The Atlantic: U.S. military personnel practices causing brain drain

Great Debates
1

In a lot of threads about the military on these forums, it has been mentioned that the U.S. military has an “up-or-out” policy for officers. That is, each successive higher rank has fewer slots and an officer who fails to get promoted when that promotion time is due has to leave the service.

In this article in The Atlantic, the authors propose that the military’s personnel practices are, in fact, forcing out the very officers that they need to keep:

I know very little about how the military works, so I’m wondering what other folks’ views are on this article and its conclusions.

2

I was a junior officer in the Navy for 5 years in the early 2000s. I left after my first tour (on a submarine) because I saw the quality of life that mid-grade and senior officers had to sacrifice in order to be good officers – to be a good Department Head (Chief Engineer, Navigator, or Weapons Officer, the next step up on a submarine after Junior Officer), one had to work about 80 hours a week (when in port, not at sea), or even 100 hours for the Engineer. Same goes for Executive Officer, the next step up. Being a Commanding Officer would be awesome – probably about 60 hrs per week or so when in port, plus all the authority and cool treatment from being in charge of the whole ship. But it didn’t seem worth it to get there.

And this all isn’t absolutely necessary, in my opinion. I get that the crew has to work really hard while at sea. At sea time isn’t the problem – work was a lot less stressful at sea, and the camaraderie was great. But in port, we’re constantly at work, and a better base infrastructure could do a lot of the maintenance and repairs that the crew does in port and give us a greater quality of life by not requiring long hours and weekends at work. I understand that this would cost money, but the current state results in about 70% of submarine junior officers (from what I remember of the statistics back then) leaving the Navy before they do a Department Head tour, including most of the best and brightest. Smarter officers might result in fewer costly mistakes made down the line. Of all the junior officers I served with (about 15-20), only 1 of the top 5 guys stayed in the Navy, and the rest that stayed were middling or at the bottom. Two in particular would have been magnificent commanding officers, but saw the shitty future that lay ahead and resigned.

This was a fast-attack submarine. Ballistic missile sub crews have quite different experiences (including much more extensive support from their bases), which I know a bit about but haven’t been through myself.

3

I have worked at companies that had similar policies to their detriment. I have alos worked at companies that had promotion opportunities into technical expert roles for those who did not move into management. These helped keep the knowledge and experience at the company and were a good thing.

From my very limited understanding of the military, the military does have these opportunities also, but really only for consultants. So the experts that don’t move up, move out and then keep working for the military but as a civilian contractor.

4

Couple of questions:

  1. Why does it have to be up and out - why not let officers stay in their position for a while (unless the idea is that that prevents underlings from getting promoted up due to no vacancies?)

  2. Hope this isn’t off topic, but is it true that ballistic-missile subs and fast-attack subs have kind of a different organizational culture, in that ballistic missile subs are more “prestigious” but also feature less career mobility, in the sense that officers don’t move up as much and everyone is more “settled” or more “longterm” into their ranks/careers in SSBNs than SSNs?

5

I’ve been in the Navy as an Officer for almost 30 years now.

Promotion opportunities are better now than they have ever been. Frankly, we are having a hard time retaining talent. I don’t see much indication that we don’t have room for quality people. Virtually all of the folks that don’t get promoted (at least in the Officer ranks), should probably be doing something else. The military is competitive, and we should want some time to thin out those that can’t lead men and women under stress. If we take away “up or out” we’ll just have a military filled with folks that can’t cut it any where else. Then we really won’t have room for quality. This isn’t a social program. I just don’t see quality folks getting push out.

Bottom line is that the military life is a hard life. If I have a nickel for every time a talk with someone who wishes they had stayed in to get a retirement, and then says that they left after 4 years I’d be a rich guy. As if that last 16 was all down hill.

6

Not really. Life as part of the crew can be pretty different between SSBNs and SSNs, but the career progression is the same. In fact, there is plenty of cross over – many officers and sailors start out on an SSN and go to an SSBN for their next sea tour, and vice versa. Some stay on the same class for their entire career, but far from all.

7

Interesting, thanks. Do they get some say or choice in their vessel type/class?

8

Another point the article makes is that the military should make room for lateral transfers from civilian to officer, currently only really done for physicians, I guess?

What about that idea, bringing in a 100-percent non-military person for his or her specific expertise at mid-officer level?

9

It seemed to me that the authors are suggesting that the current system is retaining the wrong people and failing to keep the people that should be kept. I take it you disagree?

10

As I’ve read about it, a greater problem in the up-or-out system is if it gets combined with an organizational culture that rewards zero-error performance records and checkbox-marking for progress evaluation, and that’s where you get the retention issues in some branches and career fields. As **spifflog said, line officers are supposed to be battle leaders, part of the point is that you should be able to bear stress and suboptimal conditions and do more than just one job; but at the same time, if it is allowed to become a competition of just who has a superior ability to let st slide off your back and avoid any mistakes while ticking as many checkboxes as you can hit, many otherwise competent people will say forget about that.

IIRC, up-or-out was the post WW2 response of the military to their experience *before *the war, where someone could be stuck in a middling rank for decades not getting anywhere and plugging up the back of the queue thus discouraging the newbies from staying themselves.

11

I think it would only work for professional/advanced degrees: doctor, lawyer, veterinarian (when applicable), dentist, etc. For operations on a ship, for example, very few civilians would have the discipline necessary to contribute to the crew without taking several weeks (or even months) to acclimate. Further, some of them would not be suitable at all – part of the purpose of the shittiness of officer training (Naval Academy, ROTC, and Officer Candidate School) is to eliminate those entirely unsuitable for military service.

12

Only a very little. I requested an SSN in Virginia or an SSBN in Georgia and I got an SSN in Connecticut.

13

There may have also been concern about a more permanent officer corps being in tension with civilian control of the military, similar to the concerns some people had back in the day with the very idea of having a standing army at all.

14

The bigger threat is that instead of getting innovative, creative officers who are willing to take risks (all three traits are vital in very good upper officers), you get game-players who minimize risk and check the boxes, and play the political game, while you drive out the people who could be the difference between victory and defeat in a future war, or possibly the ones who get a LOT of people killed before they get replaced, because they have no vision or ability to think outside of their narrow box of how wars are conducted.

Another way to look at it is that the military values a zero-mistake career and checking the boxes over being a good warrior and leader, even if you make some mistakes. This isn’t a great long-term plan for fighting and winning wars.

We already saw this with Franks, Sanchez and Casey in Iraq. That trio of bunglers didn’t even know what kind of war they were fighting, and it showed.

15

I’ve never been in the military. But I think this “up or out” principle is too limited. It’s essentially saying that every member of the armed forces is supposed to be working on their next promotion or they’re falling behind and will get dropped. What’s wrong with somebody being good at the job they’re doing and wanting to continue doing that?

I’m not saying the promotion chasers are wrong. But they shouldn’t be the only way of thinking. And that’s what seems to have happening in the armed forces.

16

As an outsider, this sounds like an organization that’s having problems.

17

The idea is that those who are the best at their jobs are the ones who will be promoted. Part of continuing excellence in the Armed Forces is sharing your expertise and knowledge with the constantly incoming next generation. If you’re a good flange wrangler, you shouldn’t just be wrangling those flanges, but showing the ten new guys how to, as well. If you’re a great flange wrangler, you need to be showing your good flange wranglers how to improve.

Letting a great flange wrangler sit around and do nothing but wrangle flanges isn’t going to improve your system more than forcing him to take on a leadership position, even if that means that some flanges get wrangled by less than the best.

18

I guess I don’t really agree that DoD is “failing to keep the people that should be kept.” A lot of people join the military, and after four years don’t want to stay and leave. At the other end of the spectrum, we have some amazingly smart, driven people working their entire lives in DoD. The military makes a lot of concessions to family and needs of the individual, but at the proverbial end of the day, “needs of the Service” are why we are here, and hard jobs need to be done.

I also think people use terms believing they understand what they mean, but they really don’t. I work in the very office that deals with these issues (and Secretary Carson, who is quoted in the article was my former boss here) so I’m certainly conversant in them.

One of these terms is “up or out.” People hear this, and they believe that we are just kicking out great Officers in droves who are or amazing high quality and it’s just unbelievably short sighted. Let’s look at this one example:

In one Service, an individual is an O-1 (most junior commissioned Officer) for two years, and there isn’t even a selection onboard for the O-2, it’s just “All Fully Qualified.” The selection two years later for O-3 is - surprise - “All Fully Qualified” again. At O-4, (8 years total) the selection rate is about 70%. One can retire from the military as an O-4. This means that one average, a line Officer in this Service has a 70% chance to retire from the military at 20 years. So only one selection board separates this warfare officer for retirement at 20 years. If you didn’t know this previously, does this really seem that egregious? Do you think that 70% of all the folks that walk in the door at your company’s management are sufficiently qualified that they should be promoted and still be working there in 20 years? I’d argue that “up or out” isn’t a drastic as most people think it is.

In the thirty years that I’ve been an officer, DoD has made these changes:

-Gone from “three strikes and you’re out” on most positive drug tests to one
strike,

-Took a DUI conviction from a joke to you’re most likely gone after one offense,

-Removed “unofficial restrictions” on all enlisted rates due to nationality (think Filipinos as cooks and stewards in the Navy),

-Moved from separations of gays in the military to don’t ask don’t tell to service without restriction,

-Child care on all large bases,

-Maternity leave,

-Women in virtually all warfare fields, and

-A portable retirement system.

So stating that DoD is this static organization that never changes just isn’t accurate.
Approximately 180,000 men and women leave the military each year, so finding people that got out of the military because it didn’t work for them should be that hard to find.

“Astonishingly, almost three-quarters of Americans from age 17 to 25 are disqualified from serving in uniform due to obesity, education, criminal records, or medical reasons.” OK. What does the author say we should do about that? DoD has education outreach programs. We have physical readiness outreach programs. Do we want to lower standards for education, criminal conduct and medial?

My experience is that there are some amazing Military Officers and Enlisted that make the military a 20 or 30 year career. And for some others, it just doesn’t work out. But it’s are hard life, and there are limits to how liberal we can be and still put men and women to sea for 6 months at a clip and send them to combat in Afghanistan for a year.

19

What I read was not so much that qualified, talented junior officers were being forced out via up-and-out policies, as they weren’t even bothering to continue military careers due to various sorts of institutional inertia, bureaucratic nonsense and a feeling that the promotion system tends to reward the wrong things.

Same ultimate effect, but a different root cause. And to me as a civilian, a more worrying one.

20

The other thing that the article didn’t come out and say quite so directly is that the military is in competition with civilian employers, and that while the military life is often viewed as a calling, we need more highly competent officers than what come into the service from being called to it, so there’s got to be some kind of recognition and willingness to compete on the part of the military, or many otherwise qualified people won’t join, or will join, then get out and do something else that’s more appealing and less fraught with BS- like Jost and Van Dam did in the article.