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Comment by killjoywashere | Hacker News Reader

As a Navy physician who has dealt with COVID and fatigue, I think the chronic low pay contributes to a lack of people which leads to overwork, exhaustion, a sort of "this is my lot in life" acceptance of mild to moderate depression. And you get to the point you just look away for your own sanity. Healthcare workers get paid less as you get closer to the coasts. And military gets only very modest pay adjustments for housing costs. A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.

Edit: I also agree with the posts about outsourcing leading to ossification and rigid stratification. You want rigid stratification? Try military medicine.

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The Navy pays officers very generously across all fields, EXCEPT medicine and JAG. URL JOs will take a pay cut for the first several years (at least) after leaving for the civilian sector. I never, ever heard a URL peer get out because of financial reasons.

FWIW, BAH (pay for housing that is tax-free) is $4000 for an O-6 in Point Loma v. $2777 in Offut, NE. Seems to be aggressive adjustment, no?

Enlisted pay might be another story…

EDIT: I know one guy who griped about pay once…kind of in passing. Went on to be a YC founder haha.

For Medical and JAG, are VA benefits (ie paid long-term care) worth the loss in income over the longer term?

You will never know. That is the great thing about “benefits”, the recipient has no control or knowledge.

The employer, or politicians, 5, 10, 20 years from now can cut funding and reduce access from MDs to NP/PA, or only cover certain meds, or require excessive prior authorizations to dissuade using the healthcare.

Exactly this. The VA already is hiring as many midlevels (NP/PA) as possible so that they don't have to hire MDs. You wouldn't believe how low the bar is to become an NP. PAs receive substantially better training, but at the end of the day they are still midlevels.

Worse still, many NP programs are now giving out "doctorates" of nursing practice so that NPs can introduce themselves to the patient as "Dr." Smith.

In short, the VA is willing to gamble with your life if it means saving a few bucks. It's pretty harrowing.

Is there any evidence that care by midlevels produces worse outcomes for routine cases?

Plenty. Here is perhaps the most recent: https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/...

But of course, nobody cares. The rich will get MDs and the poor will get midlevels.

You can't just look at enlisted pay broadly. You have to look at the troops that earn BAH and those who don't. Both are underpaid, but those who don't get BAH are inundated in very poor base services and are usually on the clock 24/7: https://veteran.com/2022-military-pay-charts/

Another point that I haven't seen brought up here is that usually the people who paint ships are school washouts. They couldn't get through school and have no classification, so this is what they do. I wasn't in the Navy but this is always what I heard.

Good point RE: sailors in barracks, who don’t receive BAH.

I was a submariner, so I’m not certain who ends up chipping paint on surface ships. Submarines don’t get the people who washed out of schools.

>JAG

>URL JOs

>BAH

if only i knew what any of those words mean. Why haven't people learned to describe their abbreviation unless they already pre-established that the audience will definitely know them?

Quick googling reveals JAG = Judge Advocate General aka a military lawyer

If you have seen JAG or NCIS (tv shows), you probably know some of these and with NCIS being a top (broadcast) show for a few years, it is quite likely a lot of (dare I say older) people have heard of these

I was Navy for 5 years and a navy contractor for 10 and I’ve never seen URL in my life. (Besides, you know, the web meaning)

Only ~30% of people on HN are from the US and I'd assume that the number of non-US people who watched NCIS in the original language are comparatively low.

> Only ~30% of people on HN are from the US

Does anyone have time to cite a source for this? I was thinking this number was a lot higher.

Sure! There are no definitive numbers, but we have a few data points:

Dang mentions quite often that HN has a very international readership, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23363430 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27052434

An old poll with 32% US (probably the number I remembered): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13819771

There's also a recent poll w/ 47% (2346 of 4891), although this might be timing related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378

> An old poll with 32% US

> There's also a recent poll w/ 47%

Clearly you need one more poll to decide this, as per XKCD 927.

People dont own TVs anymore?

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Line_Officer basically any officer that isn't a specialist. Doctors and lawyers have artificially high ranks compared to non specialists, but you wouldn't expect them to command a ship.

> but you wouldn't expect them to command a ship.

I know what you mean, but I don't think it would merely be unexpected if one did somehow. I'm pretty sure it isn't possible because, being specialists, they can't also be a line officer. It seems like logic stops them, but then leads me to wonder about the vague possibility of a horribly unfortunate event leaving only specialists on-board... what then? Would logic stop them from sailing, or inexperience and lack of expertise?

Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are.

The ELI5 is that the Navy pays officers who do the core ship/flying activities quite well. Compared to their civilian peers, Navy lawyers, doctors, and cyber people don’t get paid well.

The posted article is about rust on ships. A ships management team is paid well. Low pay is unlikely to be the cause of dissatisfaction.

To be clear, “paid well” is not “paid well” as measured by FAANG tech salaries. A submarine officer with 8 years of experience is making something equivalent to $200Ks if I am to believe the calculators that adjust for tax advantages of military pay, discounted value of future retirement cash flows, etc.

"Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are."

That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.

It's curious that you are smart enough to come up with an arguement yet apparently at the same time innocently simple enough not to know why it's invalid.

>That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.

Counterpoint: It doesn't.

They made a reply to a military member on a thread about military equipment. Googling a few acronyms + "military" would surely lead one to the answer.

It would indeed. But why push the burden onto all the non-specialist readers, who after all come here to both learn and to take part, rather than expand the initialisms the first time they're introduced in a thread?

I'm reminded of an acronym at work: CIM. They come in two variants, CIM-A and CIM-B. I'd been there a year before I finally decided I needed to ask a more senior colleague what they stood for, and he didn't know either. The intention was obvious from the context of their use (although whether -A or -B was more serious wasn't) but most of the people in the weekly meetings discussing Critical Incident Management didn't actually know that was what they were discussing. Nowadays we have a culture that better encourages definition of terms upon first use, and it's less common that someone needs to ask "stupid" questions.

lol I feel like this debate plays out at least weekly in a HN thread about a subculture, specialty, etc.

I was a SWO before going into medicine. My first divo tour was in the engineering dept and my second was in weapons. Did well in both. I'm not sure I agree with you about the SWOs or pilots getting paid well relative to their civilian peers.

Maybe it’s ultimately a subjective thing. If one feels underpaid, they are underpaid. Then it’s a matter if there’s an employer that agrees, and it just takes one.

I’d just note that the service academies crowd the rankings for highest paid graduates at early/mid career https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors#ful...

Anecdotally, I had a reservist friend with a Harvard MBA who realized he could pull down more money as an activated reservist in Bahrain than his role at BlackRock.

Your mileage may vary…

JAG was a TV show for like 10 years. Judge Advocate General. Lawyers.

BAH has a description in parens immediately following, but could be better.

Why do people on technical message board with lots of jargon refuses to do even a modicum of research? If I didn't drop a description of a monad after I said it here would you also be mad? How about Term Sheets. I see Alpha used all the time and I have to look it up.

Since this doesn’t seem to be answered down thread- URL refers to Unrestricted Line officers, for example officers in the aviation, surface or submarine warfare communities etc. Restricted line officers can be found in the medical, supply, or intelligence communities etc. A third type of officer, and one of my personal favorite abbreviations, is the Direct Input Limited Duty Officer. DILDOs are required to have prior enlisted experience, but not required to have a bachelors degree. Restricted line officers and DILDOs could be given command of a training unit, or medical facility, but would not be given command of a ship or squadron.

It's part of the indoctrination of military culture/mindset. The heavy use of acronyms especially in a public context like this serves to signal in group/out group status.

$4000 is a (maybe nice?) 2 bedroom apartment in Point Loma at current rates

Great point! At the end of the day, we're talking about people. Highly trained people in Navy, medicine, and Navy medicine cases.

And people have limits, because they need lives and aren't robots.

Morale and aligning work to allow for happiness in life is a requirement for people bringing their best to work. If you ask people to toughen up and suffer through the suck to get the job done... there'd better be an eventual light at the end of that tunnel. Otherwise, it's just a death march.

PS: Thank you for your service, and especially through COVID.

> A colonel in Kansas may live like a king, but a captain in San Diego can't afford a house.

Assuming both sought living accomodations outside of free base housing, I was curious what those figures actually looked like[1]:

- O-6 colonel stationed at, e.g. Fort Riley, KS 66442, would draw up to an additional $1500 without dependents, $1911 with.

- O-6 captain stationed at, e.g. NAS North Island, CA 92135, would draw up to an additional $3342 without dependents, $4026 with.

It's worth mentioning for those unfamiliar that, just like BAS (i.e. food allowance), this BAH (i.e. housing allowance) is completely tax-exempt.

The game that active service members play here is to secure a home mortgage (often through VA home loan), then apply BAH directly towards monthly mortgage payments throughout service all the way to retirement. It's not hard to imagine other tax advantaged games to be played here. Applying BAH to rent a house off base is a naive fool's errand.

In terms of annual cost of living adjustments to base pay, uniformed service received +2.7% increase this year; in contrast, +2.2% for federal GS civilians. The year before that, it was +3% v. +1%. These adjustments have historically favored uniformed service over the federal civilians that work beside them. Sure, they're lowball relative to inflation, but that ought to be squared against military tax-exempt BAS/BAH and hugely subsidized commissary entitlements.

Exceptionally common amongst Navy personnel, married sailors typically draw an additional $250/mo family separation allowance[2] when out at sea for more than 30 continuous days. This will obviously have a greater financial impact amongst the enlisted ranks than officers. Depending on rank and job, there's a litany of allowances, bonuses and incentives (beyond the scope of this remark) that are often ignored when the conversation of military service compensation is brought up...nevermind that no one ever talks about the opportunity to retire with guaranteed pension + benefits for life as young as 38.

As an outsider, I'm inclined to agree that military health professions do seem to pay a substantial indirect opportunity cost despite the unique bonuses they're entitled to[3].

I do wonder what individual circumstances led you to choose a Navy commission over everything else?

[1] https://www.defensetravel.dod.mil/site/bahCalc.cfm

[2] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/fsa/

[3] https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/Pay-Tab...

There's plenty of reason to not buy. What if something catastrophic happens while you're gone for six months? What if you struggle to close on your house in time to move? How sure are you that the market will appreciate enough in the ~3 years at a given station to make back the realtor fees?

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