Well for one thing, rates don't really describe your job or what you do in a lot of cases any more. A YN on a sub has a very different set of responsibilities than a YN on a surface ship; I didn't know that until the SUBLANT CMC described it. For that matter, neither did the 10+ other master chiefs in the room. He also described the headaches merging/splitting rates has caused in the sub community.
A SEAL Corpsman does a completely different job than an IDC on a destroyer, FMF Doc, or a pharmacist's mate at a shore station, yet they're all HMs. PRs and AMEs wind up doing exactly the same job and qualified to do the same things in the rigger shop but being one rate instead of another limits their promotion prospects. There are a lot of specializations that are valuable and expensive to train, but in the end they're getting lost in the rate-grade pool - "an AO2 is an AO2". Witness also the fiasco of merging and now un-merging the Aircrew rates. The list goes on.
Point is, the rates system had the virtue of tradition - which definitely ain't nothing - but trying to bend it into something usable with a modern HR system was getting to be way more trouble than it was worth. It's just got to the point where the badge under your crow doesn't describe what you do or what you've been trained to do any longer. Unfortunately SECNAV's office led with the "take '-man' out of everything" thing and that's all anybody heard. Ditching the system altogether and putting the emphasis on subspecialties is sensible.
Of course, this is the Navy, and we've never yet found a sensible idea we couldn't completely fuck up in execution.
A SEAL Corpsman does a completely different job than an IDC on a destroyer, FMF Doc, or a pharmacist's mate at a shore station, yet they're all HMs. PRs and AMEs wind up doing exactly the same job and qualified to do the same things in the rigger shop but being one rate instead of another limits their promotion prospects. There are a lot of specializations that are valuable and expensive to train, but in the end they're getting lost in the rate-grade pool - "an AO2 is an AO2". Witness also the fiasco of merging and now un-merging the Aircrew rates. The list goes on.
Point is, the rates system had the virtue of tradition - which definitely ain't nothing - but trying to bend it into something usable with a modern HR system was getting to be way more trouble than it was worth. It's just got to the point where the badge under your crow doesn't describe what you do or what you've been trained to do any longer. Unfortunately SECNAV's office led with the "take '-man' out of everything" thing and that's all anybody heard. Ditching the system altogether and putting the emphasis on subspecialties is sensible.
Of course, this is the Navy, and we've never yet found a sensible idea we couldn't completely fuck up in execution.