Comment by 23B1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 23B1 | Hacker News Reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have some terrible news for you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, fair enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Huh!

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