I'd venture to say that aren't any significant federal government contractors that don't employ former federal workers. Like it or no this is the norm and it isn't all the revolving door. Selling to the federal government is significantly different than selling to other customers.
"Except for Eldakdoky, all the AWS hires named in this article either declined to comment or didn’t respond to inquiries."<p>I'll check Hazem Eldakdoky's profile in 6 months but I'll be shocked if they're still at AWS after making a statement to the press.
Not that any of this is incorrect, but there are two important bits of context to add here:<p>-Not all DoD hires are for the purpose of lobbying. A lot of the time it’s just because they already have the TS/SCI clearance which is necessary for working on servers in the government-only datacenters, and hiring people who have it already is a lot easier than getting a new hire and waiting the multiple years to get clearance (seriously: it’s a pain in the ass, especially when you consider that you have to pass drug tests including THC, which is an increasingly rare thing to find among developer-types)
- Amazon’s competition in this space is mainly Microsoft, who does the exact same thing. Indeed, part of the reason Amazon lost the JEDI contract is probably because Microsoft had been playing the ‘hire former Pentagon suits’ game for much longer.
They are hiring people with security clearances to work on the Govt. cloud. Unsurprisingly, many people who have a DoD security clearance work for the DoD, it's not a huge community.
A friend that does inspection work at factories, told me over beers once, that many executives are former military. West Point graduates and the sort. I took it as some sort government control of industry collusion. But who knows.
One thing to consider is that a federal security clearance is expensive. It makes a huge amount of sense to hire people who already have a clearance paid for by a federal employer. That saves $50-$80 thousand per headcount. A high quantity headcount of clearance holders also bolsters a contractor’s position in contract negotiation.<p>Every defense contractor does this. It’s stupid not to. My current employer isn’t even a defense contractor (as far as I know) and still hires thousands and thousands of veterans.
This is exactly what I'd do if I wanted to expand my cloud defense revenue. Amazon clearly stated that's a major goal of theirs, they are in hot competition with Microsoft, and Oracle/IBM want in too (both those company have long and deep relationships with defense). Google, obviously, showed itself out the door with its public statements about Maven.
Not uncommon. I know of companies in the transportation industry that contract through the DoD and hire ex-DoD people specifically for the DoD contracts. They know how to speak the language and get deals done.<p>Edit: To clarify, most of these contracts, you have to bid for. But if you don't know how to speak DoD, you're going to have a much harder time.
Change the headline to the original:
The secret behind Amazon's domination in cloud computing<p>The current one doesn't really convey what the article is about
This would make sense. Unlike Google where a woke employee might start gas-lighting coworker if they worked for DoD or berating Google if it tries to work with DoD. Amazon seems to have better handle on situation.
"In FY 2019 there was a 4.2% increase in the number of security clearances, for a total number of 4.2 million individuals with eligibility to access classified information."[0]<p>This "they need people with clearences" talk is laughable. This is purely lobbying which every government contractor does. They also scooped up 4 former state CIOs. They are playing the game and quite well. This does need to be cleaned up. A company recently won a $500 million DOD contract and months later the women on the government side is now the company CEO.<p>[0] <a href="https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/02/09/how-many-people-have-a-security-clearance/" rel="nofollow">https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/02/09/how-many-people-ha...</a>