assuming your friend is doing gov contractor work, it's certainly not out of the ordinary...
i can't tell you how enlightening this Reddit thread was fo my own insights...
Man I could make a long *** post on this from my history which is entirely contract work through the Department of Defense, with the FAA now though.
Telos is king of this, getting contracts, detailed S.O.W, requires 10 men, contract starts, ain't **** to do. Has its pros and its cons. Sounds like dude there is just surprised, must have worked an m.o.s (was he Army?) where he wasn't around a lot of contractors and civilians to know to expect that.
Has its pros and its cons but I'm grown with a family and **** to do outside of work, so all pro to me.
We were stationed in a building with the 552nd Air Control Wing, at the time I got hired there was 3 of us stationed downstairs with them there for the contract. A Sr Sys Admin, JR IT Customer Service Rep, and 2 Network Admins which trimmed to 1 eventually so we had 1 desks and there was a big conference table next to it. Since that math doesn't add up, we'd just sit around the conference table and be twiddling our thumbs, on our cell phones, etc all the time. Well, there's no greater rivalry than Soldiers/Air men/etc. in uniforms vs Civilians esp Contractors so long story short, they'd always complain about us appearing unbusy, etc. and yes I agree the biggest problem was just being so out in the open like that as plenty of Civilians and Airmen in the building didnt do **** all day but had their own offices. Got to the point where our PM would literally just send us home early every day. Would never just say go home, had a code which was "go update the servers in building 3001" or something like that, sometimes he'd get really into character and yell at us about it. But us being out of sight, out of mind was better since they were such *****es and always complaining.
Only potential downside and maybe this matters most early in your career if job did almost nothing for my resume. When I go over it with recruiters I even tell them and most understand how contracts work so they dont hold it against me. I say almost because we did eventually all get repurposed into working behind the SKIF window handing out flyaway kits and reimaging tapes that came off the jets, which are COMSEC and dealing with COMSEC while now more logistics, is value in itself. You could get a whole career just from that. But being behind that window was big trash
TLDR:
Telos got all the I dont have nothing to do contract jobs
Have to learn to look busy though or the clients might complain or just leave
Don't feel a bit self conscious about it as much as you're getting paid for DOING the job you're getting paid for your skillset that you have the ABILITY TO DO or option to do the job when it's needed. They don't pay Doctors a la carte per procedure
I had a PM on a different contract who was P.M for 2 different companies who were operating on the same contract too. And he was retired Air men. His daughter was Ms Puerto Rican USA or something like that and used to date Nick Cannon and got curved for being virtuous, shes in some Disney stuff as a voice actor and a live performer. Ear elephant I know, but yea the conflict of interest angle, I'd say it's OK since it's an I.T contract and at this point just a Prime and a Sub situation where both companies are doing the same thing. As long as he wasn't part of the decision making to pick the SUB and picked a company he was also employed by but it sounded to me like NCI picked the sub and when that company got the contract he applied for PM on the contract and got that job too. Get your money Afro- Latina man. I ain't even mad.