No need to kid. You're right. It's a fact. Just look at the timeline.This is when Naval Aviation began to auger in . . . .
. . . . I keed (to the OP) of course.
No need to kid. You're right. It's a fact. Just look at the timeline.This is when Naval Aviation began to auger in . . . .
. . . . I keed (to the OP) of course.
I understand why it exists, but we shouldn't be shocked that this kind of stuff pushes the needle to make people want to leave - and then they actually do. I don't even think our travel rules are all that bad, but trying to get a travel claim with the tiniest hint of something nonstandard is an exercise in futility when the person who has to approve it is a GS-4 and is laser focused on "but but but, it has to be this way!"Combine the government contracting process with necessary oversight and accountability and you often get to a mess when trying to make a DoD-wide system like DTS. Repeated abuses by military folks, up to and including Fleet CMC's and even Combatant Commanders, and trying to ensure they are not repeated doesn't really help things.
Here’s a thought, punish the offenders, and don’t treat everything as a systemic issue, e.g. “You all have to wear diapers, because airman Timmy pooped in his pants.”Combine the government contracting process with necessary oversight and accountability and you often get to a mess when trying to make a DoD-wide system like DTS. Repeated abuses by military folks, up to and including Fleet CMC's and even Combatant Commanders, and trying to ensure they are not repeated doesn't really help things.
Here’s a thought, punish the offenders, and don’t treat everything as a systemic issue, e.g. “You all have to wear diapers, because airman Timmy pooped in his pants.”
Just because a system can be abused doesn’t mean it is broken. Expect integrity from your people, and you’re likely to get it from most of them. The ones who don’t get with the program were likely going to be a problem either way. Make a system of perpetually added rules, and you encourage administrative abuse of members by bureaucrats (you know who you are… jerks), a culture of workarounds, and frustration.
This hits a lot of the high points. One of the most injurious things the Navy ever did was invest in Lemoore. That place is an absolute shit-hole and the carrier break doesn't make it any better. The impact on family life is huge, too. Granted this is coming from someone who was never stationed there, but my brief sojourn left a big impact.
I think the golden path plays a big role. I was never one who bemoaned the fact that you had to leave the cockpit. I actually think that's good and flying does get boring after a while. But more flexibility to pick and choose duty stations/jobs would hugely improve QOL. It would also aid with spouse employment/career which is a big thing for a lot of people (myself included). This is a pretty monumental change and involves a pretty big magic wand, but it's also an issue the Navy should try to address.
You get to taste more freedom and flexibility in the reserves and its a hard drug to quit. I would have been happy to stay on active duty if I had more of that, but I had zero faith that the Navy wasn't going to try to fuck me and send me somewhere I didn't want to go with zero consideration for my wife/family life or my career ambitions; I was pretty lucky during my ten years and got more or less what I wanted, but the clock was running out. It's the military, and I get the sacrifices that entails. But the military is also an employer in a competitive labor market.
In my first fleet squadron, the previous training officer's bullet was "Develop comprehensive currency training syllabus and processes". My bullet was "Greatly streamlined administrative processes for currency training."
I agree. But sometimes they highlight holes in the system and someone, somewhere decides to 'fix the glitch'.
No need to kid. You're right. It's a fact. Just look at the timeline.
1. The contracts and how they are written and incentivized. As an organization, we really only care about cost so we write the contract to test for and reward reductions in costs. The DoD has zero idea on how to classify, measure, and reward value. It's why our attempts at Agile and DevSecOps have had such mediocre outcomes.I didn't mean to suggest government civilians. I am talking about actual corporations.
For what it's worth, my dad works for a company that does both contracting for the government but also many other private companies. He knows and sees the pain of the stupid "fall protection" and other GMTs he has to do at the government contracted vendors - sometimes even the same company, same course, different site that don't count (i.e. Raytheon Massachusetts doesn't recognize the Raytheon Buffalo's courses) - but guess what? He has an issued laptop, an issued iphone (not a nice one, but a dedicated phone line), and the VPN somehow works 99.9% of the time. He also submits a travel claim that's no-nonsense and paid to his bank account 3 days after he submits it. When he travels, his company, like the Navy, requires him to take the cheapest flights, but it isn't hard for him to justify "landing at 11 PM sucks and then I have to drive home, so if you pony up $48 more I can get home at a reasonable time," and his company will spring for it.
How is it the Navy can't do literally anything I just put in italics? Before you tell me "OPSEC," I can confidently say my dad's work needs more OPSEC from China or competitors than 99% of what we deal with on the UNCLASS side - literally designs of chips that go into satellites, NVD's, Playstations, etc. Knowing we won't change it, the Navy shouldn't be surprised to learn they bleed talent the more and more they put training and administrative requirements on Sailors and away from Admin without improving those same Sailors' access to computers or a reliable network. Know what sucks? When Chief tells a division "liberty is secured until we all complete the GMT on the computer," and there's 2 computers for the shop. Of course people are leaving - and it's hard to quantify the death by 1,000 cuts - but this is one of those 1,000 that gets repeated fleet wide many times a year.
Exactly this. DTS, NMCI, and systems like them are largely dictated by the contract (Which is very, very old now) and those contracts are often not written with the end user in mind. They're written at a level that allows the government to control overall costs and schedules IAW the Nunn-McCurdy Act. See my comments above about how the government has no idea how to quantify, measure, or reward value. A lot of it comes back to the fact that we lack a profit motive.Combine the government contracting process with necessary oversight and accountability and you often get to a mess when trying to make a DoD-wide system like DTS. Repeated abuses by military folks, up to and including Fleet CMC's and even Combatant Commanders, and trying to ensure they are not repeated doesn't really help things.
Spousal employment is a big deal. The Navy is paying a bit of attention, but it becomes more difficult with white collar work (aka career, not jobs). Not a lot of lawyer/tech/whatever jobs in Lemoore or Fallon.It's perverse in how we celebrate it, how we wear it like a badge of honor. "My wife is better than yours because my career treated her life like shit."
So my controversial opinion is that DTS isn't that bad, at least within the constellation of enterprise software the Navy uses. Yes I'm sure the update process is fucked and that the lowest bidder maintains it (the fact that I can pick Midwest Airlines and ATA as options for frequent flyer numbers indicates a bit of age). But the biggest issue with that platform is incompetent unit-level admin who don't understand the JTR and presumably orgasm every time they hit "deny." This is followed very closely by arcane rules like the need to use your GTCC (corporate welfare if ever I've seen it), that your flight isn't ticketed until 72 hours prior to departure which can lead to fuckery if there are issues with aforementioned GTCC, and that for some reason SATO is thrown into the mix and there is no self-service function....DoD-wide system like DTS....
Sounds like a company looking for good help (not OnlyFans) knows where to open an office.Not a lot of lawyer/tech/whatever jobs in Lemoore or Fallon.
Spousal employment is a big deal. The Navy is paying a bit of attention, but it becomes more difficult with white collar work (aka career, not jobs). Not a lot of lawyer/tech/whatever jobs in Lemoore or Fallon.
I would assume this is getting easier with the move in the corporate world to remote work. I have quite a few friends whose spouses have been able to maintain employment and career progression by taking advantage of remote opportunities. The only thing that seems to screw it up is how intrusive and inefficient the PCS process is because they are without the infrastructure and home office environment to be able to telework during the actual move.Spousal employment is a big deal. The Navy is paying a bit of attention, but it becomes more difficult with white collar work (aka career, not jobs). Not a lot of lawyer/tech/whatever jobs in Lemoore or Fallon.
Another issue is that the JTR rules aren't programmed into DTS properly. I've had quite a few issues where I needed to travel under certain programs or lines of accounting that leveraged special case rules within the JTR and it was a huge problem trying to get it squared away. Each time the command's DTS admin had to go in and manually override everything. I miss the days where my PS or admin department would just set everything up and hand me my ticket and TAD orders.So my controversial opinion is that DTS isn't that bad, at least within the constellation of enterprise software the Navy uses. Yes I'm sure the update process is fucked and that the lowest bidder maintains it (the fact that I can pick Midwest Airlines and ATA as options for frequent flyer numbers indicates a bit of age). But the biggest issue with that platform is incompetent unit-level admin who don't understand the JTR and presumably orgasm every time they hit "deny." This is followed very closely by arcane rules like the need to use your GTCC (corporate welfare if ever I've seen it), that your flight isn't ticketed until 72 hours prior to departure which can lead to fuckery if there are issues with aforementioned GTCC, and that for some reason SATO is thrown into the mix and there is no self-service function.
I think the promise of remote work is oversold and a lot of companies are expecting more of a hybrid work environment (that has certainly been my experience in the non airline pilot job market). There are definitely remote jobs out there, but they tend to be either pure tech (coding) or they are more rote (Medicare coding).I would assume this is getting easier with the move in the corporate world to remote work. I have quite a few friends whose spouses have been able to maintain employment and career progression by taking advantage of remote opportunities.
Hard for me to express how infuriating and unsurprising that is.Not a joke- My wife, and a good buddy's wife, both had to attended a spouses orientation when we were Lts at MATSG-21. My wife has her BFA in, and is an Equity Stage Manager (union recognized, not easy to do). Buddy's wife is a Lawyer, but not a member of the Bar in Florida.
They had to sit through a spouse's job presentation in which they were told they could be a dog walker, work in child care, or work at the Exchange.
Another buddy's wife is a chemical engineer. Similar story.
None of us are on AD anymore. I'm the only one in still in the military.
So I spent a tour with the AF and worked a ton with the AF throughout my time on active and the reserves. The AF absolutely does admin better than the Navy and does a lot of things really well. That said, they too are hemorrhaging people. That tells me that the grass is perhaps not as green as many would make it out to be. I think they have serious cultural issues that are causing that.The AF will consistently go out of their way to take care of their people.