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Comment by dotBen | Hacker News Reader

Your argument, if I read it right, is basically that I'm wrong and that the military is good at capitalizing on people's skills - and you give psyops as one example and also talk about people's credentials.

Sure, I don't disagree with you that in general, you can specialize in the reservists.

The point I'm making is that specifically for tech/software engineers/startup folks -- which was the genesis for the OP comment -- there isn't a great deal of skill overlap and capitalization. I'm not sure anything you've said disagrees with that.

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FWIW, I'm retired from the USAF. I also hold an ECE degree. In the military I did nothing that required my degree (though I got to fly fighters for a career, so it was awesome anyway). The military has a different mission than the "real world", and using your background and expertise and self-discipline and stamina and perspectives and judgement and ethical view are called upon at any given time, and occasionally, all at once - and sometimes there is failure - and you continue. The great value of such service is in learning to do the mission, to live with the frustrations of political vacillation that can decide what was worth great risk one day now might cost votes, to work with others that humble you with their own talent once you mature enough to recognize it, to absolutely be there when someone depends on it, and to develop and develop with those around you such that you know they will also be there when you need it. I did get to do a multi-year job once that drew heavily on my engineering education, and it was great too - but following Heinlein's thoughts on over-specialization, sometimes breadth is worth more than depth - sometimes much more. Vince malum.

The military has been making a huge push in recent years to grow capabilities for "cyber warfare." The Air Force has pushed especially hard to establish themselves in this area, because they see some of their existing core capabilities being marginalized, and they need to keep finding ways to keep themselves relevant. Although the Air Force is pushing hardest in this direction, the other services are also trying to expand their cyber capabilities, and the Navy even recently established a designator for officers to basically be hackers: http://www.informationwarriors.net/showthread.php?t=623

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