[theamk]

I worked at one place that could do either small business military contracts or products.. and the management always preferred real products over military contracts.

The reason is simple: for product, the success is potentially great - you work hard, make a great product, everyone loves it, so you have tons of customers and money. And by working smarter, you can deliver faster and better products, so there is a great incentive for quality work (and engineers love this!).

And that military contract is "cost + fixed fee", which means no matter how great you are, you are going to get the same amount of money. And it's not like you can get more customers - that "technical support" part does not really scale well. And if an engineer has a great insight and make implementation much simpler.. this just means project ends earlier and company get less money.

[tilwidnk]

Yep, I agree with all of that. Half of a billion dollars though, one contract, one bidder, that was only one of several awarded that day with many awarded every day of the year (with various amounts/bids), just saying, so many contracts and one with one bidder worth that much, wow.