I work for a government contractor that does quite a number of things for a diverse set of agencies. You would be amazed at the mental gymnastics people go through to convince themselves you are some sort of child-eating monster. 80% of the time they have absolutely no idea what my company does nor what working for the military is actually like.

“Where do you work?”

“Oh at $COMPANY.”

“I hear they work in missile defense technology, you should be ashamed. Gaza Israel blah blah blah”

“Oh, well sorry you feel that way.”

“So how many innocent children you bombed this week?”

“Actually zero, I spent the week writing Ansible and bash scripts. Then I went to a presentation about a team trying to stop $COUNTRY from hacking into the electric grid and shutting down power to hospitals. Then I read a report about improving 911 tech backends and other emergency services. Then I had lunch with my friend, who works in forensics catching sex traffickers, and he told me some crazy stories.”

“Wow I didn’t know you guys did all that stuff at $COMPANY…”

“Sounds about right…”