Defense contractors don't pay premium wages. Rather the opposite. Many employees specifically want to work in the field in order to contribute to the national security mission.
replyI'm being a bit obtuse here to make the point, it's more complicated than that. The reality is if you create a defense startup you end up hiring defense employees which comes with its own set of issues.
replyThat said, go look at salaries right now in the defense space.
From my experience with working for defense/aerospace companies as well as civilian b2b ones in the US, the general situation is that defense/aero companies pay less but demands less of a grind. People usually take the lower pay (usually 70% of equivalent role in commercial sector) for the better culture
replyFor pure generic full-stack-whatever devs yes. For EEs, embedded, FPGA, RF, etc you can pull waaaaay more in the defense world, especially if you're willing to do cleared work.
replyBut if you need clearance to do your work, how can it be bait-and-switch? You need to hire people who are able and willing to obtain a clearance.
replyAnd have work that allows employees to keep their existing clearances active.
replyTwo different discussions, but I've had an earthy crunchy employer ask me to put in for one once.
replyWhat companies are examples of that bait and switch strategy?
replyGoogle tried to become a national security contractor, and the backlash among the engineers was very intense.
replyGoogle already does national security work.
replyhttps://cloud.google.com/distributed-cloud-air-gapped
https://www.defence.gov.au/news-events/releases/2025-12-19/d...
I’m not in the industry, but I would say Hermeus would be a perfect example. Ostensibly building a commercial airliner, but if you look closely it feels like a military oriented startup from the inside out.
replyCan't give any examples but I have definitely heard the same about a lot of aerospace startups through the grapevine. As for OP's point about private jets, Boom supersonic is your classic example.
replyI can't name names but 3 of the startups I've worked at.
replyPlaces I haven't worked:
Skydio
Applied Intuition
Saildrone
Planet Labs
Boom
Scale AI
Also worth noting that sometimes it's on purpose, sometimes the founders are all "we're gonna save the world" then AFWERX enters the chat with a big fucking check and the founders yell "Nevermind! Guess we're the baddies now! How many slaughterbots did you say?"
> * when I say time savings I mean dick measuring contest
replyAnd in this case smaller is better?