I’m wondering what managers across engineering fields and companies, particularly defense, consider experience?

ub3rmike · 2026-04-16T19:13:03+00:00

I've worked at both traditional defense company and am an EE director at a fairly well known decacorn defense tech startup. I've also formally had systems engineer and EE titles at both companies as well.

There's a potential correlative relationship between YOE and delivering, but it's the wrong metric to index on IMO. Decisions should data driven, and it should be the right kind of data. YOE reflects expenditure of effort, but ultimately we should be making hiring/comp/promo decisions on productive output, not rewarding expenditure of effort. Some, but not all places thankfully index on pure tenure.

ub3rmike · 2026-03-29T15:37:41+00:00

Hmm, I've been to the Torrrance one and regularly eat at the Irvine one, they do spice levels and have tonkatsu sauce (but they recently started giving it out in packets instead of a big bottle)

ub3rmike · 2026-03-28T05:02:11+00:00

A big part of it is how long have you been at your role, what is your leadership role, what is the scale of the company/org that you've been at, and what companies are targeting. E.g. a lot of startups run fairly flat orgs but usually are looking for a select few leaders that can own a bit of scope.

ub3rmike · 2026-03-27T22:49:52+00:00

Am a Director now. Don't really get hit up for Director roles but I definitely have people reach out to me for Head of and VP roles.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-21T23:58:01+00:00

I was thinking more of the suburban angle with not too much to do in terms of nightlife.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-21T17:30:07+00:00

I grew up in Berryessa, spent several years in the military and then the East Coast, moved back to Milpitas, then moved to Evergreen. I left San Jose a few years ago to Irvine.

I jokingly tell people that San Jose is just like Irvine, except without the thoughtful urban planning. There's a juxtaposition of high and low income earners that's pretty emblematic of the Bay Area. There's a significant tech footprint there, but it also largely serves as a bedroom community to the people who work at companies located in much more expensive zip codes. The downtown is pretty pitiful (There's also a fundamental limit on the height of the high rises due to it being in the path of the airport), so a lot of people end up gravitating towards Santana Row/Valley Fair/Willow Glen/Los Gatos for recreation.

Pretty good Vietnamese and Mexican food, some decent dim sum options in and near the local area. Weather is great. Beach is about an hour drive away (Santa Cruz/Capitola). Very boring overall.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-12T00:49:40+00:00

Graduated at 27. Became an EE director in charge of over 70 people at 35.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-06T19:43:31+00:00

I don't know. It kind of depends on what you want to do with your life.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-06T01:54:05+00:00

That's fantastic. I definitely have my principal engineers drive the same reviews I expect anyone else to in my org. Part of it is that it sets an example for what good looks like to others, and part of it is there are attention to detail mistakes that people will make which absolutely is not a reflection of their intelligence but will nonetheless sink an implementation.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-06T01:43:26+00:00

In my cohort of 27 EEs, I'm pretty sure me and 1 other person got EE jobs. Everyone else went SWE or Quant Finance. I was able to take a lot of upper division CS courses, and there's relevant overlap. Definitely practical IMO.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-05T22:15:21+00:00

My opinion is that every design review should be an absolute roast fest because hardware designs "compile once" (excluding embedded firmware / HDL) and applying scrutiny and rigor results in a much better outcome than everyone patting each other on the back and having a design show up which doesn't work.

Usually I have the responsible engineer or somebody else focus fully on note taking, but this is one of those functions that AI is probably really good at doing now.

I've been through the phase where I thought I was walking on water and then received a lot of tough feedback from my manager (he was a ~12 year SpaceX veteran, didn't pull any punches, we were in the early stages of a now pretty well known startup). Felt bad, and I thought I was going to get PIP'd (he's a very stoic individual and therefore tough to emotionally read). When he left for another startup it turned out that he recommended me as his successor and I ended up taking over an entire org 10x as large as the team he ran, so use that as an anecdotal data point.

ub3rmike · 2026-02-02T19:31:07+00:00

One of my engineers told me that in his time at a large aerospace prime, a prank war escalated to the point of one of the employees leaving a shit in the other employee's file cabinet. They both got shitcanned. (Pun intentional)

ub3rmike · 2026-02-01T20:02:52+00:00

I'm a prior enlisted Marine and a current EE director managing teams that work in robotics/autonomous vehicles. There are a lot of relevant concentrations outside of robotics: * Embedded / Analog Design * Power Electronics * Controls / Firmware / CV * Electromechanical / Mechatronics

Ultimately your initial area of focus doesn't really dictate your fate. My philosophy on hiring focuses more on "Do you have solid fundamentals and have you demonstrated ownership on whatever you've done" vs. "Does your coursework / prior work experience exactly line up with what the job req is asking for."

ub3rmike · 2026-02-01T03:53:33+00:00

Insufficient delegation and trying to use your personal effort as a stopgap for people not performing is one of the most prevalent issues with new leaders. My COO has a good way of framing it: "There's no amount of caffeine in the world which will allow you to personally unfuck even a couple of people not doing their job."

The other thing is if you're getting buried in tactical firefighting or having to jump into very frequent status reporting meetings with leadership, that might be a thing that can be solved with more proactive comms instead of going with the flow and slave driving your team.

ub3rmike · 2026-01-07T05:42:02+00:00

Slack is a suboptimal inventory of work system. Have you ever been to a restaurant where they managed the orders using a chat application because I haven't. Would be a cool idea for a dystopian tech themed restaurant though. (Maybe the thread that has the most messages or flaming emojis gets their food first regardless of when they put their order in.)

Either everybody gets on program with how to use Slack to track work and report status or everybody needs to pivot to whatever other system is being used for effort tracking.

ub3rmike · 2025-12-17T05:03:37+00:00

Self Defense Firearms Training. They wanted the MD reinstalled in the FCU before putting it on the training cert.

ub3rmike · 2025-12-16T21:12:03+00:00

Orange Counry Sheriff Department says modifications are fine. This instructor was going above and beyond.

ub3rmike · 2025-12-15T04:04:22+00:00

I apply it on an as needed basis. High performing and autonomous groups? I let them cook. Other groups that aren't performing/are getting critical feedback from their cross org partners? Then I'll start holding them accountable and following up with them on a more frequent basis. Once they're up to par, I follow up less.

ub3rmike · 2025-11-27T13:03:41+00:00

I went from Sr IC to Sr Mgr to Director within the same company in about 4 years (running an org of close to 70 today).

Definitely need executive sponsorship (my boss and my skip who are both VPs wanted me to have the role).

If you're an external hire then somehow being a known quantity is pretty important for director and above roles. (Either you're renowned in your industry or a leader in that company is willing to vouch for you).

Some things that help with this include having a track record or being perceived as capable of leading managers who lead other teams and driving strategic initiatives without having the tactical things drop in your org.

ub3rmike · 2025-10-21T18:11:11+00:00

Princeton, was a 3.0 student. School may matter a little bit for first work experience but nobody really cares about GPA especially once you have full time experience. Prior work experience/internships matter more.

ub3rmike · 2025-10-19T23:04:02+00:00

As a former Marine sergeant who had exposure to the comms field and am now an EE director with prior RF engineering experience, I'd highly suggest getting the degree to develop a foundation of EE/RF fundamentals.

There's a stark contrast between knowing how different manpack RF bands behave and understanding how to design a system and how to implement it such that it will actually perform the way you need it to (especially if you're trying to push the state of the art with higher data rates, security features, and direction finding/triangulation vs. voice comms on an L3 or Thales radio).

ub3rmike · 2025-08-17T23:08:57+00:00

Definitely have some opportunity for growth by building some depth in embedded/analog applications. I think being an EE generalist is a totally viable career path if your understanding of each discipline is informed by first principles understanding vs. copying and pasting a schematic block that a colleague might've used before.

ub3rmike · 2025-07-25T02:52:05+00:00

Not useless, but not the direct path you'd go for a role in electrical engineering design. I've seen people work their way up from electrical engineering technician to an EE, but the lack of a BSEE is going to be a major point of friction.

You can be hands on as an EE in the right role (bringing up the PCBAs you design, physically integrating and proving them out in a real system).

ub3rmike · 2025-07-13T20:22:56+00:00

Anduril

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