Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses | Hacker News Reader

Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses

warontherocks.com

> Required permanent changes-of-station every two to three years

Well, there's your problem.

Good luck starting a business if you lose your entire customer base, reputation and all your employees every two years. Good luck trying to keep your well paid Wall Street job when you're forced to move to Wyoming, or your Silicon Valley job when you're sent to Vermont. Good luck practising law, if you leave the state where you passed the bar.

These policies might have worked in the 1950s when two thirds of women were home-makers, but that's no longer the world we live in.

Academia is just as hostile. It is even a stated policy that you are supposed to move countries between your undergrad (up to masters), Ph.d, multiple postdocs, all the way until you get tenure, to the point that some specific funding schemes require this. At the same time and without even a single bit of irony, they advertise a family friendly environment and a women first hiring policy.

So people will inevitably postpone having children due to this (in addition to all the other reasons that may exist for you).

Or just not have them at all. Children are expensive and postdoc salaries suck.

Indeed. This coupled to the fact that female fertility is easier when younger (easier to become pregnant, fewer complications, better physical shape, not menopaused, etc.), is IMHO the number one factor in a lot of male/female statistical discrepancies.

My wife studied law, and we saw every single one of her female friends abandon or pause a successful career in order to have children. Just like academia, careers in law often tend to invade nights and weekends; and that's just not compatible with having children.

Fertility doesn’t have much to do with it after the kid is already born, and that’s when parental leave becomes relevant. The fact that women are still seen as the de facto parent responsible for childcare for all those nights and weekends is more a cultural thing than biological.

In my experience, for at least the first year, there is no replacing women as the de facto parent responsible for childcare due to breastfeeding, and the child’s emotional needs.

Well into the post breastfeeding toddler years, no one but my wife would have been able to satisfy the needs of my kids, and I feel like that is probably nature more than nurture. Mothers should be given at least a year of bonding leave, and fathers too just so the market does not reward men over women.

Well there's one massive factor, at least until the kid is weaned, the mom is the easiest food supply for the kid. It's vastly easier than pump and bottle or even formula and bottle. Beyond that phase though it's true it's mostly societal, once the kid is eating real food there's little reason for a particular parent to be the primary care giver.

True, but fertility will still matter if they decide to have another.

Decide you want four kids at age 20? No problem. Start at age 33, though? I hope you weren't planning to drink beer for the next decade.

I can't explain it, but there's definitely a biological aspect too that matters a lot. The mother understands deeper things about the bond with the baby that us dads don't have a clue about.

Academia often involves a lot of time, but often in informal and flexible ways, with relatively little inflexible time (eg, lectures), and campuses that are not necessarily child-unfriendly. Unlike law, most likely, it isn't necessarily incompatible with having children if the university accommodates it. In some ways universities can even have particular advantages in accommodating children: they may well have entire departments of students being taught to educate and care for children (this can also include both educators and medical students), and spaces and resources that can be useful, especially for older children, like libraries. They might already manage things like housing, and can help with some worries, like trying to look forward to college tuition.

Neither my parents nor most of the academic parents I knew growing up paused or abandoned their academic careers. We just spent a lot of time on university campuses. Departments were often fine with even infants being brought to offices, and classes their parents were teaching, as long as they weren't too disruptive. Quite a bit of work could be done at home, and home was often quite close to campus. While I was usually was with my mother, I think there was also easily accessible childcare. By the time I was an undergraduate, I knew the campus and library very well, and many faculty and staff knew me.

Sounds like a good thing to me in terms of the climate emergency.

I don't like this line of thinking. Climate change isn't caused by population, but by industry, corporations and capitalism. Individuals and their choices are the least impactful pieces when it comes to reducing emissions and the like.

The world's population has more grown by 4.5B since I was born. The idea that this hasn't impacted climate change is naive at best.

If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems. Luckily they don't. But if you want to cull population based on carbon footprint, you should start with the billionaire class, then work your way down the income brackets of the US and then the rest of the West.

The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population. In terms of resources we could also feed and provide shelter to every single person alive today, which would reduce population growth as child mortality, lack of access to reproductive care (including safe and legal abortions) and parental socio-economic distress are the biggest contributors to high birth rates. But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.

>If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems

Good luck convincing everyone on earth to downgrade their lifestyles. The amount of people who are committed to living a ascetic lifestyle to save the planet is negligible.

>The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population

Without lifestyle downgrades? Given how much environmental problems we're running into already I find this to be unlikely.

>But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.

How much is the "billionaire class"'s contribution to global warming?

> How much is the "billionaire class"'s contribution to global warming?

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

For the US, the top 1% income bracket generates 15-17% of all emissions, the top 10% generates 40%.

Also:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rich-americans-ha...

This article states that the top 10% in the US generates more than double of the top 10% in Europe and still nearly double than the top 10% in Asia per person.

The article also correctly points out that the poorest half of the US also generates as many emissions as the middle 40% of Europe while being "almost twice as poor", so this is not at all about "downgrading their lifestyles". Even poor people in the US have a larger footprint than wealthier people than them in Europe.

If you consider anything moving away from all produce available year-round, nearly identical products released every year with an artificially shortened lifespan, AC/heating running constantly because of a complete lack of insulation, car-centric infrastructure because of a complete lack of walkable cities or public transport and disposable everything a "lifestyle downgrade", then yes, it will require lifestyle downgrades. But without a billionaire class (i.e. raising marginal tax rates to 90% so wealth is reinvested into the economy rather than hoarded) many of these things can be resolved without serious downgrades for most people and actually upgrading the lifestyles of the poorest (e.g. because you no longer have to maintain an expensive gas-guzzling vehicle to get anywhere).

>https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal...

>For example, in the producer framework households receiving wage or investment income from a power plant are responsible for the direct emissions it generates, while in the supplier framework households receiving wage or investment income from selling financial services or fossil fuel to that power plant are responsible for the plant’s emissions, proportional to their importance as a supplier

This approach seems questionable. In that model there's some sort of joint responsibility between the producer and the consumer. However, I argue that if someone is driving a SUV, he alone is responsible for all the emissions. I'm not sure why you'd get to blame whoever owns the oil company. After all, the only reason why the oil company is drilling for oil is that people want the oil, so it's questionable to blame the owner. If the driver switched to EVs, the oil consumption will disappear.

>The article also correctly points out that the poorest half of the US also generates as many emissions as the middle 40% of Europe while being "almost twice as poor", so this is not at all about "downgrading their lifestyles". Even poor people in the US have a larger footprint than wealthier people than them in Europe.

I'm not sure what your point is? "Just be like europe"? "America bad"?

>If you consider anything moving away from all produce available year-round, nearly identical products released every year with an artificially shortened lifespan, AC/heating running constantly because of a complete lack of insulation [...] and disposable everything

How much do those measures move the needle? For instance single use plastics (ie. "disposable everything") is basically a non-issue when it comes to overall greenhouse emissions, and might even be better than the alternatives in some cases (eg. https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...)

>car-centric infrastructure because of a complete lack of walkable cities or public transport [..] then yes, it will require lifestyle downgrades

Since US is sparsely populated, not having cars is most definitely a lifestyle downgrade. You could argue "but we can just make public transport better!" but the economics just don't work as well compared to europe, so you'd pay more and/or pay less which is still arguably a downgrade. Moving to denser/"walkable" cities rather than suburbs is also a solution, but is also a downgrade. Except to the most diehard urbanists, most would prefer a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs with a yard than a 3 bedroom apartment.

> I'm not sure what your point is? "Just be like europe"? "America bad"?

My point is that the US is doing something that is making everyone's footprint significantly larger without improving their quality of life, so clearly there are other factors to reducing the footprint than "downgrade the lifestyle".

> You could argue "but we can just make public transport better!" but the economics just don't work as well compared to europe, so you'd pay more and/or pay less which is still arguably a downgrade.

Citation needed.

> Moving to denser/"walkable" cities rather than suburbs is also a solution, but is also a downgrade.

Citation needed. Also the US doesn't have walkable cities, so you're comparing suburbs to a thing I already said is bad, not the thing I said would be better.

> Except to the most diehard urbanists, most would prefer a 4 bedroom house in the suburbs with a yard than a 3 bedroom apartment.

Do you think this preference is part of the immutable fabric of reality or do you think this is an emergent property caused by the total lack of public transport infrastructure, horrible zoning and white flight? "Urban center" vs "suburbs" is a false dichotomy caused by the missing middle in American urban planning, namely mixed-use zoning.

You don't need a car in the suburbs because the suburbs are sparsely populated, you need a car in the suburbs because everything other than housing is miles away and despite the roads being ridiculously congested the infrastructure is hostile to bikes and pedestrians and there are no trams, metros or buses. Meanwhile US urban centers are so hyperdense that nobody wants to live there and New Yorkers in 2023 are throwing a fit about the introduction of trash cans because there's literally nowhere to put them without impeding traffic, vehicular or otherwise.

Frankly, all I hear from you boils down to the same old tired "the US can't be improved because it's special" which is not just another boring rehash of American Exceptionalism but also demonstrably wrong. The thing holding the US back is that one of the major political problems has no qualms pushing nonsense conspiracy theories like the so-called "15 minute cities" being part of a dystopian plan to create real-world Hunger Games rather than a catchy "doing the bare minimum" plan to address climate change.

There's nobody except individuals in the world.

Academia has always seemed like a colossal joke to me. You pay a lot of money, give up a lot of opportunities to advance in life that are offered to everyone else, have no skills relevant to working in any industry related to your field of study, forced to give up family and community, will probably end up marrying someone who is also from Academia, all so you can have three little letters next to your name.

Ain't worth it, man.

That’s how status and externalities work. People choose academia for the non-monetary compensation. They want to work in a field that feels deeply meaningful to them. And they want the status that comes with being a professor.

I read an article a little while ago where someone recounted their academic career in Physics. What really hit home was his retelling of a class in undergrad where his professor (paraphrased here), "What you learn here really isn't physics, and most of you in this class aren't smart enough to learn physics." He got his PhD in physics, so it wasn't just him giving up. Everything I look at seems to add up to that statement across multiple disciplines. We place such an emphasis on academia which really teaches almost nothing useful to a career, etc. to the majority of people. I don't use my degree at all.

That’s one view. Another view is that getting paid (or even having a career) to study philosophy or art history or a similar topic is better than just about any job out there, no matter how little the pay or how many hoops you have to jump through.

For reference, I have a degree in philosophy but ultimately decided not to go for a PhD.

I'm a professor in computer science, so things are probably quite different than in other academic fields. There are some clear downsides to academia (lower salary, always looking for funding, limited geography, lots and lots of meetings), but there are also many positive aspects too.

These include: (a) teaching can be really fun, in terms of inspiring the next generation and opening their minds to new topics, (b) no one tells us what to do, we can work on what we personally think is important (though funding that is a separate question), (c) we're considered experts that can be called on by journalists, government agencies, patent lawyers, and immigration lawyers to help out, (d) we can do consulting to help with tech transfer and to learn more about industry problems, (e) thanks to Bayh-Dole act in USA we can also commercialize the technologies we develop.

Again, computer science is quite different, in that there are a lot more industry jobs available, a lot more money sloshing around compared to other fields, and less of a need to do multiple postdocs.

Also, don't underestimate the value of teaching. Not only is it a great value to society as a whole, but it can be highly intrinsically rewarding. I have a large stack of thank you cards and small gifts from students over the many years, and still occasionally get fun emails from students sending me new examples to use in class or stories of how they're applying what they learned.

So yes, there are a lot of tradeoffs involved with academia. But for me personally, I feel that I've made a positive difference in many people's lives, through my teaching, my research, and my advocacy, in ways that I wouldn't have been able to elsewhere.

During my last year in college, my programming languages professor (he was one of two CS professors I had who wasn't a complete boob) asked to have a meeting with me some afternoon. He pitched me on joining his graduate program since I was doing well in his class. I said I was hoping to do something with my skills that people would actually use, and his only response was some university team in another state helped contribute something to the USB mass storage spec. Uhhh no thanks. Left that meeting without another thought. I'm sure academia works for some people, but I wanted nothing more than to be as far away from that environment as possible.

Academia also has a lot of work to do to reconcile the idea of an expanding research sector, and environmental responsibility.

It's kind of hard to reconcile exotic conference destinations and increased travel to visit your family with a future with less planes, and academia being a very small ivory tower with few people is a thing of the past, so this can't be pushed under the rug anymore.

In the United States, there are medical programs that average more than one divorce per resident.

I don't doubt it. Do you have a link for this?

https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/divorce-because-of-...

Second-hand, but the best I could find on short notice. The money quote:

'I remember someone saying that their residency program advertised a "110%" divorce rate: every one of their residents divorced, and of the ones who remarried, 10% of those divorced as well.'

Academia in a certain era, at least in the US, used to acknowledge that it posed several specific difficulties for relationships and families, and addressed them through policies and programs, for example, spousal hiring policies, family housing, university-run childcare, child-friendly working policies, preferential admission and tuition for children of university staff, etc. I was born and raised in academia; for a while, it worked reasonably well. There was the sense that universities often saw themselves as being a bit like villages in that respect. It has been depressing to see how much of that is now gone, seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness.

Of course, before that time, there were also problems, like the embarrassment of refusing to hire Goeppert-Mayer, that may have led to the relationship accommodations in the first place.

seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness.

Nah, university presidents are just greedy and wanted to play with that money themselves.

Of course. It's just that fairness is often given as a reason, especially since the accommodations often might be unfair in other professions, but were meant to counteract specific unfair problems.

For example, spousal hiring could be seen as nepotism; in the case of Goeppert-Mayer, it famously wasn't allowed because of that. Yet outside of a handful of major cities, the local university is often the only place in the area someone can have a strong academic career, and academic careers often involve moving, so for a couple to both have academic careers, they often need to find a university willing to hire them both, and to search for positions together, something that is very difficult, especially when in different fields, unless the university has procedures to handle it. Add to this that academics often have social lives within academia, and this can become a very common difficulty.

Army vet here! This is GREAT for a couple of reasons:

1. Moving around made building a career an impossibility for my brilliant wife, because military bases are typically situated a ways away from major economic zones.

2. This will improve retention because there is a lot of pressure on the (relatively underpaid) service member to make ends meet, especially when the best your spouse can do is like, become a realtor.

3. Great for employers. IMO (and you can fight me on this one) military families embrace duty, leadership, and hard work. If you can hire a vet or their spouse, you're going to get more out of them.

4. Great for military bases/areas which are typically economically depressed.

5. Great for family life. When I was in I was deployed for almost half of our marriage. That was really tough on my wife with nothing to do. A lot of spouses can't handle that, get into trouble, put undue pressure on the marriage, etc. For those of you who've ever been in an FRG you know what I'm talking about ;)

Back before Covid I seriously considered joining the armed forces in Germany as a side entry OCS candidate. They were looking for people, still do, so the offered package wasn't to bad. Go through basic, go through OCS, get a rank in accordance to your academic degree (with a Master it was Captain for me, no idea how the rest of the service men think about that so) and sign on for 15 years doing something more meaningful than making sure rich people get even richer. Even passed the assessment center.

What turned out to be the deal braker was exactly what you pointed out: despite quite a few military bases close to where we live, bases that had a need for someone with my background at that (so no infantry combat units, but rather hardware and logistics heavy units like fighters and helicopters and the like), they were unable to give a gurantee to serve at the same location for longer than the initial year or so. Having family, a wife with a career and a house, moving every 3 years max just cause simply is a no go. Heck, even 6 months deployment were acceptable, if not ok, for my better half. I doubt so, that the Germany armed forces really understand how much of a problem that posses for recruiting when you need skilled people and not only people anymore. Which actually is a pitty. Funny thing so, this constant shuffeling around of folks even causes serious issues internally because a ton of knowledge is lost (confirmed by ex service members), so offering more stability would solve a bunch of problems. At the same time, they would also offer flexibility, because if transfers are still a thing, military spouses have so much more options pursuing their careers when serving partner can "simply" transfer to another post.

> sign on for 15 years doing something more meaningful than making sure rich people get even richer.

I have some terrible news for you.

I know, but on some level not all interventions Germany was involved in had the background of stealing other people's oil. And as I said, the whole relocation thing was the final deal breaker, there were other reasons for me not to sign up as well.

Yep. Now multiply that across a broad swath of society and you're really undermining not only your military's talent pool, but possibly impacting your economy negatively, especially if your country's military does things, like you say, beyond just fighting wars. Social service, civic programs, R&D, etc.

I don't think there's many jobs out there where you're not benefiting the rich in some way. The important thing is that you as an individual can find meaning and thrive.

> IMO (and you can fight me on this one) military families embrace duty, leadership, and hard work. If you can hire a vet or their spouse, you're going to get more out of them.

Any data on this (specifically the spouse). Experience says otherwise, TBH.

I doubt that sort of data exists anywhere, but I personally run a veterans service organization with ~800 families and I've yet to meet a vetspouse who wasn't squared away!

The veteran community is a cross-section of America so there's bound to be turds, but I'd say that if you're a CHRO you're probably doing whatever you can to improve talent across the org, even if incrementally. One way to do that is to be vet/vetspouse friendly.

> I doubt that sort of data exists anywhere, but I personally run a veterans service organization with ~800 families and...

Okay, fair enough.

> ...I've yet to meet a vetspouse who wasn't squared away!

This has to be the most unlikely thing I've read on this site. Honestly I doubt the veracity of your comment based on this patently absurd claim.

> One way to do that is to be vet/vetspouse friendly.

Obviously you're biased by your experiences, as am I, but it's interesting we've come to completely contrary conclusions.

You think it's patently absurd that members of the same community might have the same shared traits?

I think it's patently absurd that you have only positive experiences with such a broad cohort, not to mention that the cohort self-selects (and not for positive behaviour).

I think we both know if we had data, you'd be in damage-control mode.

So you think my personal experiences... are patently absurd...?

Huh!

I’m imagining how a remote/wfh military job would work with all the quirky parts of military life.

You roll out of your rack in the morning, get into PTs and onto something like a Peloton, only it doesn’t fit and works like it was build by the lowest bidder, which it was. They do roll call and you wake up the rest of the house hollering “Here first sergeant!”

The executive order was to expand remote work opportunities for civilian federal government employees who are military spouses.

I'll try to keep my rant shortish.

I can speak from serving in the military and as a military spouse, and can without any hesitation, state that being a military spouse is more challenging than being an active-duty military member in the long-run. I came from a fatherless, disadvantaged household, dropped out of high school, and the military provided opportunities I would not have had access to otherwise.

While in the military, I met my civilian wife, who later on joined the military herself and I exited service to finish university with the intent to apply to medical school. This seemed reasonable to a young idealist at the time. Everything was lining up, then she was stationed in a remote area with a less than stellar university. The university I transferred to not only did not have chemical engineering but did not accept around 2 years' worth of mathematics and science courses; so, I was forced to change majors if I wanted to graduate before she changed stations. I didn't care too much about the ramifications from a career perspective, because medical school was my end game.

A couple of semesters before graduating, she was promoted early, and we were scheduled to move. I would not graduate on time.

We moved to an even remoter area with a worse university. Basically, it was a community college with university credentials. Was forced to repeat some courses, again, and was forced to take this university's required general credits, again. It was at this juncture, I decided to give up on pursuing medical school. We could not afford the application process from where we were stationed to fly around to medical school interviews (each would be 7+ hour flights) and the situation difficulty was compounded with having a child. Even if I were accepted, I would not see my child or wife regularly for 4-5 years.

The whole fiasco drained and wasted what are largely considered to be prime productive years and left me feeling like I was caught in a hamster wheel with no meaningful career trajectories in sight--too much work and effort with for no foreseeable benefit. Plus, most spouse programs target women and preferential hiring practices are for low-impact positions without meaningful promotability. There is an additional degree of isolation for male spouses, when most of your potential spouse community are women.

I decided to quit traditional career aspirations and there was a fairly deep depression period, but I climbed out of it by focusing on ensuring that my child would have access to education and economic opportunities that I would've never dreamed about during my childhood. By the time I finally graduated with my bachelors, I had over 200 credits due to all courses I was required to take between the several universities I attended and had tutored people in math and chemistry as a university side job. When the local schools available to our child were poor, I used my overeducation and tutoring skills to home school. We pinched pennies to purchase fixer upper homes and I learned to remodel homes in between moves to earn an "income" that provided enough flexibility to wholly support our child's extracurricular activities in both money and time.

The self-sacrifice paid off. Our child is graduating high school 2023-24, scored a 1580 SAT, and will be competitively applying to the best schools in the country. She will escape all the worries I faced at her age, so mission success on that front. My wife has a very fruitful career trajectory in her respective military service. Post-child life for me will be making up for lost time. I'm not worried, because I've made decent money from flipping houses and have not lost or diminished my competitiveness or desire to learn. If anything, those characteristics have increased due feeling slighted by my lack of traditional opportunities across time. Looking forward to the future as I transition back to focusing on myself.

[deleted.]

I'd gladly take a government job - I was interested in a Military career when I was in my teens, but DADT put that out of reach - and now I'm too old and too out of shape.

I'd be interested in performing some form of public service now, but most government jobs seem to suffer from the worst kind of credential requirement inflation imaginable, so that's not an option either - I have no degree, just lots of experience.

The most impactful PM I know from Defense Digital Service doesn't have a degree in Fahrenheit. He did arrive with a 20 year track record at Microsoft though. Have a look at US Digital Service, Defense Digital Service, Defense Innovation Unit or 18F. Check out usajobs.gov. If you're in the Bay Area, feel free to PM me.

There's a TON of great jobs out there in defense tech! You could get paid well to build interesting projects (that occasionally are used, if you're lucky, to whack bad guys) and none of those jobs/founders GAF about credentials, they just care if you can do the job.

well speaking for the UK not the USA...

> and dedicated people, anywhere

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH OMG yeah right sure, carry on my good man.

(Edit: I agree with your larger point though)

I'm assuming you're referring to predominately the enlisted side? This also isn't a jab at enlisted people in general, just that many enlisted people come from economically disadvantaged positions in life. And, yes, many of them can yield a behavior that is questionably dedicated, but the people who continue to stay in are largely dedicated and others are rooted out in time.

Guess we're lucky that the US military is armed and ready to find WMDs in the next middle eastern country to fall afoul of the US's foreign policy goals (and butcher some civvies while they're at it. Fun!).

But sure, Russia, China and so on. I prefer to focus on what the military's actually been up to instead of the (real) threats they use for recruitment propaganda.

It'd be wild if what eventually killed Pax Americana was the military being unable to recruit smart people, because they can make much better money elsewhere

I would argue that that is exactly what is happening.

Good, experienced warfighters get to a point in their career where they realize they can make 2-3x what they do now in an environment with less toxic leadership.

The ones that stay in become those toxic leaders.

We've lost tons of institutional knowledge post-GWOT. Imagine if we'd've shut down our factories, alienated our allies, and not put all those vets to work after WWII. That is what's happening now.

I wish I could skip the money, but honestly why would I skimp out on the one thing the government seems to prioritize, which is making sure people with significant assets get maximum leverage? By taking less money I disadvantage my own kids in a world where increasingly it looks like only the wealthy are human beings.

Considering 2 hours ago is 7AM EST, you might want to wait for America to wake up before jumping to conclusions.

The article isn't even about military readiness either. Making the military more friendly to married couples is a fine goal, for sure, but the ones who chose that life know the caveats involved and if they don't like it, they leave.

China may have the largest branches of services, they are hardly the best funded and most prepared. Wars have not been decided by who is bigger for a long time.

And to top it off, the Russian progress into Ukraine is largely stalled and has mostly been a shitshow for Russia. Their propaganda machine is scarier than their military incursions.

> But then, maybe, take a government job for a while. They pay like shit, but you won't find more compelling missions and dedicated people, anywhere.

And you also won't find more red tape, not even in multi-billion international conglomerates, than in government - I've worked in government, small companies, medium companies and one so large you'll likely find on the news regularly.

When I want something like, say, a dozen hours worth of GPU compute time at <conglomerate>, I shoot over an email to my boss for approval, that's there an hour later, and I can begin to work. In government, that's weeks worth of paperwork and meetings, and by the time I got the approval, I've forgotten what I wanted to do in the first place. Not to mention sub-par machines that were outdated even when they were acquired, processes copied straight over from the mainframe era, and crap offices barely worth the name including a 10/10 SDSL for > 100 employees.

Oh and forget getting hired if you have a "grey" past - convictions of hacking, marijuana or whatever that's common in the private sector are an immediate no-go in anything government, often enough for life.

It depends on which government, and what kind of stuff that agency does.

I don't find my government customers to be more or less chock full of red tape than my non-government ones. Sometimes my large corporate (utility) customers can be worse than even the National Parks Service, and generally always worse than local government.

In my experience, government is indeed much slower in approving outlays. There may of course be exceptions to that pattern. One of my interview questions for prospective bosses of mine, is something along the lines of:

- Suppose I am on your team , and I want to develop a prototype/PoC, which costs $1,000, and you're okay with it

- What is the process to get approval for it?

- How much time elapses between starting the approval process and receiving funding/greenlight to start spending?

In my current job, the answers were "if I'm okay with the idea, you can start immediately".

In a previous one I left, it required CEO approval (hence why I ask now).

This should be posted to /best. Nice - and I'll definitely add it to my list, should I ever hunt for jobs again!

> you won’t find more compelling missions and dedicated people, anywhere

My friends and family working for the (federal) government would take issue with this statement. If you’re looking for mission-driven people, imo a mission-based nonprofit is the way to go. I’m curious, are/were you in government yourself?

> China has the world's largest Army, Navy, and Air Force

I'm no armchair strategist but highly doubt the Chinese could hold a candle to the US who size aside is ridiculously battle hardened at this point, and that's completely ignoring NATO/Anglo/Asian allies who would definitely join the fray.

The US military has no peer on Earth and I don't think that's a controversial opinion to hold.

> They pay like shit, but you won't find more compelling missions and dedicated people, anywhere.

Not sure if there's a US equivalent but in Australia we have the reserves for people perhaps wanting to keep their dayjob.

Wish you didn't delete what was an accurate depiction of HN's general response in relation to the posted topic. Was spot on.

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