Navy Ad: Gig Work Is a Dystopian Unregulated Hellscape, Build Submarines Instead | Hacker News Reader

Navy Ad: Gig Work Is a Dystopian Unregulated Hellscape, Build Submarines Instead

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39 pointsdotcoma17 comments

The ad itself was quite good and somewhat inspiring but the article makes some factual errors. It's neither a Navy or military recruitment ad- it's for maritime manufacturing.

Building a submarine != joining the Navy. These are civilian industrial jobs, and with the AUKUS treaty we will certainly need more of them in the future.

US youth would be well served to learn a trade. Globalisation is entering a very new form, and a new industrial capacity build is beginning in the US.

This is not a Navy recruiting ad, this is an ad to recruit shipbuilders. The vast majority of those jobs are civilian. If this author had spent about 5 minutes of research, they would have discovered this.

If you're skilled enough to work on a nuclear submarine, you're probably skilled enough to be employed in a variety of different industries and make good money.

And I don't see how it's the Navy's responsibility to make sure that Gig jobs don't suck.

So often people see one segment of the US government (the teeny, tiny bureaucracy that it is.) doing something, and think that portion of the Federal government has the power to decided and change the rules for another entirely different part of the government. This may be one of the worst cases of this I've seen in quite a while. Shockingly, the US Navy doesn't actually write legislation pertaining to gig work.

I try not to cast aspersions on opinion pieces, but this was absolute garbage. Do better.

It appears you missed the opening and last paragraphs. Have you read the article?

> The gig economy is obviously not the Navy’s direct responsibility. But it is quite striking that instead of trying to improve the state of gig work run by multi-billion dollar corporations that actively oppose measures to improve their workers’ lives, the government has simply opted to agree that it is bad, and use those working conditions to recruit for the military.

If they agree it's not the Navy's fault, there's not much point in writing the article at all. As the parent pointed out, the Navy is not "the government", the Navy is "the Navy" and has absolutely nothing to do with how gig work sucks.

I've found that almost all of my political/US govt outrage disappeared after taking a single course on it in college. There's a method to the madness.

The world would be both more and less efficient if the US Navy got to write most federal regulation. “Prep the mess deck. Yeoman Jones is 7 knots ENE with your UberEats order”.

I deeply love that your sharp criticism ends with a forward looking suggestion that the author do better. That’s the nicest criticism I’ve seen today.

The actual website is here: https://www.careersbuilttolast.com/

It seems to pick a random path (?) and eventually show a ten year career timeline, such as this for CNC Machinist:

- MAY 2025: Get My First Paycheck, Up to $54K/year

- JANUARY 2030: Level Up to a CNC Machinist II, Up to $63K/year

- JANUARY 2035: Growing My Career as a CNC Programmer, Up to $72K/year

To try other paths, edit the headline near the top:

  HOW DOES A CAREER IN ___________
  COMPARE TO BEING A ____________?

Or click the blue "New Matchup" pill button near the bottom.

It seems they wish to hire over 140,000 people over the next decade.

https://seapowermagazine.org/us-navy-launches-careers-in-def...

I mean, they’re not wrong… they offer investments, predictable salary path, health insurance, job security, pto/sick leave, saving many other things.

And work on some of the coolest machines in the world.

That's mostly because submarines operate in water that is on average 4℃

Well played

Isn't the military industrial complex like incredibly boom-and-bust depending on the salience of national security issues, contract awards and renewals, Congressional machinations, etc?

To your point, I think we see a lot of cancellations on projects that are too futuristic, But I believe the answer is no; just look at Lockheed Martin’s stock price history.

Look how many Burk destroyers Are being upgraded; Look how many Sm6 Missiles are being ordered or upgraded, etc.

Now being a US Navy submariner is like living in a dystopian hellscape.

Just a highly regulated one.

(your real wages per hour of work are far lower than being on a surface ship given the amount of work that has to be done)

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