[prostheticvamp]

He wasn’t silencing anyone. There were no black suits with billy clubs outside.

He was warning the kid that if he went around repeating that aloud he’d burn himself on the interview trail as someone too naive to tow the corporate line and likely to reveal embarrassing workplace details to outsiders.

He was doing the naive youngster a favor, before he could hurt his own career.

The use of the phrase “people like that” is pretty much always pejorative, in a story where a guy who owes the student absolutely nothing took a moment to warn him “don’t touch the stove, you’ll burn yourself”.

So it’s become a story about government contractors instead of a story about “how I fucked up my job search as a new grad.”

Thank you, random kind recruiter guy.

[jmpman]

Nah, I was smarter than that. I already had multiple offers, and had no intention of working for a government contractor. I mostly wanted to see how this recruiter would react to my flippant statement. If he had vehemently defended his company, it would have implied that the whole government contracting wasn’t quite as disfunctional as I’d experienced. His reaction basically confirmed my suspicions. It was a “don’t talk too loud about what we all know is going on”, along with a “how dare you unmask us”. Sure, it was also a “holy hell, you can’t talk to recruiters like that”.

But, no black suits with billy clubs.

And, I’m not suggesting that anything was out of norm for any of these government contractors. They’re delivering a very specialized service with immense regulations. There are very few companies which can produce the same product, so the competition is low and the feedback loop in procurement cycles is much longer.