If it walks like a duck, it might be a goose

Ripping the band-aid

Many may not be aware of my Internship with the government, had some good times developing security solutions and researching windows.

The work, while restricted, was good enough that it made me want to look for something there, who doesnt want to do things they love right?

It led to a different part of the government, not that different from what I expected, but worse where it mattered.

Ofcourse I cant tell you everything, theyll have to kill me if I do because of some very sound logic lmao.

Is that a duck I see?

I was recommended by someone who saw me intern, and was taken up on that offer by a person in the defence sector. Who took me in then started looking at what to do with me.

Which meant I was thrown in a corner with no team or tools.

With my age old hatred for web as a concept, I was ofcourse told to learn web! And being given time to learn is a wonderful thing, dont get me wrong, whats actually wrong is your superior asking you why you cant find things when youre literally sitting there doing the thing you hate most.

Good bad boys

First thing i was asked, was my whereabouts on the day they protested at Connaught Place, and if i had any “gen Z wale lakshan”, still dont know what that means, but the permanents worry about that a lot, such as when we take gazetted holidays.

No flake to the main guy, he did seem accomodating and nice all things considered, but most people there were consultants, and when asked about why noone worked for more than a year, id be looked at like the shoulder meme and told “आगे-आगे देखो, अभी तो शुरुआत है।”

Observations revealed what was expected, most permanent govt employees treating the consultants as replacable trash.

Employee rights? Benifits? What is that? Just dig the hole hole digger (if you know that meme, lets talk :) ). You could legally be fired the same day you joined, with no reason necessary, the government’s wet dream!

Wasnt my problem, happily found some big stuff without touching web a lot (tho कान में जूँ नहीं रेंगी, बोल-बोलकर थक गया।), which took a week for the superior to realise how big it actually was, maybe I wasnt loud enough? Ofcourse, they just threw an llm at my covert work! After telling me to practice higher secops!

Should you do what i did

Yes and No, go look at other govt industries and sectors. Find a better place to work where people arent considered heavily disposable. Ofcourse there are good people, those are everywhere, but life can be a lot better than whatever youll get at a black company adjacent place like this. If you have people working towards bios level exploits and you cant retain them, thats a you problem.

Working in a place like this, people are divided into different parts of cybersecurity and the ones considered elites (ahem, us) have the least transferrable skills when it comes to corporate.

Consider it a job like no other, literally.