They want you to have a degree so they can charge more, but that's about it. You can easily work on the same project doing the same things for 20 years; I worked with people who did.
The reality is that they bill your time to the government a certain way based on your qualifications, and the contract specifies what qualifications you're expected to have. If you grow or change in some way the contract doesn't capture, they can't give you a raise without losing money (since the contract pays them the same).
So classically you have to switch to another job - within the same company, or at another, to advance.
Compounding this is the nature of classified work (which most DoD contracts are). You're in a windowless lab, and you can't really say what you do, or even, often, who you do it for. You get 0 visibility outside your immediate team.
There are exceptions and some ways to get around these realities, but you're really fighting against a system that strongly prefers things remain static.
Also, that company would compensate you to get a master's degree.
Google provides partial tuition reimbursement: https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-provide-100-tuition-reimbu...
Here are some:
- Accenture
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- Deloitte
- Department of Defense
- Lockheed Martin
- Northrop Grumman
- Raytheon
It’s not just consulting companies and the defense industrial complex, these are just the only companies I have exposure to that offer managed career paths.
A drawback is that in those organizations, the pay is often low. Except the consulting companies, which just expect lots of hours. Either way, there are trade-offs involved.
I haven’t seen a serious investment in education from Bay Area companies, probably because attrition is higher and it’s not seen as a safe investment.