I worked at a aerospace defense contractor 8 years ago and this tracks with my experience. The quality of the equipment is terrible as is the pay in comparison to jobs with similar qualifications. I understand the economics of why these jobs suck, but there's no reason to stay.
8 years ago I had to move from an area I liked to get a better job. It will be interesting to see what happens with the rise of more remote hiring.
I've been working most of the last 6 years at a rather small space company. After discussing work conditions with enough people who worked at other space companies, I'm pretty damn sure I'd never work in the space industry again after I leave here, lol.
I've heard stories about "water clubs" and "coffee clubs" because some companies are so cheap they don't even pay for bottled water machines - so the employees group together and pay for it themselves. Like WTF?! And a couple of these stories came from programmers too.
As far as I know, we get paid better, have free basics like that (there was free lunch before covid), and whenever we carry our equipment to test sites, it's usually several generations newer and better than anything else I see at those sites. It's kinda funny lol.
It's a bit of a golden handcuffs thing I suppose. The problem is even if they pay better than anyone else in the space industry, I could probably double my compensation by getting a job at google. Of course, landing an interview at google in itself seems nearly impossible.
Sometimes I wonder if having a space company on your resume is a bad mark for hiring managers at companies like google. It kinda feels that way. Like as if only the riff raff work at space companies. But there are a lot of us who just wanted to work on cool stuff lol.
The issue is that in my experience the entire aerospace/aeronautics sector is like that. As well as most industrial sectors. At least if I stay in Europe.
So changing that means doing something else than my studies and experience. And I like working on aircraft.
I don't really have complains about salaries though. I find it's pretty normal compared to other industries. It's pale in comparison to the US, but that's a matter of continent, not sector.
8 years ago I had to move from an area I liked to get a better job. It will be interesting to see what happens with the rise of more remote hiring.