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I am a defense contractor; I've worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, etc. since about 2004.

1) $200k is pretty weak, even for today (it's gone downhill overall). If you can get a secret (basically, us citizen and not a felon), and have decent tech skills, you should be at $200-350k.

2) It's not tax free. The FIRST ~$85k is tax-exempt, which saves you about 18k. You then pay taxes at the normal 27-36% rates above that. My win s that I don't have an apartment back in the US, so my only expenses while here are car payment, storage, and server colo.

3) Big difference in quality of life throughout the country -- if you're on base at Balad or Victory it's basically like living in a small town in the US. If you're out in a Bn or smaller unit on an iraqi army base, or out in the city, it's a lot different. I've done a variety.

4) If you've never been in the military or had contact with it, I'd do it for a year just for the experience -- it's actually something I think everyone should do for a couple years.

The biggest downsides for me:

1) I gained about 20 pounds last year in Afghanistan living on Bagram, due to the shitty but high-calorie carb-laden food.

2) Generally, working for government is the anti-startup. You are specifically instructed not to take any initiative, everything is more concerned about process than results, etc. Actual combat is different, but there is no real combat in Iraq or Kuwait now, and in Afghanistan it is unlikely a contractor involved in direct combat support would be posting like this on hackernews. (If I could get a job where I got to put bullets into bad guys 12-24h/day, I'd do it for $20k/yr, but aside from joining a government agency or the military, it would be difficult to find a contractor in 2010 who does this ... blackwater/triple canopy/etc. etc back in 2003-2005 were about the only ones)

3) There is no firm end date. I did this for 6 months just to see what it would be like, and have wasted about 4 of the past 5 years in the sandbox. I'm planning to leave in a few months to work on a startup of my own in the USA again (maybe YC 2010 Summer!), using some of my experiences from here, but it's totally possible to keep doing this indefinitely.

4) The war is definitely winding down, so pay, upward mobility, etc. continue to decrease

5) People in the defense industry are NOT like startup people -- there are huge amounts of fraud, backstabbing, incompetence, etc. Startup deals for $50m can be done on a handshake; here you need lawyers, contracts, audits, etc. or you will get fucked.

1 comments

Upvoted for the information, but your fantasy of "putting bullets into bad guys" while working for the U.S. army is pretty sickening. Outside of military, nationalist propaganda, you are most likely fighting someone who is defending his home country against invasion and occupation. The 'good guys, bad guys' thing is a little uneducated. Sorry for the interlude.

I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground.

For the invaders, it's mostly their choice to be out there on the ground ... for the defenders, it's not ... so maybe people in the army should understand if the natives are a little pissed off. After all, those bombs they've sent probably killed a lot of innocent people.

I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground.

"I imagine your perspective changes a lot if you're out there on the ground."

Very true, when your country is invaded and your friends and family shot/raped/jailed/killed by the invader's mercenaries, your perspective probably changes very fast!

Anyone getting in actual combat will experience perspective change no matter which side he is on I guess.

It is a bit harder for the rest of the world to sympathize with the invaders than with people defending their own homes and country. Just imagine your country invaded by a self righteous army trying to "uplift" you. I actually like the Unites States a lot, have lived there and so on, but if the USA were to invade my country you can be sure I'd fight back too. Americans would, if they were invaded instead of being the invaders.

We aren't there to "uplift" them. We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.

If America was taken over by a group that violated human rights like the Taliban, that was refused to even be recognized as the legitimate government by the overwhelming majority of nations in the world, and was the subject of binding UN sanctions, yes I would sympathize with the invaders. But that's just me.

> We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan.

These people, including Al-Qaeda, where receiving funds from the US (with the help of Pakistan no doubt) to support their struggle against the soviets.

The Taliban's origins are in Afghanistan, which was later abandoned ... which is regrettable, since the aid it needed for building schools and hospitals was a only a fraction of the money already spent in warfare by the US.

I guess this is what you get when you're having the God syndrome. If you're going to interfere with other people's business, at least do it right.

" We're there to stop safe havens for terrorist groups from being set up by the Taliban, a group that was formed in and supported by Pakistan."

I was talking about Iraq, not Afghanistan. The topic is about hackers going to Iraq. Nice trick of deflection.

Why are you in Iraq again? Persuading the American public that the invasion of Iraq was a response to 9/11 is the greatest con game in history.

As as to the Taliban, they are holed up in Pakistan (and Somalia, and Yemen) these days . Will you be invading those countries too?

My country has been invaded by a self-righteoius army trying to "uplift" me. I call them Christians, and I consider them the real enemy in this country.

There is a pretty wide gap between the actual bad guys who must be killed (Al Qaeda, other transnational terrorist groups, and the hard core of the insurgencies in many countries..the people who go around blowing up schools, chopping off hands of those who vote, etc.), and the majority of the enemy (who are purely mercenary foot soldiers, or common/pretty criminals, or some kind of tribal/ethnic group).

The ideal outcome is to separate the really bad guys and let tier-1 US units go after them (kill or capture; with kill being the most common outcome), while using politics and economics to reduce the number of the second category, convert them into either peaceful civilians or members of the security establishment in the country, etc.

Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and the other leaders: kill or capture Top-level baathists: prosecute using local courts Iraqi soldiers, local tribal militias, etc.: Bring them into the IP/IA/etc.

That's been the (successful) strategy since ~2006.

(I was actually AGAINST the Iraq war, because it was a distraction from going after Al Qaeda globally)