All I can say is that he knew it was a bad deal and he nonetheless took it.
One aspect was that he was having trouble finding interesting projects to work on. The JDAM precursor where he teamed with a major aerospace firm was I think lost due to politics. Simple GPS systems were a step or three down from that but were nonetheless more interesting than the other work he had been able to find for some years previous to that (losing the JDAM precursor contract was a last straw sort of thing).
One aspect was that he was having trouble finding interesting projects to work on. The JDAM precursor where he teamed with a major aerospace firm was I think lost due to politics. Simple GPS systems were a step or three down from that but were nonetheless more interesting than the other work he had been able to find for some years previous to that (losing the JDAM precursor contract was a last straw sort of thing).