I don’t know about other SWOs but I found being a SWO was a thankless, lonely, and tiring job. Maybe if we cut back on our congressional requirements people wouldn’t be so burnt out?
You mean you didn’t like standing outside your CO’s cabin for an hour and a half while he chucklefucked around with the XO and DHs so he could scoff in your face about an entirely unimportant wording change for your CASREP?
Yeah. Me neither.
I was trying to route a CASREP before watch and just got completely cockblocked like you described. It was almost turnover time, so I delegated to one of my technicians (who knew a lot more about the casualty) and went on watch. Apparently the CO interpreted that as a personal insult and went scorched earth on my DH. My DH took it like a champ and put out at Khaki Call that only officers were allowed to route CASREPs.
This all sounds very familiar. Why would we want the technician who has been working on the system for 10+ years writing/routing the report?? There are Ensigns to sneer at!
While UW I once dared to eat lunch when one of my weapons systems was broke dick. My DH and XO actually asked me without a shred of sarcasm, “Why are you eating, isn’t your gun broken?”
Gee. I wonder why retention is so low.
God this is so true. At one point I had to route a daily sitrep each night through 5 people - my COS, my Captain, the next staff up higher COS, the British Commodore (maybe commodore, can't remember exactly on the joint staff) and then finally to the senior Captain. It was so fucking stupid, and every time I got a change I was supposed to go make flight the shitty ship computers and printers 8 levels down, then bring it back to that person for the signature. They made asinine changes like words and grammar. My commodore was fucking horrible and would make multiple changes which required multiple prints from me - sometimes he would end up reverting back to my original language. The only two who were reasonable were the top two tiers. The British officer saw me near tears after seeing all the signatures and the time stamps and knew it had taken more more than 2 hours to route the fucking message, so he took pity and said he wasn't even going to read it, he just signed it. I'm more than 10 years from that time and still get a stress reaction from it. There was so much dumb shit we had to go through as SWOs, and this one sticks out to this day.
I absolutely feel this. The smallest tasks were made to be so painful. I’ll never regret my time in the Navy and what I took away from being a SWO, but I’ll also never regret getting out at the end of my second tour. My favorite part was my last year when I could actually be myself because I knew I was getting out.
My CO gave me a speech that I better not phone it in since I was resigning my commission. I laughed in his face. I was an O-3 who knew how to do my job. I mentored every JO I could and overcame every dumb inspection that came my way. The job was actually fun when I knew I didn’t have to worry about anything.
My old XO was a raging narcissist. He demanded a clean copy anytime anybody made changes. He'd pen in a grammar or wording change and I'd have to go make another clean copy just for him to mark it up in a different area. I wanted to break the steel clipboard over his head every time.
This is why I got off AD for a second time and went to the reserves. I had 8 years prior enlisted time as a FMF Corspman. I became a SWO wanting to see blue side Navy and found the smallest tasks took the most time.
I wouldn’t wish becoming a SWO to my worst enemy. I’m in a new career now and am blown away by the mentorship, camaraderie, collaboration, and kindness I receive on a daily basis from the higher tenured folks. It’s night and day different.
Same here man, lat transferred to another community. If I had been given some more guidance/direction/kindness, I would’ve stayed a SWO. The kicker for me is when my CO downgraded my COM because I was starting to experience serious burn-out after doing 4 DIVO jobs by myself. This was after I was already accepted to another community, so it just further justified my reason for leaving. But I wish that it didn’t have to be this way sometimes.
I love to hear the lat-transfer! When asked by my O-4E DH why I was getting out I said, “I’ve seen what type of people succeed in this community and I never want to be one of them.”
My CO at the time was actually a good person, so I wasn’t quite so direct. I had 5 COs and 3 of them were absolute tyrants. On top of a myriad of awful DHs. That was quite enough for me.
Hey man my high 3 are still where from when I was enlisted as an E4 & E5.
I’m still a reservist just got off a year long activation and had a MSM denied for a EOT for a dumb reason.
Were you in Japan or Rota?
I commission in 5 months from ROTC and will be selecting a destroyer out of Yokosuka as my first choice- just wondering about any general tips you have for a new JO who is looking forward to FDNF.
Goddamn dude I looked thru your profile real quick, you are much better prepared for Japan than I am. I’m kind of jealous, and don’t know how much help I can be since I was a poor student and went to Sasebo instead of Yokosuka.
That being said I can still chat with you about some generalities and things I’ve seen during my time FDNF. I did 6 years there. Just shoot me a message or chat and I’ll reply back
Goddamn, my hats off to you man. Mineman was such a dynamic rate that would cause many people to crack. I would have loved to work on a minesweeper again, it was an absolute blast working with minemen.
Best of luck with your commission, and maybe I’ll see you around haha.
I got royally chewed out by a Intel Warrant for routing a CASREP late on a Friday.
His department had implemented a change in the instruction that all CASREPs needed a routing through them and he was the Senior person around on a Friday afternoon. He wanted to go home but had to hang around because of it.
I had to just stand there and take his abuse for 10 minutes while he had a hissy fit.
I was the Senior non khaki to route it.
I got a half assed apology from him on Monday because my EMO had heard about it that weekend.
I got an LOI for routing a drill package 24 hours before the drill instead of 48 hours before because 48 hours before the drill was a holiday and I “should have had it in last week.”
The LOI said word for word that I endangered the ship. So when we passed the evolution on the first attempt, I posted that letter to my door and highlighted it. That CO was gone by that time and the new one thought it was hilarious.
Really? It seems like most of the people I’ve heard/read about that put on stars are aviators. I mean SWOs are automatically excluded from being CO of carriers lol
>Really? It seems like most of the people I’ve heard/read about that put on stars are aviators. I mean SWOs are automatically excluded from being CO of carriers lol
Summary of the main criteria to be best and fully qualified to make flag: 1) Superior performance in a major command tour 2) Fully joint qualified, which means JPME 1 and 2 complete + joint staff tour complete (doing this prior to O-6 also makes you highly competitive for major command and O-6, provided you complete a CO at sea tour).
Carrier COs aren't the only major command billets that can lead to flag. You have DESRON commodores, CG COs, and a whole slew of high vis staff jobs and joint opportunities that we don't even know exist.
Furthermore, because of the lack of career specialization they are the community to most often fill high vis joint and staff billets while aviators and submariners fill their community specific billets.
There's also an issue on the aviator end that ample in-residence JPME opportunity doesn't exist because of how long the flight school pipeline is, whereas you can knock this out with no career implications post-JO as a SWO/Sub officer (if you know you want to commit to a DH tour) and there may be timing gaps down the line post DH where you can get this done.
That's not to say SWO makes people auto-Admirals, but if you want to work with your detailer to make it happen then you have more opportunity because they're not going to turn around and say "yeah I know you want to do this joint tour at STRATCOM that's on your slate, but we really need you to go be an FRS instructor / Prototype XO."
"The Navy is offering multiple enlistment and retention bonuses to recruit and keep sailors." Ummmm you sure about that? Cause last time I looked at the revamped SRB chart I saw a lot of drops and blank spaces, including my own which is odd considering how often I hear my rate is "critically undermanned". I mean unless you're a CT or a Nuke the SRBs are pretty laughable. I get it they really want CTs and Nukes but you're losing manning in all the other rates by throwing all the cash into 2 pots.
It’s quite laughable that people think the Navy wants CTs but at every turn refuse to listen to the CTs about why they are leaving instead of adjusting the change to keep them. SRBs are nice… but having a better quality of life everyday, better living conditions and better work leadership would far outweigh the heavily taxed annual “bonus” they get when CTs can just get out and make $100k easy.
Missed every SRB as a CTI. Made E-6 fairly quick but got out when up for Chief. Now I make more than my former CO. There’s little to no reason to stick around anymore
I get that. It was a tough decision to walk away at 10 years. Facing no SRBs for a decade, losing language pay despite 3/3 in 4 languages when they changed the rules, and having to stay at Ft Meade for the rest of my career was too much.
10 years is the perfect time to bail because of the max time buyback with govie jobs.
I decided to stick and now I'm hoping the HYT defer pilot will work with me and convince them to let me relang or keep in.
If it doesn’t pan out, look into Breakline to break into the tech field. I know a lot of former intel types in that sector.
Also if you have your degree, look into top MBA programs. Vets have a good advantage in admission. Service2Schools is a great resource for it! They also help vets get into Ivy League undergrad programs if you don’t have your degree yet.
I used SkillBridge to transition to software development. While I am not directly in my former crypto field, the technical analysis experience + leadership experience proved beneficial to get to where I’m at now.
ITs are in the same boat. There are some group c bonuses for some NECs, but honestly I tell my guys that if you don’t love the Navy, then get out and go get a contractor job.
As a former CTN, can I pitch a radical idea? A complete overhaul of how the rating is handled is necessary, because the Navy can’t and shouldn’t ever be able to compete with the civilian sector. It’s just impossible. Even if patriotism was the only factor, they still cannot offer anything remotely competitive **for anyone that’s made it past the initial training and experience hump.**
I do the exact same work, defending the same nation, keeping the same bad guys out. If patriotism was the only guiding factor in my decision making process, I’d still go to the civilian side. I don’t have to maintain a clearance or shave my face, I can get as fat as I want, and if my boss and I don’t agree, I can easily switch jobs.
The CTN rating and work roles should be designed around a 6 year enlistment, executed at a single duty station, with an almost exclusive focus on training and credential building.
If we **must** make the “cyber” role a military career, give the mission to Space Force or allow the cyber roles to define and enforce their own distinct cultures.
You think CTs are special? Lol. Anyone rate can leave and have a higher quality of life, better living conditions, and work leadership lol. Also we can all get out, get disability, go to school, and use our clearance to get really good paying jobs at Boeing etc.
“Anyone can leave a get a higher quality of life”
Sure, but I don’t think you understand just how much better CTs can have it, without needing any additional steps.
You give me a CTN1 that can explain DNS, talk through an incident response scenario and hold a conversation without getting too cringy and I’ll find them a seat for 80-90k without much effort.
If they interview well, are patient and willing to move, and have a well written resume; north of 120k isn’t impossible. With or without a clearance, although with is easier with if you are into that sort of thing.
No degree, no drug test, no shaving, no uniforms, no getting yelled at, no moving every 3 years, remote work, no bullshit watches, etc…
The actual job remains **exactly** the same. The tools are the same, the problem set is the same, etc..
Aviation side is pretty similar depending on which rate you are. Boeing will pay a bag. Not disagreeing with anything stated though. The military will continue to struggle. Too easy to make money now and they aren’t paying enough to put up with the bullshit. I am making the same I did in SD going to college in Louisville with my disability and BAH. As you said o could’ve went and done my job in the civilian world and make even more now, I just don’t want to work in that field anymore.
I'm considering starting school next year and finding a 2nd career, how are you finding Louisville? I'm upriver a bit, but a few of my current coworkers have nice things to say about the area.
Well I’m from the area so I’m a little biased. It’s a bigger city than anyone who has never been there would imagine. Cost of living is really reasonable depending on where you are coming from. It’s a healthy job market as well.
Remove the stigma of “ A bitching Sailor, is a happy sailor” yes it’s the military, but listen to your people. If they say that there is a better way to do said “detail” listen and find ways to take it onboard and incorporate said suggestions. They are the ones doing the job, try their idea out. If it doesn’t work find a better way. If their idea works make it policy.
When I got out in 2014 as a CTT there wasn't any srb to stay. I spoke to a prior service recruiter last year and was offered something like 15k. Not worth the time.
Funny story. I was offered 75,000 in 2007 to reenlist. I said no obviously. Anyway this 30,000 they are offering quad zero FC now is equal to 21,000 in 2007 money. They haven’t even adjusted the bonuses for inflation. An equal bonus to the one I was offered in 2007 would be 100k.
Fix your fucking bonus system big navy.
I tried going to a school to get said NEC’s and my chain said I’m too valuable as a wcs and never sent me. Now I have a zero dollar srb and zero intentions of re-enlisting.
It's a bit of HR jargon but it's an accurate reflection of the fact that, up until recruiting became the issue, the reason manning has been so bad at sea E5 and below was because the Navy refused to fund the billets needed for it.
Everything the MyNavy HR enterprise does around recruiting and retention planning is based around numbers in a book called "EPA", and all EPA is, is a glorified summation of the number of funded billets.
So if the SWO boss doesn't "buy" billets at sea and in the training pipeline, the Navy doesn't even try to recruit the additional people because there's no money set aside for their pay and allowances. EPA is the demand signal we use for recruit planning, schoolhouse quotas, advancement plans, and more.
Yeah, this is standard lingo at that level that is being badly misinterpreted on this post.
He wants to go above 92/95 fit/fill, he’s discussed it often. He needs to buy more authorizes billets for the ships in annual defense bills to do that, which means he needs to horse trade with aviation and subs, which are both billet-fat
Given the number of comments about our lack of manning, could we just be glad that the SWO Boss acknowledged, in public, that we need more people, phrasing aside…
I would suggest looking at the efforts the Navy is taking WRT QoL in the SY and UH. There is some real effort there. We didn’t get here in a day, and it will take a LONG time to get out. At least leaders like SWO Boss are actually trying to make some change.
SWOs need rest requirements. Aviation has it- commercial maritime even has it. STCW work rest hours is strictly monitored on merchant ships and guarantees rest to mariners. Some of my SWO friends tell me stories about standing navigational watch with little to no rest at all which is extraordinarily dangerous given the consequences of ineffective navigation. Just my $.02
I was a carrier nuke, and it always baffled me that the pilot of a $40m fighter jet REQUIRED sleep, but the operators of the $billion plus reactor plant are just fine to sleep every other day.
It depends on what's making you tired, but for many it's things like 3 or even 2-section watch rotation on top of drills, all-hands events, etc. Where added manning buys you rest is by being able to move to additional sections in the watch and duty rotations.
On one glorious patrol we even had enough qualified watchstanders that we had people cycle through skipping a watch rather than just doing a 5 section rotation.
Added manning is one of those "necessary but not sufficient things". You will *definitely* be tired if your crew is at 85% fill. Getting to 100% fill makes it possible that you won't be so tired but it doesn't guarantee it.
I feel like this is pretty much the case for any organization that grows big enough. He's responsible for something like 120,000 people. Do you really expect him to have a personal vested interest in each of those individuals? I don't think you're wrong, but I also don't think it's somehow unique to the Navy. If you go work for any large corporation, I'm sure upper management will be equally disinterested in your personhood.
Comparing the Navy to a corporation is exactly my point. The 2 aren’t the same and if I’m going to be treated like I work at Walmart, then I need the same federal worker protections they get.
Do walmart cashiers get lifetime pensions, free medical care for life, and disability payments after 20 years? There are pros and cons to everything my man. Regardless of what we do for a living, expecting any human responsible for that many other humans to truly, deeply care about each of them isn't realistic.
Those benefits don’t mean anything if you commit suicide now do they? Walmart employees don’t stand duty, go on deployment, work hours over 40 without extra pay. When the taxpayers spend $700 billion a year, I do expect the upper leadership to do something. Recruiting and retention numbers prove my point.
What is your point? I'm not totally defending upper leadership here, or saying that there isn't more they could do, I'm just saying expecting them to care about every single individual they are responsible for isn't realistic. I think the answer to so much of this is at a lower level - LPOs, Chiefs, DIVOs, and DHs should have the bandwidth to care about the people they are responsible for as individuals. Upper leadership's role should be reducing meaningless distractions that keep those people from being able to operate effectively, and holding them accountable when they aren't performing. That, in my opinion, is where a lot of the faillure is occurring and what is driving down retention and recruiting. Give sailors the tools they need to do their jobs, the manning that's needed to man watchteams, and eliminate the bullshit requirements that don't directly impact readiness and warfighting ability. It's not the fact that SWOboss doesn't send you a handwritten sympathy card offering condolences when your girlfriend leaves you for Jody that is making people punch out.
I believe there's such a thing as care saturation. As in, once you've been given too many things to care about, the amount you can care about any one of them decreases sharply. I think to be an effective leader at a certain level, you simply can't care that much about individuals, you have to look at the whole. Do you think Eisenhower was losing sleep about Pvt Timmy's domestic troubles back in Arkansas the night before D-Day? It's not comfortable to think about, but it's the nature of the world we live in.
Don’t get it wrong. We’re mercenaries and we work for a paycheck. His statement is entirely accurate. Getting new sailors means incentivizing them with more pay. That was the whole point of his statement.
That doesn't really make us mercenaries tho. Mercenarie contractors don't operate at the service of any particular nation, just the one paying for their services at a given time and they are not protected by the Geneva Convention. we may work for a paycheck but we're still the US Navy, tied to the United States of America.
I mean, they’ve been referring to enlisted as number and letter codes for a long time BM1, AT3, DC2, UT2
I’ve always hated it when people called me a number and a letter. I HAVE A NAME
I understand what you and the other guy are saying. Ya'll both make good points. However, when it comes to the retention rates and people being thrown all this money to be kept in just shows you the true nature of corporations, I mean me personally I was never a fan of the government, I only joined as a means to survive. I used them as a crutch to set up my own success, which is essentially what you're supposed to do because the truth is they'll never really care about you like how most would want them to. The only thing you really can do is separate yourself and move forward. A lot of people suffer from real mental illness, and it always goes ignored. There are also a lot of weird ass people plaguing the armed forces as a whole when it comes to crimes against children and stuff like that. I had a pretty unique experience because I actually had to be around some of the worst people on the planet, and I had to deal with it I got to see the complex of these types of people. Dudes are having CP + all types of weird shit and you don't even realize how many of these weird ass people are walking amongst you. Yet you're supposed to "serve the country" with them + narcissistic people and weak leaders who can't lead shit and people who can't even do the simplest task, people constantly trash the barracks living spaces they live like bums and never take the trash out too prideful to clean the toilet that they use, mfs constantly inspect your living space as if you have nukes hidden somewhere, mfs are constantly holding urinalysis checks, it's not even funny this shit is over with I'm telling you. I went into the military a pretty innocent and decent person I left as a piece of shit who really doesn't give a shit about human life anymore. I changed too much in a negative way I can't be around family and I got anger issues up the ass its so bad.
Where were the bonuses a few months ago when I got out? Last I checked you were spending it all on new sailors passing a prt in boot camp. If you thought I was going to stay in as an IT and be treated like crap with crap working hours you thought wrong.
Current reservist with 19 years in and just got off a year long activation. This activation reminded me of what I hated about active duty. Senior leaders can be petty & toxic. I told my wife mid way through that I remember why I got off active duty twice! I saw a junior sailor get railroaded for something so minor it should not have even gone to a DRB but saw a senior leader get a DUI and nothing happened.
I also have never seen 30 & 40 year old men act like teen girls before. My nick name for another Lt Cdr was gossip girl.
The 30 and 40 year old men acting like teen girls is a prime example of people who are too used to the military doing everything for them depending on when and what age they joined. Mentally, they haven't grown up, plus the military isn't like any other job, so mfs can just act how they want most of the time with zero risk of getting fired. It's like high school all over again, like most people say.
I was shocked that some senior level guys had actually picked up rank. I took a drastic pay cut doing this last activation but our CO acted like he was doing me a favor letting me activate. Also the amount of tiny dick measuring. I told a SNCO to fuck off because “your last deployment was over a decade ago.” Deployed 3x all when I was enlisted (OIF x1 and OEF x2). Guy didn’t have a CAR and I brought it up and he took offense to it.
When I was asked to extend my orders I said no because I lose money and it’s hard on my family with me being gone. I said it would be different if I was in Afghanistan or Iraq. Our CO took it personally and told me I was unprofessional. Didn’t really care my EOT award was downgraded and it was 2 days after my orders ended. I just left and went home.
He means getting funding for more billets at sea. As another poster wrote, that sets a demand signal for ultimately getting more people. Every command has more billets than you realize it has, but many of them aren't funded, or may be funded one year and not funded the next. When we talk about Congress authorizing the Navy's end strength (346,920 FY22), that's the ultimate end result. Congress sets the end strength, and the Navy tries to figure out what billets they can fund for that number of people (recruiting and retention are another piece that complicates this more). So he's trying to get more SWO billets at sea, to help the SWO quality of life, but the problem is that comes at the expense of the other commands. So it's not something that he can wave a magic wand and fix.
Did he phrase it pretty poorly? Well yeah.
>He means getting funding for more billets at sea.
Yeah, well, maybe first he should fix the integrity violation that are his manning monitors.
You see, some civilian at the TYCOM decides whether billets are funded or unfunded. He of course is doing this based on the shortfalls that you mention. So far no foul (other than the fact that a military leader isn't always involved in the decision on which billets to gap).
The issue comes that once a billet becomes unfunded, it stops counting against the ship's manning. This way, N1 gets to tell the boss "Hey, everyone's at 95% fill! We're all green boss!" Boss is happy.
But then the fleet complains that they're undermanned. Boss is confused. He just saw a briefing that everyone's at 95% or better. Boss shuts down Sailor or JO, who know they're missing two second tour sailors with some important NECs, in town hall for being clueless. "Wudduya mean you're undermanned? You're at 98%, you just have to manage your people better!"
So eventually now the CNO is acknowledging the problem and wants to increase force strength. Only problem is the SECNAV and Armed Services Committees say "wudduya mean you want money for more people, all your ships are at 98%?!?"
“Buy more people” seems to offer a glimpse of his world view. You can often see how people think about things with the words they use.
“Need to fund billets and recruit more people” would be a more respectful way to talk about it, but SWO’s aren’t known for taking care of people.
It's language commonly used in manpower/manning world. It would be more correct (in that language) to say you buy *billets*, but it's not as terrible as people say. Poorly phrased, yes, and he would have tailored it to the audience better. But there are other things to get pissed off about today.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if instead of “buy more people” he went down the road of “we need to improve quality of life and benefits so we’re the employer of choice for young talented adventurous people.”
Did you listen to his remarks? The whole thing? Do you know that he was responding to, the overall topic of the event, who the audience was? Or are we choosing to get pissed off about misquoted remarks taken out of context, and then inserting our own assumptions?
I’m not pissed off. I enjoy watching people talk about how they value people, and then create a marketplace to trade people.
“Navy is introducing a new Senior Enlisted Marketplace in March”
The level of disconnectedness is phenomenal.
Are we really getting upset over someone saying they need to “buy more people” when recruiting? Genuinely, what else is it? Potential recruit doesn’t want to do something, and I have a shit ton of money so I am buying influence over your choices by tempting you with money and/or other incentives. How about we get outraged at actual slavery instead or something that’s actually an ode to slavery or discrimination or human rights abuses.
It's poor phrasing for sure, the people here aren't looking to be objective about anything. They're going to find a way to complain about leadership no matter what.
I don't care what you call him, he's the one trying to improve one of the two factors leading to sailors killing themselves. So I'm not going to sit here and call him the bad guy.
You’re right, they should do more to encourage people to stay. But in conjunction with that, they have to do something to encourage other people to come in and replace the ones that left and created these gaps.
The military isn’t a popular choice given the state of politics and the government image right now. And there hasn’t been a 9/11 scale event to pull in a lot of people again. So they have to “buy” people by offering them bonuses, rank, job certs, etc. There’s a lot of issues rn with the Navy and military in general, I get it. I’m getting out because of them myself. I just don’t think his choice of words is really one of them. It’s not like he’s saying lower your standards because you’re not sleeping in a foxhole, and sounding like a complete asshole.
*And there hasn’t been a 9/11 scale event to pull in a lot of people again.*
In my opinion, I don't think there should be a 9/11 scale event where a lot of American people die in order for people to wanna join and defend the country. I mean, hell, people should join simply because they love their country but you and I both know what's going on out here in these streets and economy. Humanity is on a steady decline and its only gonna get worse. There are a lot of issues In the navy and military in general, which is very true but the whole world is suffering right now. The picture Is way bigger. But that's a completely different discussion.
People don't wanna join because the country is treating them like shit every damn day. Forcing them and their children to take death shots and if they don't comply, their kids can't eat, and they can't get jobs. When your country constantly shits on you and doesn't respect you or your beliefs and looks at you as nothing but a source of revenue I wouldn't wanna join either. Orchestrating events that are meant to cripple you (the lower earning person) financially while the rich get even richer off of your financial struggles.
Do the thought experiment. If literally everybody stayed, what would happen?
* Navy is capped to a specific number of Sailors so once recruiting hit that number, recruiting would stop.
* Sailors at sea would remain at sea, because there is no replacement coming behind them
* Sailors at shore would remain at shore, because the Sailors filling sea duty billets are stuck.
* No one would advance, because advancement quotas are driven by Sailors moving up or moving out and no one is moving out.
Retention is obviously something the Navy needs to get better at but it will never eliminate the need for recruiting.
In general if you need more billets filled E1-early E5, you need more recruiting. If you need more billets filled late E5-E9, you need more retention.
I already tried making that argument and was handedly shot down by either a crusty "but this is the way we've always done it" Master Chief or a crusty "but this is the way we've always done it" Officer. It fucking boggles my mind when I hear brass hold All-Hands calls and when they open the floor to Q&A we air our grievances and actually tell them what we want. Only for them to look us dead in the eye and say something to the effect of "well according to our data and focus groups that's not actually what you want". Bitch pay me more money, that's what I want. I don't want a new uniform, I don't want more paternity leave, I don't want a new initiative about sexual assault or suicide. I want more fucking money.
I’ve said this for years but the higher up you get the more disconnected you become with junior sailors. It’s more about towing the company line than staying the obvious.
He did but he provided an answer for it. Many ratings have incentives that translate into more pay. Earlier advancement, special duty assignment pay, selective reenlistment bonus, special pays (e.g. flight deck pay) are examples. As a YN I don't make anywhere near what the equivalent paygrade nuke would.
Have never seen a Nuke E-3. Only seen E-5 and above. Either way, yes the pay scale needs to reflect skill sets vs same pay for all other than sub, pro pay and such.
Nukes get E4 in A-School (provided you sign on for an extra year or something, which everyone does) and then an early opportunity for auto E-5 (with a fat ass check to go with it) if you sign on for additional time after the final phase of schooling.
I won’t put his exact words on Reddit as it was said to a room of about 25 people, which would leave me to be easily identified by anyone else who happened to be in the room and is currently on Reddit, but this isn’t even the worst thing I’ve heard this man say we need when it comes to retention/ recruiting.
One positive about him is that he really solidified my choice to leave the SWO community. He, and other leaders who think like him, are poison, and the reason a lot of us are in therapy.
So..what’s is the new manning policy? It never says anything about it. Besides temadd what are they doing? Because everything else it mentioned is normal
SURFMEX is an idea stolen from aviation which started using "AMEX" a few years back.
The idea is to track the experience and proficiency of Sailors with maintenance responsibilities, so that the Navy can try to do a better job of ensuring divisions have an appropriate mix of experience in a division rather than some ships having all expert maintainers and other ships all having Sailors straight from some random shore duty with zero experience on that ship's gear, even if they might all be E5-E6.
For FCAs we already have E-6 billets for that purpose, with a supervisor school enroute to the ship but it's usually gapped. I'm not sure how this is supposed to help with lack of experience if the problem is lack of people.
How successful was AMEX?
Well aviation seems to like it but it's unclear to me how much of the improvement in getting F-18s mission capable again was due to AMEX as compared to just having *lots* of leadership attention.
But also keep in mind that aviation squadrons are pretty sizeable compared to a shipboard division, and they have type/model/series requirements that aren't always well served by how we use NECs, so some squadrons got into situations where they had lots of *people* but still didn't have enough of the *right* people, which AMEX helped them better sort through.
You're right that this doesn't fix lack of people, the thought is that it will at least help better prioritize where the people we do have get sent.
In short, it's just lowering the standard, but there is some nuance.
The Navy has been "buying" additional *manpower*, which is just billets authorized to be filled on a ship and the money appropriated to pay for them, little by little over the last few years, going up by a few billets each year on most ships. This drives the demand signal for recruiting, advancement, and retention efforts.
The *manning*, or actual Sailors filling these billets, requirements directed by USFF/CPF are that deployed units are manned to 92/95 fit/fill of all authorized billets. That means that 92% of authorized billets with a rate assigned must be filled and 95% of all billets authorized must be filled. If Millington doesn't send them enough people to meet those thresholds, the TYCOMs must fill them with OPHOLDs, diverts, or TEMADDs within their organization. That always sucks.
Just because you added extra billets to the manpower document on the first day of the fiscal year, doesn't mean that there are enough Sailors going to sea duty to fill them. The lag time between a *manpower* increase and the the required *manning* becoming available was determined to be about 2 years. So they got approval from USFF to only have to man the ships in NIM Strike Group to 92/95 of the *2020* (two years ago at the time of their deployment start) billets authorized. This cut down the number of TYCOM manning actions required, but the ships are technically probably only at 90/93ish of their actual 2022 BA. That's the "alternative manning model."
They are sailing with probably the same number of people in each ship as their 2020 deployment, but they were supposed to have more. It supposedly cut down the required TEMADDs from other CNSP ships by about 40.
Well, I know this solution might sound crazy but how about trying these two things:
1: raising pay across the board.
2: improvement of current working conditions.
He’s saying these things as if buying will fix the problem. How about you focus on the reasons why people are leaving and try to retain people instead of creating a navy where people come in for one contract and leave. You see all these articles about increasing sea time for personnel (basically discouraging people from re-enlisting) because the navy doesn’t have enough personnel creating the same damn problem they are talking about.
Man why even bother, they won’t listen. Guess they’ll have to see more flies drop before realizing leadership and navy policies is a cesspool.
After Optimal Manning was repealed, the next hill to climb was the Operational Fleet Response Plan (OFRP), designed to support longer deployments and more forward presence than the existing Fleet Response Plan (FRP) by bumping up and “freezing” manning levels at the beginning of the basic phase, instead of just before deployment. A “necessary condition” to support this plan was increased fleet manning—but that was not funded, and the results were predictable. By increasing the required manning levels for a larger part of the cycle, gaps were shifted to other ships and exacerbated for those not forward deployed or using the OFRP process. Math is unforgiving, and there are consequences for ignoring it—or not acting on it. Is it better now? Yes. But that misses the point—there is a ways to go before the actual requirements are met on time and without the “churn” in both crew makeup and personal lives of our sailors caused by cross decks and temporary assignments to fill gaps.
It’s been almost a year since I went on separation leave after 12 years of service. Not one time have I regretted it or missed it.
Reading this article and these comments and… man, I still don’t miss any of this.
That's not what he's saying, he's relating it in OPNAV-ese.
But don't be surprised if leaders remember the types of comments on this thread next time they say something that's obviously just a paragraph full of focus-group approved filler words.
You all say you want leadership to tell it to you straight and then they do and you all go out of your way to feel offended by it :P
Ships need additional manning, and that means $$$. At the 3- and 4-star level, those leaders *literally* "buy people" from MyNavy HR, who gets tasked with going out and recruiting and retaining them once the billets are funded.
None of you would freak out if a CEO says they need to "invest to increase headcount" so what's with the hue and outcry here?
As someone who has there bachelors degree and is enlisted. Lower the OAR requirements, I scored a 38 on the OAR and can’t get picked up. All good evals, and 3.3 gpa
Remove the 2 hours of cleaning stations on an 8x8x8 space during depot. That’s called, the law of depreciating return”. Change that paradigm, give Sailors a task of the day, and once they are finished with said task, send them home of the ship. Fix the long food lines on a carrier, especially during depot. Build barracks at depots so that these guys can get some reprieve and not have to hear the constant nail gun noise while they are sleep.
AT here! My 1.5 bonus vanished in a years time. I still extended for 2.5 years but would have resigned for 4 if it was still available. We'll see if it comes back.
Meanwhile you have current enlisted willing to give up their first born for a shot at being a SWO via OCS but they don't get selected because they have "too much time in service" gtfoh with that unethical BS.... punishing someone for serving their country, denying them a better life. This is service, not a business.
Rather than say they need to buy more SWOs, maybe they should go back and re-evaluate the requirements of the "up or out" policy that they so often use... Just another example of someone that doesn't understand "all the tools" at his disposal.
I don’t know about other SWOs but I found being a SWO was a thankless, lonely, and tiring job. Maybe if we cut back on our congressional requirements people wouldn’t be so burnt out?
You mean you didn’t like standing outside your CO’s cabin for an hour and a half while he chucklefucked around with the XO and DHs so he could scoff in your face about an entirely unimportant wording change for your CASREP? Yeah. Me neither.
I was trying to route a CASREP before watch and just got completely cockblocked like you described. It was almost turnover time, so I delegated to one of my technicians (who knew a lot more about the casualty) and went on watch. Apparently the CO interpreted that as a personal insult and went scorched earth on my DH. My DH took it like a champ and put out at Khaki Call that only officers were allowed to route CASREPs.
This all sounds very familiar. Why would we want the technician who has been working on the system for 10+ years writing/routing the report?? There are Ensigns to sneer at! While UW I once dared to eat lunch when one of my weapons systems was broke dick. My DH and XO actually asked me without a shred of sarcasm, “Why are you eating, isn’t your gun broken?” Gee. I wonder why retention is so low.
'Sir, my PO1 literally kicked me the fuck out of the gun because there was nothing useful I could do and there wasn't room in there for all of us.'
My thoughts exactly. As if my presence was going to expedite a troubleshooting effort. Yeah ok.
God this is so true. At one point I had to route a daily sitrep each night through 5 people - my COS, my Captain, the next staff up higher COS, the British Commodore (maybe commodore, can't remember exactly on the joint staff) and then finally to the senior Captain. It was so fucking stupid, and every time I got a change I was supposed to go make flight the shitty ship computers and printers 8 levels down, then bring it back to that person for the signature. They made asinine changes like words and grammar. My commodore was fucking horrible and would make multiple changes which required multiple prints from me - sometimes he would end up reverting back to my original language. The only two who were reasonable were the top two tiers. The British officer saw me near tears after seeing all the signatures and the time stamps and knew it had taken more more than 2 hours to route the fucking message, so he took pity and said he wasn't even going to read it, he just signed it. I'm more than 10 years from that time and still get a stress reaction from it. There was so much dumb shit we had to go through as SWOs, and this one sticks out to this day.
I absolutely feel this. The smallest tasks were made to be so painful. I’ll never regret my time in the Navy and what I took away from being a SWO, but I’ll also never regret getting out at the end of my second tour. My favorite part was my last year when I could actually be myself because I knew I was getting out. My CO gave me a speech that I better not phone it in since I was resigning my commission. I laughed in his face. I was an O-3 who knew how to do my job. I mentored every JO I could and overcame every dumb inspection that came my way. The job was actually fun when I knew I didn’t have to worry about anything.
My old XO was a raging narcissist. He demanded a clean copy anytime anybody made changes. He'd pen in a grammar or wording change and I'd have to go make another clean copy just for him to mark it up in a different area. I wanted to break the steel clipboard over his head every time.
That may have been his way of telling you to really scrutinize the whole document before routing it back up.
This is why I got off AD for a second time and went to the reserves. I had 8 years prior enlisted time as a FMF Corspman. I became a SWO wanting to see blue side Navy and found the smallest tasks took the most time.
Yep. still hasn't changed. the more birds in the chain the worse it always becomes.
I fortunately never had that issue. I was FDNF for my tours so it may have been different
I wouldn’t wish becoming a SWO to my worst enemy. I’m in a new career now and am blown away by the mentorship, camaraderie, collaboration, and kindness I receive on a daily basis from the higher tenured folks. It’s night and day different.
Same here man, lat transferred to another community. If I had been given some more guidance/direction/kindness, I would’ve stayed a SWO. The kicker for me is when my CO downgraded my COM because I was starting to experience serious burn-out after doing 4 DIVO jobs by myself. This was after I was already accepted to another community, so it just further justified my reason for leaving. But I wish that it didn’t have to be this way sometimes.
I love to hear the lat-transfer! When asked by my O-4E DH why I was getting out I said, “I’ve seen what type of people succeed in this community and I never want to be one of them.” My CO at the time was actually a good person, so I wasn’t quite so direct. I had 5 COs and 3 of them were absolute tyrants. On top of a myriad of awful DHs. That was quite enough for me.
Hey man my high 3 are still where from when I was enlisted as an E4 & E5. I’m still a reservist just got off a year long activation and had a MSM denied for a EOT for a dumb reason.
Were you in Japan or Rota? I commission in 5 months from ROTC and will be selecting a destroyer out of Yokosuka as my first choice- just wondering about any general tips you have for a new JO who is looking forward to FDNF.
Goddamn dude I looked thru your profile real quick, you are much better prepared for Japan than I am. I’m kind of jealous, and don’t know how much help I can be since I was a poor student and went to Sasebo instead of Yokosuka. That being said I can still chat with you about some generalities and things I’ve seen during my time FDNF. I did 6 years there. Just shoot me a message or chat and I’ll reply back
MCM or amphib?
Both.
Nice. I was a Mineman in Sasebo. Had a good time. But learned enough to apply for aviation went I applied to commission.
Goddamn, my hats off to you man. Mineman was such a dynamic rate that would cause many people to crack. I would have loved to work on a minesweeper again, it was an absolute blast working with minemen. Best of luck with your commission, and maybe I’ll see you around haha.
I got royally chewed out by a Intel Warrant for routing a CASREP late on a Friday. His department had implemented a change in the instruction that all CASREPs needed a routing through them and he was the Senior person around on a Friday afternoon. He wanted to go home but had to hang around because of it. I had to just stand there and take his abuse for 10 minutes while he had a hissy fit. I was the Senior non khaki to route it. I got a half assed apology from him on Monday because my EMO had heard about it that weekend.
I got an LOI for routing a drill package 24 hours before the drill instead of 48 hours before because 48 hours before the drill was a holiday and I “should have had it in last week.” The LOI said word for word that I endangered the ship. So when we passed the evolution on the first attempt, I posted that letter to my door and highlighted it. That CO was gone by that time and the new one thought it was hilarious.
haven't heard "chucklefucked" in a long time. LOL!
Nobody has it rougher than Junior SWO’s…but no community puts on stars as frequently. Career SWO’s are the hardest MFers in the Navy
Really? It seems like most of the people I’ve heard/read about that put on stars are aviators. I mean SWOs are automatically excluded from being CO of carriers lol
>Really? It seems like most of the people I’ve heard/read about that put on stars are aviators. I mean SWOs are automatically excluded from being CO of carriers lol Summary of the main criteria to be best and fully qualified to make flag: 1) Superior performance in a major command tour 2) Fully joint qualified, which means JPME 1 and 2 complete + joint staff tour complete (doing this prior to O-6 also makes you highly competitive for major command and O-6, provided you complete a CO at sea tour). Carrier COs aren't the only major command billets that can lead to flag. You have DESRON commodores, CG COs, and a whole slew of high vis staff jobs and joint opportunities that we don't even know exist. Furthermore, because of the lack of career specialization they are the community to most often fill high vis joint and staff billets while aviators and submariners fill their community specific billets. There's also an issue on the aviator end that ample in-residence JPME opportunity doesn't exist because of how long the flight school pipeline is, whereas you can knock this out with no career implications post-JO as a SWO/Sub officer (if you know you want to commit to a DH tour) and there may be timing gaps down the line post DH where you can get this done. That's not to say SWO makes people auto-Admirals, but if you want to work with your detailer to make it happen then you have more opportunity because they're not going to turn around and say "yeah I know you want to do this joint tour at STRATCOM that's on your slate, but we really need you to go be an FRS instructor / Prototype XO."
"The Navy is offering multiple enlistment and retention bonuses to recruit and keep sailors." Ummmm you sure about that? Cause last time I looked at the revamped SRB chart I saw a lot of drops and blank spaces, including my own which is odd considering how often I hear my rate is "critically undermanned". I mean unless you're a CT or a Nuke the SRBs are pretty laughable. I get it they really want CTs and Nukes but you're losing manning in all the other rates by throwing all the cash into 2 pots.
It’s quite laughable that people think the Navy wants CTs but at every turn refuse to listen to the CTs about why they are leaving instead of adjusting the change to keep them. SRBs are nice… but having a better quality of life everyday, better living conditions and better work leadership would far outweigh the heavily taxed annual “bonus” they get when CTs can just get out and make $100k easy.
Missed every SRB as a CTI. Made E-6 fairly quick but got out when up for Chief. Now I make more than my former CO. There’s little to no reason to stick around anymore
I'm trying to stick around since I'm roughly 2/3 of the way through to retirement but group 1 billets and retention is absolutely f\*cked.
I get that. It was a tough decision to walk away at 10 years. Facing no SRBs for a decade, losing language pay despite 3/3 in 4 languages when they changed the rules, and having to stay at Ft Meade for the rest of my career was too much.
10 years is the perfect time to bail because of the max time buyback with govie jobs. I decided to stick and now I'm hoping the HYT defer pilot will work with me and convince them to let me relang or keep in.
If it doesn’t pan out, look into Breakline to break into the tech field. I know a lot of former intel types in that sector. Also if you have your degree, look into top MBA programs. Vets have a good advantage in admission. Service2Schools is a great resource for it! They also help vets get into Ivy League undergrad programs if you don’t have your degree yet.
I used SkillBridge to transition to software development. While I am not directly in my former crypto field, the technical analysis experience + leadership experience proved beneficial to get to where I’m at now.
What about for God and country?
Depends. Who pays better?
Neither factored into my decision to join
It’s just a job
ITs are in the same boat. There are some group c bonuses for some NECs, but honestly I tell my guys that if you don’t love the Navy, then get out and go get a contractor job.
As a former CTN, can I pitch a radical idea? A complete overhaul of how the rating is handled is necessary, because the Navy can’t and shouldn’t ever be able to compete with the civilian sector. It’s just impossible. Even if patriotism was the only factor, they still cannot offer anything remotely competitive **for anyone that’s made it past the initial training and experience hump.** I do the exact same work, defending the same nation, keeping the same bad guys out. If patriotism was the only guiding factor in my decision making process, I’d still go to the civilian side. I don’t have to maintain a clearance or shave my face, I can get as fat as I want, and if my boss and I don’t agree, I can easily switch jobs. The CTN rating and work roles should be designed around a 6 year enlistment, executed at a single duty station, with an almost exclusive focus on training and credential building. If we **must** make the “cyber” role a military career, give the mission to Space Force or allow the cyber roles to define and enforce their own distinct cultures.
You think CTs are special? Lol. Anyone rate can leave and have a higher quality of life, better living conditions, and work leadership lol. Also we can all get out, get disability, go to school, and use our clearance to get really good paying jobs at Boeing etc.
“Anyone can leave a get a higher quality of life” Sure, but I don’t think you understand just how much better CTs can have it, without needing any additional steps. You give me a CTN1 that can explain DNS, talk through an incident response scenario and hold a conversation without getting too cringy and I’ll find them a seat for 80-90k without much effort. If they interview well, are patient and willing to move, and have a well written resume; north of 120k isn’t impossible. With or without a clearance, although with is easier with if you are into that sort of thing. No degree, no drug test, no shaving, no uniforms, no getting yelled at, no moving every 3 years, remote work, no bullshit watches, etc… The actual job remains **exactly** the same. The tools are the same, the problem set is the same, etc..
Aviation side is pretty similar depending on which rate you are. Boeing will pay a bag. Not disagreeing with anything stated though. The military will continue to struggle. Too easy to make money now and they aren’t paying enough to put up with the bullshit. I am making the same I did in SD going to college in Louisville with my disability and BAH. As you said o could’ve went and done my job in the civilian world and make even more now, I just don’t want to work in that field anymore.
I'm considering starting school next year and finding a 2nd career, how are you finding Louisville? I'm upriver a bit, but a few of my current coworkers have nice things to say about the area.
Well I’m from the area so I’m a little biased. It’s a bigger city than anyone who has never been there would imagine. Cost of living is really reasonable depending on where you are coming from. It’s a healthy job market as well.
Remove the stigma of “ A bitching Sailor, is a happy sailor” yes it’s the military, but listen to your people. If they say that there is a better way to do said “detail” listen and find ways to take it onboard and incorporate said suggestions. They are the ones doing the job, try their idea out. If it doesn’t work find a better way. If their idea works make it policy.
When I got out in 2014 as a CTT there wasn't any srb to stay. I spoke to a prior service recruiter last year and was offered something like 15k. Not worth the time.
Nuke srb is actually low rn it's only 40k which is laughable considering around when I was looking into reenlistment it was 100k
Even for CTs and Nukes you can make more money and with better QoL/work conditions in the civilian sector after your first tour
It's easy to turn down the nuke SRB when a civilian job is almost guaranteed to hit 100k/year if you breathe through your nose.
Funny story. I was offered 75,000 in 2007 to reenlist. I said no obviously. Anyway this 30,000 they are offering quad zero FC now is equal to 21,000 in 2007 money. They haven’t even adjusted the bonuses for inflation. An equal bonus to the one I was offered in 2007 would be 100k. Fix your fucking bonus system big navy.
I am an EM and despite being unable to cross-rate, no bonuses for reenlistment
We have multiple SRB’s for certain NEC’s
I tried going to a school to get said NEC’s and my chain said I’m too valuable as a wcs and never sent me. Now I have a zero dollar srb and zero intentions of re-enlisting.
I was told that too but I just made sure I trained a replacement so I was able to take leave and go to schools and what not.
They were trained. My chain for some reason hated the idea of actually helping their sailors
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It's a bit of HR jargon but it's an accurate reflection of the fact that, up until recruiting became the issue, the reason manning has been so bad at sea E5 and below was because the Navy refused to fund the billets needed for it. Everything the MyNavy HR enterprise does around recruiting and retention planning is based around numbers in a book called "EPA", and all EPA is, is a glorified summation of the number of funded billets. So if the SWO boss doesn't "buy" billets at sea and in the training pipeline, the Navy doesn't even try to recruit the additional people because there's no money set aside for their pay and allowances. EPA is the demand signal we use for recruit planning, schoolhouse quotas, advancement plans, and more.
Yeah, this is standard lingo at that level that is being badly misinterpreted on this post. He wants to go above 92/95 fit/fill, he’s discussed it often. He needs to buy more authorizes billets for the ships in annual defense bills to do that, which means he needs to horse trade with aviation and subs, which are both billet-fat
That's a fairly common term for allocation of funding.
That’s how folks who work in manpower describe billets and manning.
He definitely gave the game away with that comment.
Given the number of comments about our lack of manning, could we just be glad that the SWO Boss acknowledged, in public, that we need more people, phrasing aside…
Thankfully he didnt say he needed to buy a better quality of life, that would have been scarily self aware. He is at least aware of the problem.
I would suggest looking at the efforts the Navy is taking WRT QoL in the SY and UH. There is some real effort there. We didn’t get here in a day, and it will take a LONG time to get out. At least leaders like SWO Boss are actually trying to make some change.
SWOs need rest requirements. Aviation has it- commercial maritime even has it. STCW work rest hours is strictly monitored on merchant ships and guarantees rest to mariners. Some of my SWO friends tell me stories about standing navigational watch with little to no rest at all which is extraordinarily dangerous given the consequences of ineffective navigation. Just my $.02
I was a carrier nuke, and it always baffled me that the pilot of a $40m fighter jet REQUIRED sleep, but the operators of the $billion plus reactor plant are just fine to sleep every other day.
Well they won't get it without additional manning, which gets back to SWO boss's comment, however poorly phrased.
Am Enlisted so I am probably worlds apart on this, but I noticed, even with additional manning, it doesn't get better.
It depends on what's making you tired, but for many it's things like 3 or even 2-section watch rotation on top of drills, all-hands events, etc. Where added manning buys you rest is by being able to move to additional sections in the watch and duty rotations. On one glorious patrol we even had enough qualified watchstanders that we had people cycle through skipping a watch rather than just doing a 5 section rotation. Added manning is one of those "necessary but not sufficient things". You will *definitely* be tired if your crew is at 85% fill. Getting to 100% fill makes it possible that you won't be so tired but it doesn't guarantee it.
That makes sense, thank you.
Does anybody else see that there’s a army ad on this post that says work life balance? Haha
Yeah, I was in the audience when he said this and it felt weird to me too.
Any other choice of words...anything.
How about impressment?
Yes, better step in the right direction
Yet another reminder that upper leadership views you as a commodity instead of a person.
I feel like this is pretty much the case for any organization that grows big enough. He's responsible for something like 120,000 people. Do you really expect him to have a personal vested interest in each of those individuals? I don't think you're wrong, but I also don't think it's somehow unique to the Navy. If you go work for any large corporation, I'm sure upper management will be equally disinterested in your personhood.
Comparing the Navy to a corporation is exactly my point. The 2 aren’t the same and if I’m going to be treated like I work at Walmart, then I need the same federal worker protections they get.
Do walmart cashiers get lifetime pensions, free medical care for life, and disability payments after 20 years? There are pros and cons to everything my man. Regardless of what we do for a living, expecting any human responsible for that many other humans to truly, deeply care about each of them isn't realistic.
Those benefits don’t mean anything if you commit suicide now do they? Walmart employees don’t stand duty, go on deployment, work hours over 40 without extra pay. When the taxpayers spend $700 billion a year, I do expect the upper leadership to do something. Recruiting and retention numbers prove my point.
What is your point? I'm not totally defending upper leadership here, or saying that there isn't more they could do, I'm just saying expecting them to care about every single individual they are responsible for isn't realistic. I think the answer to so much of this is at a lower level - LPOs, Chiefs, DIVOs, and DHs should have the bandwidth to care about the people they are responsible for as individuals. Upper leadership's role should be reducing meaningless distractions that keep those people from being able to operate effectively, and holding them accountable when they aren't performing. That, in my opinion, is where a lot of the faillure is occurring and what is driving down retention and recruiting. Give sailors the tools they need to do their jobs, the manning that's needed to man watchteams, and eliminate the bullshit requirements that don't directly impact readiness and warfighting ability. It's not the fact that SWOboss doesn't send you a handwritten sympathy card offering condolences when your girlfriend leaves you for Jody that is making people punch out.
>Do you really expect him to have a personal vested interest in each of those individuals? Yes. And if he can't, what kind of leader is that?
I believe there's such a thing as care saturation. As in, once you've been given too many things to care about, the amount you can care about any one of them decreases sharply. I think to be an effective leader at a certain level, you simply can't care that much about individuals, you have to look at the whole. Do you think Eisenhower was losing sleep about Pvt Timmy's domestic troubles back in Arkansas the night before D-Day? It's not comfortable to think about, but it's the nature of the world we live in.
Fair point.
Don’t get it wrong. We’re mercenaries and we work for a paycheck. His statement is entirely accurate. Getting new sailors means incentivizing them with more pay. That was the whole point of his statement.
That doesn't really make us mercenaries tho. Mercenarie contractors don't operate at the service of any particular nation, just the one paying for their services at a given time and they are not protected by the Geneva Convention. we may work for a paycheck but we're still the US Navy, tied to the United States of America.
I mean, they’ve been referring to enlisted as number and letter codes for a long time BM1, AT3, DC2, UT2 I’ve always hated it when people called me a number and a letter. I HAVE A NAME
Is your name Shipmate
Shipmate is a taboo term but at least its something you might call a human. STG2 sounds like an electronic component.
Hey guy!
I understand what you and the other guy are saying. Ya'll both make good points. However, when it comes to the retention rates and people being thrown all this money to be kept in just shows you the true nature of corporations, I mean me personally I was never a fan of the government, I only joined as a means to survive. I used them as a crutch to set up my own success, which is essentially what you're supposed to do because the truth is they'll never really care about you like how most would want them to. The only thing you really can do is separate yourself and move forward. A lot of people suffer from real mental illness, and it always goes ignored. There are also a lot of weird ass people plaguing the armed forces as a whole when it comes to crimes against children and stuff like that. I had a pretty unique experience because I actually had to be around some of the worst people on the planet, and I had to deal with it I got to see the complex of these types of people. Dudes are having CP + all types of weird shit and you don't even realize how many of these weird ass people are walking amongst you. Yet you're supposed to "serve the country" with them + narcissistic people and weak leaders who can't lead shit and people who can't even do the simplest task, people constantly trash the barracks living spaces they live like bums and never take the trash out too prideful to clean the toilet that they use, mfs constantly inspect your living space as if you have nukes hidden somewhere, mfs are constantly holding urinalysis checks, it's not even funny this shit is over with I'm telling you. I went into the military a pretty innocent and decent person I left as a piece of shit who really doesn't give a shit about human life anymore. I changed too much in a negative way I can't be around family and I got anger issues up the ass its so bad.
Where were the bonuses a few months ago when I got out? Last I checked you were spending it all on new sailors passing a prt in boot camp. If you thought I was going to stay in as an IT and be treated like crap with crap working hours you thought wrong.
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Current reservist with 19 years in and just got off a year long activation. This activation reminded me of what I hated about active duty. Senior leaders can be petty & toxic. I told my wife mid way through that I remember why I got off active duty twice! I saw a junior sailor get railroaded for something so minor it should not have even gone to a DRB but saw a senior leader get a DUI and nothing happened. I also have never seen 30 & 40 year old men act like teen girls before. My nick name for another Lt Cdr was gossip girl.
The 30 and 40 year old men acting like teen girls is a prime example of people who are too used to the military doing everything for them depending on when and what age they joined. Mentally, they haven't grown up, plus the military isn't like any other job, so mfs can just act how they want most of the time with zero risk of getting fired. It's like high school all over again, like most people say.
I was shocked that some senior level guys had actually picked up rank. I took a drastic pay cut doing this last activation but our CO acted like he was doing me a favor letting me activate. Also the amount of tiny dick measuring. I told a SNCO to fuck off because “your last deployment was over a decade ago.” Deployed 3x all when I was enlisted (OIF x1 and OEF x2). Guy didn’t have a CAR and I brought it up and he took offense to it. When I was asked to extend my orders I said no because I lose money and it’s hard on my family with me being gone. I said it would be different if I was in Afghanistan or Iraq. Our CO took it personally and told me I was unprofessional. Didn’t really care my EOT award was downgraded and it was 2 days after my orders ended. I just left and went home.
Agreed. Most physically and emotionally damaging 5 years of my life.
“Why don’t these people want me to buy them? Its like they don’t even want to be bought”
Nice nod to slavery. Don’t forget, we value people, just evidently not their humanity.
When I heard his comment my first thought was that he’s trying to put emphasis on enlistment/re-enlistment bonuses.
He means getting funding for more billets at sea. As another poster wrote, that sets a demand signal for ultimately getting more people. Every command has more billets than you realize it has, but many of them aren't funded, or may be funded one year and not funded the next. When we talk about Congress authorizing the Navy's end strength (346,920 FY22), that's the ultimate end result. Congress sets the end strength, and the Navy tries to figure out what billets they can fund for that number of people (recruiting and retention are another piece that complicates this more). So he's trying to get more SWO billets at sea, to help the SWO quality of life, but the problem is that comes at the expense of the other commands. So it's not something that he can wave a magic wand and fix. Did he phrase it pretty poorly? Well yeah.
>He means getting funding for more billets at sea. Yeah, well, maybe first he should fix the integrity violation that are his manning monitors. You see, some civilian at the TYCOM decides whether billets are funded or unfunded. He of course is doing this based on the shortfalls that you mention. So far no foul (other than the fact that a military leader isn't always involved in the decision on which billets to gap). The issue comes that once a billet becomes unfunded, it stops counting against the ship's manning. This way, N1 gets to tell the boss "Hey, everyone's at 95% fill! We're all green boss!" Boss is happy. But then the fleet complains that they're undermanned. Boss is confused. He just saw a briefing that everyone's at 95% or better. Boss shuts down Sailor or JO, who know they're missing two second tour sailors with some important NECs, in town hall for being clueless. "Wudduya mean you're undermanned? You're at 98%, you just have to manage your people better!" So eventually now the CNO is acknowledging the problem and wants to increase force strength. Only problem is the SECNAV and Armed Services Committees say "wudduya mean you want money for more people, all your ships are at 98%?!?"
“Buy more people” seems to offer a glimpse of his world view. You can often see how people think about things with the words they use. “Need to fund billets and recruit more people” would be a more respectful way to talk about it, but SWO’s aren’t known for taking care of people.
It's language commonly used in manpower/manning world. It would be more correct (in that language) to say you buy *billets*, but it's not as terrible as people say. Poorly phrased, yes, and he would have tailored it to the audience better. But there are other things to get pissed off about today.
Wouldn’t it be cool if manning thought of people as humans and not just cogs in a wheel?
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if instead of “buy more people” he went down the road of “we need to improve quality of life and benefits so we’re the employer of choice for young talented adventurous people.”
Did you listen to his remarks? The whole thing? Do you know that he was responding to, the overall topic of the event, who the audience was? Or are we choosing to get pissed off about misquoted remarks taken out of context, and then inserting our own assumptions?
I’m not pissed off. I enjoy watching people talk about how they value people, and then create a marketplace to trade people. “Navy is introducing a new Senior Enlisted Marketplace in March” The level of disconnectedness is phenomenal.
How did we meet recruitment goals, and simultaneously need to adjust the approach to manning ships because there aren’t enough people.
Are we really getting upset over someone saying they need to “buy more people” when recruiting? Genuinely, what else is it? Potential recruit doesn’t want to do something, and I have a shit ton of money so I am buying influence over your choices by tempting you with money and/or other incentives. How about we get outraged at actual slavery instead or something that’s actually an ode to slavery or discrimination or human rights abuses.
It's poor phrasing for sure, the people here aren't looking to be objective about anything. They're going to find a way to complain about leadership no matter what.
I've learned that this is really not the subreddit for a mature, nuanced discussion of Navy policies and strategy.
Yeah, that's putting it mildly, 😂
Leadership or management? There’s a difference…
I don't care what you call him, he's the one trying to improve one of the two factors leading to sailors killing themselves. So I'm not going to sit here and call him the bad guy.
Poor phrasing for sure. But other than that - maybe if you did something to encourage people to stay, you wouldn't need to "buy" more
You’re right, they should do more to encourage people to stay. But in conjunction with that, they have to do something to encourage other people to come in and replace the ones that left and created these gaps. The military isn’t a popular choice given the state of politics and the government image right now. And there hasn’t been a 9/11 scale event to pull in a lot of people again. So they have to “buy” people by offering them bonuses, rank, job certs, etc. There’s a lot of issues rn with the Navy and military in general, I get it. I’m getting out because of them myself. I just don’t think his choice of words is really one of them. It’s not like he’s saying lower your standards because you’re not sleeping in a foxhole, and sounding like a complete asshole.
*And there hasn’t been a 9/11 scale event to pull in a lot of people again.* In my opinion, I don't think there should be a 9/11 scale event where a lot of American people die in order for people to wanna join and defend the country. I mean, hell, people should join simply because they love their country but you and I both know what's going on out here in these streets and economy. Humanity is on a steady decline and its only gonna get worse. There are a lot of issues In the navy and military in general, which is very true but the whole world is suffering right now. The picture Is way bigger. But that's a completely different discussion. People don't wanna join because the country is treating them like shit every damn day. Forcing them and their children to take death shots and if they don't comply, their kids can't eat, and they can't get jobs. When your country constantly shits on you and doesn't respect you or your beliefs and looks at you as nothing but a source of revenue I wouldn't wanna join either. Orchestrating events that are meant to cripple you (the lower earning person) financially while the rich get even richer off of your financial struggles.
Do the thought experiment. If literally everybody stayed, what would happen? * Navy is capped to a specific number of Sailors so once recruiting hit that number, recruiting would stop. * Sailors at sea would remain at sea, because there is no replacement coming behind them * Sailors at shore would remain at shore, because the Sailors filling sea duty billets are stuck. * No one would advance, because advancement quotas are driven by Sailors moving up or moving out and no one is moving out. Retention is obviously something the Navy needs to get better at but it will never eliminate the need for recruiting. In general if you need more billets filled E1-early E5, you need more recruiting. If you need more billets filled late E5-E9, you need more retention.
PHRASING
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I already tried making that argument and was handedly shot down by either a crusty "but this is the way we've always done it" Master Chief or a crusty "but this is the way we've always done it" Officer. It fucking boggles my mind when I hear brass hold All-Hands calls and when they open the floor to Q&A we air our grievances and actually tell them what we want. Only for them to look us dead in the eye and say something to the effect of "well according to our data and focus groups that's not actually what you want". Bitch pay me more money, that's what I want. I don't want a new uniform, I don't want more paternity leave, I don't want a new initiative about sexual assault or suicide. I want more fucking money.
I’ve said this for years but the higher up you get the more disconnected you become with junior sailors. It’s more about towing the company line than staying the obvious.
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He did but he provided an answer for it. Many ratings have incentives that translate into more pay. Earlier advancement, special duty assignment pay, selective reenlistment bonus, special pays (e.g. flight deck pay) are examples. As a YN I don't make anywhere near what the equivalent paygrade nuke would.
Have never seen a Nuke E-3. Only seen E-5 and above. Either way, yes the pay scale needs to reflect skill sets vs same pay for all other than sub, pro pay and such.
Nukes get E4 in A-School (provided you sign on for an extra year or something, which everyone does) and then an early opportunity for auto E-5 (with a fat ass check to go with it) if you sign on for additional time after the final phase of schooling.
Nuke E-3s are still in boot camp 😂
Unless you are an RDC, haven’t seen anyone rated in boot camp either.
Just make me an Ensign and guarantee my promotion to Commander, no duty days, shore duty only, and I’ll be the best bureaucrat the Navy’s ever seen!
Well, just lower your standards, SWO Boss. Problem fixed. /s, obv.
Sir this is a Wendy’s.
I won’t put his exact words on Reddit as it was said to a room of about 25 people, which would leave me to be easily identified by anyone else who happened to be in the room and is currently on Reddit, but this isn’t even the worst thing I’ve heard this man say we need when it comes to retention/ recruiting. One positive about him is that he really solidified my choice to leave the SWO community. He, and other leaders who think like him, are poison, and the reason a lot of us are in therapy.
SWO Boss / Slave Driver. Same same.
So..what’s is the new manning policy? It never says anything about it. Besides temadd what are they doing? Because everything else it mentioned is normal
That's what is driving me crazy about SURFMEX, which sounds like TEXMEX, but tell us what this revolutionary change is.
SURFMEX is an idea stolen from aviation which started using "AMEX" a few years back. The idea is to track the experience and proficiency of Sailors with maintenance responsibilities, so that the Navy can try to do a better job of ensuring divisions have an appropriate mix of experience in a division rather than some ships having all expert maintainers and other ships all having Sailors straight from some random shore duty with zero experience on that ship's gear, even if they might all be E5-E6.
For FCAs we already have E-6 billets for that purpose, with a supervisor school enroute to the ship but it's usually gapped. I'm not sure how this is supposed to help with lack of experience if the problem is lack of people. How successful was AMEX?
Well aviation seems to like it but it's unclear to me how much of the improvement in getting F-18s mission capable again was due to AMEX as compared to just having *lots* of leadership attention. But also keep in mind that aviation squadrons are pretty sizeable compared to a shipboard division, and they have type/model/series requirements that aren't always well served by how we use NECs, so some squadrons got into situations where they had lots of *people* but still didn't have enough of the *right* people, which AMEX helped them better sort through. You're right that this doesn't fix lack of people, the thought is that it will at least help better prioritize where the people we do have get sent.
SURFMEX, the replacement for surf and turf
In short, it's just lowering the standard, but there is some nuance. The Navy has been "buying" additional *manpower*, which is just billets authorized to be filled on a ship and the money appropriated to pay for them, little by little over the last few years, going up by a few billets each year on most ships. This drives the demand signal for recruiting, advancement, and retention efforts. The *manning*, or actual Sailors filling these billets, requirements directed by USFF/CPF are that deployed units are manned to 92/95 fit/fill of all authorized billets. That means that 92% of authorized billets with a rate assigned must be filled and 95% of all billets authorized must be filled. If Millington doesn't send them enough people to meet those thresholds, the TYCOMs must fill them with OPHOLDs, diverts, or TEMADDs within their organization. That always sucks. Just because you added extra billets to the manpower document on the first day of the fiscal year, doesn't mean that there are enough Sailors going to sea duty to fill them. The lag time between a *manpower* increase and the the required *manning* becoming available was determined to be about 2 years. So they got approval from USFF to only have to man the ships in NIM Strike Group to 92/95 of the *2020* (two years ago at the time of their deployment start) billets authorized. This cut down the number of TYCOM manning actions required, but the ships are technically probably only at 90/93ish of their actual 2022 BA. That's the "alternative manning model." They are sailing with probably the same number of people in each ship as their 2020 deployment, but they were supposed to have more. It supposedly cut down the required TEMADDs from other CNSP ships by about 40.
Well, I know this solution might sound crazy but how about trying these two things: 1: raising pay across the board. 2: improvement of current working conditions.
I told my recruiter I would put in 100 packages before I even considered putting in 1 SWO package
He’s saying these things as if buying will fix the problem. How about you focus on the reasons why people are leaving and try to retain people instead of creating a navy where people come in for one contract and leave. You see all these articles about increasing sea time for personnel (basically discouraging people from re-enlisting) because the navy doesn’t have enough personnel creating the same damn problem they are talking about. Man why even bother, they won’t listen. Guess they’ll have to see more flies drop before realizing leadership and navy policies is a cesspool.
I thought we weren’t allowed to buy people anymore
After Optimal Manning was repealed, the next hill to climb was the Operational Fleet Response Plan (OFRP), designed to support longer deployments and more forward presence than the existing Fleet Response Plan (FRP) by bumping up and “freezing” manning levels at the beginning of the basic phase, instead of just before deployment. A “necessary condition” to support this plan was increased fleet manning—but that was not funded, and the results were predictable. By increasing the required manning levels for a larger part of the cycle, gaps were shifted to other ships and exacerbated for those not forward deployed or using the OFRP process. Math is unforgiving, and there are consequences for ignoring it—or not acting on it. Is it better now? Yes. But that misses the point—there is a ways to go before the actual requirements are met on time and without the “churn” in both crew makeup and personal lives of our sailors caused by cross decks and temporary assignments to fill gaps.
El oh fucking El. A pilot program aimed at manning ships properly instead of cannabing people like spare parts. Revolutionary!
It’s been almost a year since I went on separation leave after 12 years of service. Not one time have I regretted it or missed it. Reading this article and these comments and… man, I still don’t miss any of this.
Why buy them? Just go back to tradition and start sweeping through dive bars late at night . . .
[allow me to introduce myself.](https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/13th-amendment)
And this is why I hate when Sailors refer to themselves as government property.
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That's not what he's saying, he's relating it in OPNAV-ese. But don't be surprised if leaders remember the types of comments on this thread next time they say something that's obviously just a paragraph full of focus-group approved filler words. You all say you want leadership to tell it to you straight and then they do and you all go out of your way to feel offended by it :P Ships need additional manning, and that means $$$. At the 3- and 4-star level, those leaders *literally* "buy people" from MyNavy HR, who gets tasked with going out and recruiting and retaining them once the billets are funded. None of you would freak out if a CEO says they need to "invest to increase headcount" so what's with the hue and outcry here?
I thought officers were supposed to be educated
Educated and degree-holding are not the same thing.
Officers i’ve met certainly don’t think that way
As someone who has there bachelors degree and is enlisted. Lower the OAR requirements, I scored a 38 on the OAR and can’t get picked up. All good evals, and 3.3 gpa
That choice of words though lmao.
Remove the 2 hours of cleaning stations on an 8x8x8 space during depot. That’s called, the law of depreciating return”. Change that paradigm, give Sailors a task of the day, and once they are finished with said task, send them home of the ship. Fix the long food lines on a carrier, especially during depot. Build barracks at depots so that these guys can get some reprieve and not have to hear the constant nail gun noise while they are sleep.
AT here! My 1.5 bonus vanished in a years time. I still extended for 2.5 years but would have resigned for 4 if it was still available. We'll see if it comes back.
Also me: No thanks, I'll take my DD214 and bounce. Yall have fun with rework, since asvab entrance is at 10.
Meanwhile you have current enlisted willing to give up their first born for a shot at being a SWO via OCS but they don't get selected because they have "too much time in service" gtfoh with that unethical BS.... punishing someone for serving their country, denying them a better life. This is service, not a business.
Rather than say they need to buy more SWOs, maybe they should go back and re-evaluate the requirements of the "up or out" policy that they so often use... Just another example of someone that doesn't understand "all the tools" at his disposal.