<story><title>My years working on black programs</title><url>https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3833/1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gnat</author><text>&amp;quot;My supervisor observed that I was anxious to learn new things. He assigned me to the Discoverer project to develop system schematics, interconnection diagrams, and wire harness definition. I was working for the Electrical Systems engineer. His was a very responsible and highly visible position. And like most engineers working in this new field, he was in his early 20’s, just three years older than me. There were senior engineers in management positions, but there were no senior spacecraft engineers. Everyone was learning on the job.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Parallels to Silicon Valley are easy to find. It&amp;#x27;s a valid career path: if you want to progress fast, find a hot young area where there are no senior experts and work hard to keep up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vonmoltke</author><text>Wow, if I&amp;#x27;d had a situation like this when I was in defense I might still be there.  Instead, I had managers old enough to be my father, no upward path until I &amp;quot;put in my time&amp;quot;, and an attitude that wanting to move around within the company was &amp;quot;disloyal&amp;quot; to my current management.</text></comment>
<story><title>My years working on black programs</title><url>https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3833/1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gnat</author><text>&amp;quot;My supervisor observed that I was anxious to learn new things. He assigned me to the Discoverer project to develop system schematics, interconnection diagrams, and wire harness definition. I was working for the Electrical Systems engineer. His was a very responsible and highly visible position. And like most engineers working in this new field, he was in his early 20’s, just three years older than me. There were senior engineers in management positions, but there were no senior spacecraft engineers. Everyone was learning on the job.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Parallels to Silicon Valley are easy to find. It&amp;#x27;s a valid career path: if you want to progress fast, find a hot young area where there are no senior experts and work hard to keep up.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>walrus01</author><text>This is sort of parallel to very young network engineers and NOC staff, in like 1996, discovering for the first time what an ASN is, what BGP4 is, etc. And the commercial growth of the modern Internet.</text></comment>