In my experience and opinion, most interservice or intercommunity rivalry, part of which is that "bashing", stems from the interservice envy, which is common for militaries of any country and any time. What does allow to take this envy less seriously is the clear understanding that each military branch and community contains a lot of unhappy members and the sources of their unhappiness are as much depend on their performanse and behavior as on the pure luck. There isn't such thing as irreproachable, blameless, unstained naval community or subcommunity. Thus, before the posing the question about pros and cons of a definite community, it's better for everyone in concern to put the questions about him/her self first.
For sensitive, "feeling" people the SWO community, again in my opinion, is clearly not the best way of career, as one should be extremely rigid about the navy rules, written and unwritten, to succed there (no matter whether you understand the rationale of that rules or not), and this still doesn't warrant success. In a sense, the SWO way is better for unimagining and insensitive people, or as Royal Navy old saying tells, for a "yokel" sailors. For the SWO world, at least in Russian navy which I'm familiar with, as if the Emerson's sentence had been written: "Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended." That is the core value for an SWO career, I'm sure. Things may be totally different for nowadays USN SWO corps, but I don't think so.
Hope this helps.
