important part of the guard's job. We had to call the guy's boss at home and have him drive over and deal with it.

That wasn't the last problem with the doors. The first issue got solved, but as time went on, they started simply not locking. This was worse than before, because the system would register it being locked and armed, but the lock wouldn't actually engage. If you didn't physical check the door after locking it, you'd never know it had failed. This happened to me, once, and I got written up for leaving the lab unlocked. They weren't kidding about this stuff- a cubicle neighbor actually got fired when she left it unlocked three times.

They eventually figured out what the problem was. The closed areas' doors were metal things with heavy-duty locks installed. They were unusually heavy, and the builders had installed them on frames for ordinary doors. Over time, the extra weight warped the frame enough that the lock no longer lined up.

But I haven't gotten to the biggest security glitch, yet. Our closed area had windows. No, not the operating system. Actual panes of glass in the wall that people can see through.

But our lab was on the second floor and you'd have to scale the wall to see inside, right? Nope! While waiting with the security guard for the supervisor to come deal with the non-arming alarm, he told me a story about another facility he'd worked at. They'd had a closed area with windows, too. Every so often, they'd see little flashes of light out in the woods by the building. Someone eventually investigated this and found that the flashes were from cameras. People were setting up outside with huge telescopic lenses, taking pictures of the computer screens inside the lab.

Fortunately, our lab kept the classified laptops in a separate, windowless alcove, and everyone had enough sense to turn their monitors away from the windows. But that's not the end of the problem. People aren't always after specific information. Sometimes they're looking for patterns. Metadata.

As an example of this, my mother once had a conversation with the guy who picked up our recycling, and he said that he could always tell when the college students were back home by the contents of the recycling bins. This sort of thing is why people tell you to stop your mail and such if you'll be away from home for a while.

Patterns, and deviations from those patterns, can be useful information.

In this case, they'd be able to see who was first in or last out of the lab (and therefore who could lock/unlock the door), who regularly went in the classified alcove, who had access to the safes (and with a good enough lens, they might have been able to see the combo). By watching who talked with whom and when, they could discern the chain of command. They wouldn't be able to get any information directly, but they'd know who to target to get it.

And this was apparently a real concern, if the yearly spies-are-bad-don't-be-a-spy-mmkay presentations are to be believed. According to one of them, AquVille ranked 4th in the country for foreign espionage activity. I'm not sure I believe it's that high up, but it was still an issue. We had to sit through multiple presentations and training videos on OPSEC on how to avoid being a target. Things like not wearing our lanyards after work so people wouldn't know what project we were working on, or the army base discontinuing the vehicle decals so the cars aren't marked as targets. I'm probably breaking a few rules by posting this, but all the information I have about Stonehenge or Wasteland is years out of date, so targeting me won't be useful. Sorry, spies!

We actually had a scare, not long after we moved in. Some people reported that there was a mysterious black truck always parked across from the building, that at least once, appeared to be following people home. Management sent out a cautionary email, letting us know what to look for.

Keep in mind, the lot across from ours, where the truck was supposedly parked, was still under construction, at the time. It's very possible that it was just a case of a construction worker having a particularly creepy-looking truck and taking the same route to the highway as the majority of the cubicle-dwellers in the office park. But because it was also possible that it could be someone looking to target Wasteland employees, we all had to be extra careful for a couple of weeks. I never saw the truck, myself, so I can't say which it was.

The windows were fixed by the addition of some blinds, which we were instructed to keep closed at all times.

#closed area tales #defense contractors #opsec

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Closed Area Tales, part 5: Wasteland and the New Building

Not long after I started there, Wasteland started building its own building in the AquVille's trendy new office park. Just about every decent-size company in AquVille eventually had a facility in this park, including RockeTech, Missiles-R-Us, Mainline (Sideline's parent company), Qubefarm (have I mentioned them, yet?), and several others, most of which I've interviewed with at some point. But not NotRockets, oddly enough.

As an aside, I now work for a different company in the same park, and this office park is a bit creepy, even today. It's huge, the lots are huge, and it was built right when the economy started to sink into the toilet. Not surprisingly, there weren't too many companies willing to shell out for oversize land parcels and shiny new buildings in the middle of a recession. This left many lots empty. If you drive around, you'll see a lot of empty space, with road turn-ins that go nowhere and ghost-town cul-de-sacs. Some of the lots were leased to farmers, rather than let them go empty, so there's often crops growing right next to the offices. Add in the fact that every building seems to have overestimated the amount of parking they'll need, and evenings that are prone to fog, and it looks like you're basically all alone in the world. The mysterious unidentified buzzing noise from the totally-not-an-evil-villain-compound across the street doesn't help.

They had a big to-do about the groundbreaking for the site. The state's governor even came to it and made a speech. I had a bit of a chuckle when he described the office park as a "national treasure". It's an office park! In a town where you can't swing a stick without hitting half a dozen office parks! Okay, he actually meant the stuff being done in the office park, not the park, itself, but still. There's an honest-to-goodness rocket across the street, and you're going on about an office park. Only in this state.

Management hyped the new building to the moon and back. It would be environmentally friendly! Look at all the new amenities! A cafeteria! A fitness center! An atrium! Ergonomic things all over the place! Multiple closed areas! Decent vending machines! More parking! NotRockets had had a cafeteria and fitness center, too, and that was really the only thing about them that I missed, so I was looking forward to the new place.

Eventually, moving day came, and that was when the fun started. They'd been at the current facility for several years, and as anyone who's ever moved house can testify to, stuff accumulates. I had it pretty easy. I hadn't been there long, and wasn't in the habit of keeping lots of stuff in the office, anyway. There was a bookshelf full of binders that had been left there by the office's previous occupant, and a filing cabinet I'd never even looked in. I didn't know what they were for, and neither did anyone else. I had to empty them all out and shred the contents.

The document destruction company had dropped off several shred bins (locked bins that you can put documents into but not remove them), but these filled up before noon. We dumped the overflow into some big trash bins, but these filled up, too. There was a pile literally as tall as I am of paper waiting to be shredded. They probably made a mint that day.

We all had junk to throw out, and the hallway was soon overflowing with trash. The veteran ubertechie down the hall had it the worst. The pile outside his office was nearly blocking the hallway, and was almost as tall as me. I took a look though it, just to see what the heck it all was. Floppy disks, backup tapes, Zip disks, Jaz disks (ask your parents, kids), PC cards, software boxes dating back to the mid-90's, SCSI cables, numerous other cables, both identifiable and not, various hardware of varying ages. I suspect if I dug through the pile I might have found punchcards or UNIVAC parts (ask your grandparents, kids).

By the way, moving day was on a Wednesday. We weren't going to be able to get into our new building until Monday. That meant we either had to use up vacation days or work in the conference room of some other facility. I tried the conference room, but as it wasn't connected to the network I needed, I couldn't do much. I ended up taking two vacation days. This was right before Christmas, too, and I could hardly spare them.

When Monday came, we could at least get into the building. The cafeteria wasn't open, the fitness center wasn't open, the parking lot wasn't completely paved, and not all the cubicles had power. But they at least made sure the security system was in place and working before putting the classified stuff inside, right?

Spoiler alert: No.

#closed area tales #defense contractors

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Closed Area Tales, part 4: Wasteland and the Classified Safe

Wasteland was where I first had to deal with honest-to-goodness classified stuff.

Like everything else in the industry, classified information was compartmentalized as heck and very very specific. This was partly due to the fact that safeguarding classified stuff is expensive, time-consuming and a pain in the ass. So they'd want to save the effort for places where it would actually be worth it.

Consider, as a totally made-up example, a new model of tank with a cosmic-ray antenna. The existence of the antenna, or its height would likely not be classified, at least not after the tank was deployed. It's made to be used on an open battlefield, where anyone with eyes can see it. Keeping the existence of the antenna classified would not be useful. If another country learned about the tank, nothing much would be at risk.

However, the fact that it detects cosmic rays and the range it can detect is another story. If an enemy found out this, they'd be able to figure out how to avoid detection, or counteract it. This is the kind of thing that gets classified. But, the compartmentalization also goes the other way, for lack of a better analogy. Given the above scenario, a photo of the tank would not be considered classified, but a user manual detailing the use of the antenna would. And even though only a small part of the manual contained classified information, its presence would render the entire document classified, regardless of the content of the other pages.

Another bit of background. In between NotRockets and Wasteland, I'd decided to go to grad school and get a MS. In defense (at least in AquVille), if all you have is a BS, your resume's just another one on the pile, and I figured it would help me find a job. At this point, I was still in classes. Wasteland was generally pretty cool about this. My schedule was pretty flexible and they either didn't know or didn't care that I was doing my programming homework on company computers.

So one day, I needed information from a particular document to finish a project. This document was classified, and as such, was kept in a safe. Although I had the required security clearance and need-to-know to see the doc, I didn't have access to the safe. That meant my boss had to get it out for me. It should be noted that this 40-someodd-page document only contained 2 pages of classified data, and the info I needed was on one of the unclassified pages. But, like the tank example above, those two pages rendered the entire document classified. I'd suggested only taking the pages I needed, or leaving the 2 classified ones in the safe, but that wasn't an option.

I got the info I needed and finished my task, and then it was time to return the doc to the safe. But there was a problem. My boss had gone home, and I didn't have the safe combo. Further complicating things was the fact that I had a class to get to- and an exam that period (and to complete the cliche pile, it was an open-book exam and I'd left my book at home). I had to leave, and that meant I had to get that document out of my hands.

Leaving it out and just leaving was out of the question- classified stuff must either be locked up or in someone's custody at all times. And since I couldn't split up the document, I still had those two classified pages. I had to leave and leave soon, and that meant I had to find somebody- anbody- to take this thing off my hands.

Miraculously, I found someone, about 10 minutes before class started. I made it to my exam, only a little bit late.

And frustratingly, it took another couple of years before they decided to give me the safe combo, so this scenario was repeated a few more times.

#closed area tales #defense contractors #classified data

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aqutalion · 9 years ago

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Closed Area Tales, part 3: Wasteland and the Vault

It took almost a year to find another job after getting laid off by NotRockets, but eventually I ended up getting hired by a company I've decided to call Wasteland, because that's what working there felt like- being stuck in an endless expanse of nothing, with no end in sight. It's going to have more stories than most, because I was there about twice as long as most other projects. And that was twice as long as I should have been there, at least. The project I was hired for was the other huge, long-running missile system, which I'll call Stonehenge. But first, SWAG ROUNDUP! Wasteland won't win any prizes for quantity, but they did bring the weird stuff. First, this thing:

It's a box on a lanyard. What is this supposed to be used for? Is it for ID cards? Disks? These were given out at some "safety" demo, and apparently, it's meant to be a "first aid kit". The "kit" inside consisted of some bandaids, antiseptic wipes and packets of off-brand aspirin. Maybe that's all you'd need in an office?

And then the set of jumper cables. Technically, that wasn't from Wasteland itself, but one of the insurance companies they'd contracted with for employee benefits. They had all the companies come and give a spiel about why we should pick them, and one of them held a raffle. I won a "car safety kit", the only really useful part of which was the jumper cables. Not bad, though. I needed a set. And the rest of the stuff: A baseball cap with the Stonehenge logo, a metal pin with the same, a fleece jacket, a stress ball in the shape of a brain, at least one polo shirt, still more lanyards, a really nice refillable metal pen, a hand sanitizer bottle on a clip, and a leather folder that I still use to keep resumes in.

Yes, I keep all my logo swag. It's all in a RockeTech tote bag I got during an interview there. Problem?

Although I'd had to get a security clearance to work at NotRockets, I'd never had to deal with actual classified stuff there. That changed at Wasteland, and I'll be ranting about that later. Hoo boy, will I be ranting about it.

The software we were working on wasn't classified, but the special hardware it was intended to run on was. That required our closed area to have something unusual: a vault.

Yes, a vault. Metal walls with EM-blocking insulation and a door like you'd find in a bank. My boss had to lock it up at the end of they day, since none of the rest of us had the combo. That's in addition to the closed area itself, by the way (which I still didn't have the ability to open and close on my own). The ruggedized laptops we ran our tests on were kept inside, with no connection to the outside network, or even anything in the rest of the closed area. This meant that if we wanted to install something or copy files over, we had to burn it on a CD and physically carry it in. I had to do that with some test files once- a whopping 100kb. What a waste of a CD.

"Ruggedized", by the way, basically means armor-plated. These things were meant to be used in active combat zones. They had thick metal plating and were heavy as anything.

Also, the Stonehenge logo used as a background image was an older version that looked suspiciously like a marijuana leaf. Probably not intentional, but when you're stuck by yourself in a chilly, creepily quiet room, that kind of thing seems funny.

A while after I joined, Wasteland moved to another facility, and a paper company ended up in the space we left. I still wonder what they did with that vault.

#closed area tales #defense contractors

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