UK Government Wargame Designer Position
civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
http://professionalwargaming.co.uk/2017.html
Basically, very complex board games that are intended to simulate real-world strategic situations.
http://professionalwargaming.co.uk/17-20170906_192955.jpg
"Oh no, not THAT story again..."
This video is long, but a good introduction to Wallman's work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN71v9H_gg8 Prior to this video being released, megagames were mostly played in the UK, but now they are played all over the United States.
The photos in this article look similar to my recreational experiences playing megagames, so I'm not surprised that he is able to handle wargame design for an actual military.
> Basically, very complex board games that are intended to simulate real-world strategic situations.
Yes, and they aren't just war games. They are games involving humanitarian crisis's and what not. See the game Aftershock[0] as an example (both designers are friends of mine).
The reality is, using games to "game out scenarios" are an interesting tool, even in tech. Think about things like game days, where you take down parts of a service to see what happens. Its better to solve these problems in a "game" rather than in the real world. Think beyond war, but anything that involves challenges.
"AFTERSHOCK: A Humanitarian Crisis Game is a boardgame that explores the interagency cooperation needed to address the emergency and early recovery phase of a complex humanitarian crisis."
Some really interesting things.
He was dead set on going through with the attempted landing on the Midway Island. There were ones below him who thought it wouldn't succeed.
The wargame showed the invasion wouldn't succeed. Admiral Yamato (or his aides?) brushed aside Japanese loses and even brought back Japanese carriers that got sunk in the wargame (basically cheated) to basically force a victory for the Japanese fleet.
And of course Japanese fleet was defeated massively. US Navy got few critical lucky breaks but the Japanese wargame predicted a defeat for Japanese fleet.
Apologies.
'Executive' in this case means 'getting on actually doing the work', and 'officer' means you are responsible for a particular job.
I know in the US 'executive' means management but when you think about what the actual word means that isn't universal.
Not so when I look at Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and on and on...
The ideal candidate is probably a retired soldier.
In the UK, regular soldiers are paid much less than in the US, and have far fewer benifits and protections after they leave, so this would be a good oppertunity for someone.
Also, it's only 10% less than Atmel are offering graduate R&D engineers at their touch screen R&D facility down the road. Outside California and London, people just don't get paid very much.
> It's not a tech job
"Develop and trial new technology for wargaming as well as maintaining existing capabilities, such as combat models, computer simulations and array of manual wargames"
> they mean guys running around a field
War games it not guys running around in a field. It's the absolute opposite of that. It's simulating, instead of running around in a field.
> In the UK, regular soldiers are paid much less than in the US
No, a UK private soldier is paid $24,631, while a US private soldier $19,198. A UK major $67,171, while a US major $55,231.
https://www.army.mod.uk/documents/general/Ratesofpay-Regular...
https://www.goarmy.com/benefits/money/basic-pay-active-duty-...
You will:
- Assist in the design and development of wargames,
translating customer requirements into practicable
designs based on credible overarching scenarios and
vignettes.
They want experts in simulations, which can be computerized or not.
British Army Private £18,488 Lance Corporal £25,524, that's $24,633 and $34,007 respectively according to Bing. US Army is $19,198 and $25,066 respectively. Obviously cost of living etc is different, but British soldiers are comparatively well paid.
have far fewer benifits and protections after they leave
This is true. The way we treat our veterans is appalling. Upon leaving the Army they are basically disowned and discarded by the government (both parties) and it is up to the charity sector. Even discrimination based on veteran or reserve status is perfectly legal here[1]. One charity I actively support is https://supportourparas.org
[1] One reason the AR has no hope of reaching its target of 30k trained reservists. The TA 20 years ago managed 70k!
In the South East, they generally pay worse.
If you don't believe me, go find your job in the civil service website and remember there is no salary negotiation.
Senior civil servants make good bank though and have very nice revolving door opportunities, so it's a good career option financially if you expect to get there (i.e. elite education and very good at debates).
The final salary pensions you mention have mostly been closed to new entrants - now you just buy into a fund and cash it for an annuity like anywhere else, with like 3-5% employer matched contributions.
Existing staff often still have them but can get pushed off them during reorgs so I figure they will be completely gone in about 10 years.
Veterans are hero-worshipped by comparison. I actually feel the police deserve more respect.
(At least the British police - can't say I have the same affection for the American police, at least based on the news reports over here...).
But it really doesn't make any sense to argue that 'it's just a job'. That's simply technically wrong.
A soldier is subject to a whole additional legal system to civilians. They can go to prison if they don't do the work they're told to do. They can go to prison if they leave before their contract is us. They can be told to do something that they know will get them killed. None of these things are anything like any other job.
Except that a soldier can't even expect that (yes RAF I know but still) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11892935/RAF-...
This is partly because there's often comorbid alcohol problems, and removing alcohol services from the NHS and dumping them in public health (eg, underfunded LAs) has been catastrophic. And there's often lack of clarity about what gets treated first - the mental ill health or the alcohol misuse, so people get ping-ponged between services.
You mention PTSD: Soldiers find it hard to engage with NHS mental health services because their experiences are so far out of the mainstream.
I know that staff at 2gether NHS Foundation Trust[1] needed extra support because they were being told stuff that was so distressing they were getting sub-threshold PTSD themselves.
For these reasons the Armed Forces Covenant is a good idea. We're not yet giving veterans equal treatment to the rest of the population.
[1] who provide MH services across gloucestershire and Herefordshire
No, it isn't. People who serve in the armed forces and their families have a different lifestyle to almost anyone else. They make many sacrifices and lack many protections at work that others enjoy, for obvious reasons. They are trained in ways that profoundly affect them psychologically, because they may be forced to see or do things that in an ideal world no-one should ever have to see or do, and neither their mindset nor their experiences of those awful things just magically change back to normal when they're discharged. While serving in the forces may develop some admirable character traits and in some cases some very useful practical skills that would serve them well in other fields after they leave, that does not go for everyone, and many ex-forces personnel have great difficulty adapting back to civilian life, even if they've had a good military career.
Abandoning people almost immediately after they've been through that, as if they're just leaving behind a web site they used to run or some clients whose accounts they used to put in a spreadsheet, is somewhere near the wrong end of the inhumane/unethical scale.
Really? From what I’ve heard, the American benefits system is so messed up that literally everyone in the UK gets better benefits than anyone earning less than about $50k in the US can hope to afford even with assistance from their employer. And that’s just regarding health insurance.
But that's because the UK does not have the same culture of young men going into the Army for a few years before going to college. In the UK if you wanted to go to college you'd do that before you joined the Army, and there are bursaries for that.
Edit: also notable is the UK has a (basically free) qualification between highschool and university degree, as UK “secondary schools” finish 1 year before US highschool, and university starts 2 years after secondary school ends.
how long until accommodation becomes part of the package.
Although I realise that deciding where you draw the line for "interesting job descriptions" is very blurry.
If you're suggesting it's simply impossible to discuss notable job descriptions on their own, that would be a bit sad. Alternatively, if it's that this isn't sufficiently notable, I guess that's arguable, but I found it interesting :|
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
Don't find that UK's defence is hiring a wargames designer is curious?
If you feel that it is interesting then you're welcome to upvote the entry.
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=service.gov.uk
Which has a bunch of such submissions, always by 0 comment HN participants. It's most likely someone trying to fish the HN pool for applicants.
That it's borderline interesting is just a nice little hook to get around the rules. But feel free to undo my flag.
If it gets to be more of a problem we'll arrive at your view soon enough, and more importantly, I appreciate your watching out for the quality of HN. On that we agree fully.