Decent Pay, Out of Touch Leadership
Pros
Pay is 90-95k for this position. I accepted 85k because I was new to networking and less skilled than I wanted to be. The imperfect nature of a DoD network gains you lots of experience really fast.
Cons
This is a contract so you will mostly work with GS (government) employees who see you working hard everyday, but the contract leadership is on the East Coast and they have no idea what we do or how stressful the job can be. Job responsibilities and skillsets are immense and cover most disciplines of networking including layer 2 / 3 switching, routing, Cisco / Juniper, wireless, VoIP, cyber / IA compliance, ticket work, project work, busy work, etc. My starting salary is higher than my mentor's salary. This shows you that you don't get what you deserve but you get what you negotiate. The contract does not care about being fair, so take care of yourself by knowing your needs, knowing your worth, and communicating these.
