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Mobilizations, when did you tell your employer?
- Thread starter ABMD
- Start date
vxc961
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Funeral honors don’t count against your max (130) point allowance, although you still can‘t get more than two points per day. I had a couple 150pt years in my “prime”, if you can call it that.
ABMD
Bullets don't fly without Supply
In my unit we have Teams, GroupMe, WICKR and then theres always texting. I guess I'm too available. Talk about overkill.
Nope... Not at all.. Accessibility and flexibility are the two key traits I have found that lead to success in the Reserve. There are others, but these two pay off in spades.
The pension is a big plus too, especially when most of the aviators I know were at or a little more than halfway there when they joined the reserves and the next 10 years goes a lot faster than the first. Most guys in my unit are looking at $3000 or more in pension a month starting at 55-59 years old for a total close to $1 million if you live as long as average, not too shabby.
I never found the admin part of the reserves to be too burdensome, even when I had to double tap quite a bit of training every year (GS and Reserve versions of the same GMT, double the fun!). Even with my last SELRES Skipper who was wound real tight with admin BS the reserve stuff didn't add that big a burden to my life with a family and real job. I've heard a lot of folks complain about all the admin and other BS but frankly the bark is worse than the bite for many, when it comes down to it that part of the reserves has always been very maneagable for me and most of my contemporaries.
As mentioned by several others, the intangibles are also a big part of sticking with the reserves. I was in a unit that was as close to a squadron as you could get without hardware for a long while and it was a pretty good time on DWE's and AT's.
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Where are these jobs you guys are finding that have security? Every job I've had in the private sector has had some degree of eat or be eaten, justify your existence before you face layoffs, etc.
The truth is somewhere in the middle. Not every civ job is guaranteed, but they’re also not all “eat or be eaten” as you describe. Choose your rate, choose your fate. My company refused to lay off anyone in the 2008 recession and refused to lay anyone off during COVID.
Hiring freeze, sure, but no layoffs by direction of the C-suite.
Hence my question as to how to square career risk with the reserves.
I'm a govie and not a reservist so you can say I'm pretty career risk averse.
I took six month ADSW orders in 2019 when I had already been applying and interviewing elsewhere because my company wasn't promoting and the new CTO decided to make his mark through expense/payroll reduction. Taking those orders gave me more time to get an offer which I transitioned to when I came off of orders whilst having USERRA protection to return to my old role if I hadn't found something else.
SELRES_AMDO
Well-Known Member
The admin side is not that bad.
For the most part, the loudest complainers are the types who don't keep track of their own things and get surprised when the NOSC doesn't approve their orders. Stay on top of your stuff and you should be fine. An extra phone call here or there to the NOSC is not the end of the world. And like someone else said, 30K-40K per year at 56-60 plus Tricare makes a big difference.
For the most part, the loudest complainers are the types who don't keep track of their own things and get surprised when the NOSC doesn't approve their orders. Stay on top of your stuff and you should be fine. An extra phone call here or there to the NOSC is not the end of the world. And like someone else said, 30K-40K per year at 56-60 plus Tricare makes a big difference.
Nice. I was asking about the other side of the coin (career is going well, pending promotion, then MOB!)
If you haven’t MOBed yet, especially if you still have a TS, you will MOB. If you join the reserves not understanding that, you’re going to have a bad time.
After that, if you’ve MOBed once and are out of dwell, you could MOB again. But they first will exhaust all other qualified bodies for that job who haven’t MOBed ever.
If you’re bucking for flag/O-6, it always helps to have a MOB in each rank, but now we’re back to the whole “balancing your $25,000 a year part-time job with your actual career” thing. Some people really want to be a Navy Captain or wear stars that badly. Others are happy as an O-4, O-5, or maybe O-6 while focusing on their civ career.