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How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds?
An anonymous reader writes "Cyber Warfare is a hot topic these days. A major reorganization may be looming, but a critical component is a culture where technologists can thrive. Two recent articles address this subject. Lieutenant Colonel Greg Conti and Colonel Buck Surdu recently published an article in the latest DoD IA Newsletter stating that 'The Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain cyberwarfare components, but these organizations exist as ill-fitting appendages (PDF, pg. 14) that attempt to operate in inhospitable cultures where technical expertise is not recognized, cultivated, or completely understood.' In his TaoSecurity Blog Richard Bejtlich added 'When I left the Air Force in early 2001, I was the 31st of the last 32 eligible company grade officers in the Air Force Information Warfare Center to separate from the Air Force rather than take a new nontechnical assignment.' So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?"
Like cannon fodder.
Somebody said "DNS," Vasquez thought they said "INS" and ran away.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If the military needs nerds, they can always hire civilian contractors.
Alternatively, there are certain nerds who enjoy military culture and do fine there.
I spent 6 years in the Air Force as a programmer. The only way they can fix that horrible mess is to stop trying and contract out everything they need. It's basically what they are doing now. Of maybe 400 enlisted programmers at my base, I'd guess 10% of them actually had work on a regular basis, and 50% do absolutely nothing their entire time there. And people seem to have trouble grasping it, but when I say nothing, I mean NOTHING. Contractors did all the real work.
Whale
I've had no problems in the Navy and been put on some really choice assignments because of my technical expertise. However, I've also seen some technical experts that got nothing from it and driven out of the service. If you flaunt it like sliced bread has nothing on you, yea, you're going to get treated like a prick. If you just do your thing and not care about the rest, you can do pretty darn good. Unfortunately, at some point you get forced to put down the wrench and pick up the pen, and then its just not fun anymore. Its great if you're just in for the college money, sucks later on if you decide to make a career out of it.
I did work as a contractor for the Defense Support Program and was impressed by the way the Air Force ran the program. The IT group I was with was treated with respect by the AF personnel. Unfortunately, it was the contracting company I worked for that insisted on playing politics rather than getting the job done. If only someone could find a way to remove office politics from the workplace (and, yes, I realize that there is irony in asking that office politics be removed from a government-run program).
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
The Military (USAF) always treated me
with great respect. It was the other civilians that would give you a hard time. The military members were all very hard-working and saw that I am too. They repected my expertise and knew about how to be tolerant of my lifestyle even better than civilians (who hated my lifestyle).
And military weren't trying to funnel contracts to their friends. And they didn't seek to ruin my career when I wouldn't go along with boondoggles. It was the Civilians that did this (some of them).
And worse, the ones who treated us the worst, were the people who didn't fund us, politicians who were on vendettas to move our offices (these were out of state politicians).
These were people with no concern other than empire building in their own back yards.
The Military members were always the best to work with, the hardest working, the most diverse, and the ones who understood and appreciated excellence.
I'm writing in from the medical side, so I hope that my comments can be useful, too. The military lures medical students and doctors with all sorts of promises such as "You'll be able to practice whatever specialty you want. You can practice medicine where you want. There are lots of research opportunities. You can't be sued for malpractice. You won't have to deal with insurance companies and other civilian paperwork nightmares..." And the list goes on.
In reality, only a few physicians get to practice the type of medicine they want. You want to be a radiologist? Too bad. Become a general practitioner instead. Docs have no say in where they practice. And the paperwork is worse in the military because (1) we do indeed have to fill out insurance forms and cover-your-ass medical notes, and (2) we have loads of performance evals and fits reps due to our status as officers. We can indeed be sued. The research is slim at major hospitals to non-existent at smaller ones. Thanks to the Base Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC), Walter Reed and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology are set for closure. And on top of all of that, the pay is much less than the civilian side. I once calculated my long-term difference in income by joining the military and saw that in just five years of active duty, I will rack up a net lifetime loss of over $700,000.
The end result is that the majority of military physicians leave the armed forces as soon as they are eligible to do so and we're left with a bunch of young docs who are certainly competent at their job, but are largely inexperienced.
If you want to spend an afternoon reading horror stories, see the Student Doctor Network.
The geeks get hardly any tanks for their had work.
In my ten years of military service I cannot recall a single person besides myself that
even knew what a compiler was. The data systems guys did know how to run some reports
and such but had zero knowledge of anything more difficult than that.
Anything requiring some sort of advanced knowledge was contracted out and for good reason, the
military structure is not designed to facilitate such personnel. Anyone with such advanced skills
cannot be retained in the military.
Got Code?
I can imagine that the "Sir, yes sir" variant of military discipline could clash somewhat with the geekish type with mountain boots, beach shorts and half the shirt hanging out :-)
The thing is, there are many kinds of discipline - just because you don't dress sharpish and are servile to officers doesn't mean that you are undisciplined. I would argue that it takes a hell of a lot of discipline to stick with a difficult piece of code all through the night and the next day too.
I was in the Army for about 7 years (including a stint in the Persian Gulf in late 2003). The Army has deep, fundamental problems with how they treat techs.
I could go on for pages, but I'll just give one quick example. Promotions in the Army are based mostly on the amount of time you've been in your job. There are also "schools" that are for the most part mandatory to be promoted to the ranks of Sergeant and above. Attending one of these military schools, requires that you leave your unit for about a month. So within my job (74B) it was typical that 75% or more of the soldiers knew absolutely nothing technical. The problem was that there might only be 1 or 2 really savvy people in a unit and they couldn't afford to lose them for any point of time. So a friend of mine who ran the mail server for a large base, wasn't able to go to a military school so he got promoted much later than his non-tech savvy counterparts despite the fact he was a really good soldier as well.
This is a very common practice for the Army. The good techies (like my friend) leave the military instead of reenlisting because they have make 10x as much. Almost all of the high ranking enlisted people used to be infantry or medics or other non-technical fields who switched because they would get promoted faster in this job classification. For the most part they don't know or care about tech.
A couple of weeks ago we were having some inane conversation and the topic of our respective work places came up. I work in an IS shop with a relatively young crew of developers (I'm 29, I still consider myself young) and most of us show off our inner nerd on a daily basis. You know the stuff; ringtones from old school games, anime, Star Wars, oddball wallpapers, conversations about stuff that leaves non-nerds scratching their heads. A while back I even heard someone playing StarFox a couple cubicles over on a Friday afternoon. All in all it is a pretty great environment :-D My friend's response was "You're so lucky, you work with nerds out in the open. All I have around here are a bunch of closet ninja nerds!" He went on to say that if you're a nerd in the army it's generally better not to show it. Apparently he catches more crap about his nerdy past-times than he does about anything else. Nothing serious really, just the general razzing you might expect. He re-upped a couple of years ago though, so it can't be all bad.
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
Perhaps the submitter or nerds in general need to realize one thing. Your technical experience is recognized, that does not mean you get a pass on showing recognition to those who hold a higher rank. Too many times its a "us versus "the man" attitude that causes the grief. It is a wonderfully working system with little need to change, the real change is required of those entering it and realizing that their technical knowledge does not impart superiority over those who out rank them.
Yeah you will run into arseholes who will dismiss your opinion even if your right but that happens in the real world as well. I think Hollywood has really given geeks a bad idea of what to expect in both extremes.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
As a degreed electrical engineer and Air Force communications *engineering* officer I was expressly confined to assignments within that narrow career field. In a service dominated by flying ("rated") officers that was the kiss of death, career-wise. I was passed over for promotion again and again because I "lacked the breadth of assignments and experience required for advancement". My classmates with history and general studies degrees got the maintenance, operations, and command assignments and promotions I could not.
Now retired from the Air Force and working as an IT contractor, my skills are very much in demand. My salary is probably double that of my peers that got "definitely promote" ratings in uniform.
In my estimation there is absolutely no possibility that the military will ever adopt -- let alone embrace -- the computer nerd culture needed to develop any serious IT capability of its own. Its leadership is too narcissistic and firmly rooted in the past to allow it.
This raises some interesting points. I've been an advocate of a separate branch for cyber war, but ironically this article has me thinking in a new direction. A former IT boss of mine used to say that in the military they take pride in the notion that if it is round you carry it, and if it is square you roll it. The article indicates this cultural problem, but isn't this a cultural pervasive in the very institution of the military? While different branches have different cultures, surely a non-kinetic warfare branch would truly be the odd one out. The military is capable of scientific rigor, certainly -- the US Army Corps of Engineers is a good example. Yet, we have all kinds of intelligence agencies under the department of defense umbrella where science is the modus operandi -- so why would cyber security go under the military, as opposed to the NSA, for example?
The military requires some degree of cyber warfare capability in the field, but I'm not sure it makes sense as the nexus of national defense efforts in the field. It further seems axiomatic that cyber security can't be reasonably split into our existing branches. This seems to be the crux of the issue: the military may not be sufficiently distinguishing operational needs from strategic needs. While each branch requires operational components, strategically the military cannot effectively pursue this goal.
I'm not convinced by the point in the article regarding the NSA. On the contrary, it almost seems like the NSA model is ideal: the military requires operational folks who rotate through the doors of the NSA to get schooled and then go out into the field. Meanwhile, I would think, the NSA is staffed by career civilian professionals who can not only devote the necessary strategic attention to cyber warfare, but can also train the military as necessary. The article seems to address an issue where military staff is used to augment an understaffed NSA. Since apparently military staff is rotated out too frequently, it is not an effective use of resources. From this description, at least, this problem seems minor in comparison to the issues of shoe horning geeks into the military.
Most heartening, however, is that these folks seem to really get it, at long last:
Let me start with a personal disclosure: This past summer slashdot ran an article about interviewing the Air Force's cyber defense team. We submitted the answers, they submitted the replies, and most people were frustrated at the lack of transparency. But one thing they did say is that they were actively recruiting (one of the big reasons they accepted the interview request). Well, I decided to try and contact them using their website. I e-mailed them and said I was game and got bounced to a government jobs website which happened to be broken and also had none of the jobs for the program listed. After a few more hours of fruitless searching, I gave up. What does it matter how they treat their nerds if the interested ones can't even land face time with someone who knows how to screen them?
Second, our culture is radically opposed to the military culture. And I'm not talking about dropping bombs and warfare stuff that so-called "liberals" go crazy over. We play violent video games to relax. And there's more people in our community that advocate gun ownership and self-defense than in the general population. In short, while it might not be popular geek culture to be pro-military, it's not a single-digit percentage of us by any means. The flip of this though is that many of us live alternative lifestyles and conventional military thinking is that we're a security risk. If it's not our sexuality, it's our hobbies (LARPing comes to mind as one example), and if not our hobbies, than our eccentric worldviews, morality, religious preferences, etc. The very things that make us valuable -- the ability to think critically, take the initiative, and not be weighed down by conventional thinking is exactly the thing the military (like so many bureauacracies, large corporations, and organizations around the world) seems to weed out.
Really, by the time anyone makes it through all those hoops -- are they really going to be a significant asset? Can the military honestly say it's retaining enough labor assets to combat what less-restrictive organizations (including criminal and terrorist organizations) will accept, and also what they're willing to pay? Seriously. They're organizing out there -- they are seriously organizing how they aquire networking and system resources, they're doing it in bulk, and those resources can be easily militarized. They're being traded amongst themselves already and while right now the targets have been primarily financial, it's only going to take a few geniuses out there to sit down at a table and put their combined skillset together and start attacking real infrastructure targets.
"Cyber defense" as it sits today is a total and complete joke. Even with chain of command decisions under five minutes from aquisition to execution, you people are still orders of magnitude too slow. And your entire strategy has been reactive in nature, because you lack the intelligence assets necessary to get on the other side of the curve and begin anticipating and analyzing potential threats before they materialize. Not only that, but the military has long been associated with the protection of physical assets and real people -- they are woefully inequipped to deal with intangible assets and virtual people. This is the new blitzkrieg and attacks can start and end faster than a single person's physical reaction times (on the order of a half second).
They not only aren't fighting the right war, they don't even have the basic sense to know how to adapt to it, or hire the people and trust them to take them in the direction they need to go. It doesn't matter how they treat their "nerds" -- they've already been hired away by private companies, organized criminals, terrorists, or simply left the field due to lack of legitimate employment. And all the while hundreds of billions in assets sit largely undefended, or defended only as well as a bunch of civilians with a hobby interest in security can do.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The military supports tech nerds as much as anyone else. You have to learn how to adapt yourself to what the military wants, rather than waiting for the military to adapt to you.
I've been actively practicing computer nerdity for a little over 15 years now, and what I've noticed in my last 7 years with the Army is that I can practice whatever I want during my free time, but applying my technical expertise during work hours was often ignored or even actively fought against until I started applying my skills directly to the job.
For example, I wanted to write code more, and maybe even design my own applications. I wanted to learn how to use microsoft tools with databases and whatnot. This never worked because it required too many changes to the system that was already in place, and it had a negligible gain to anyone besides myself. All I wanted was to learn. Eventually I ditched my idea and instead focused on learning VBA (visual basic for applications) to write macros that would drastically reduce redundancy in our office. For that I got some form of praise. Another example would be in Kuwait, where I used my photoshop skills to do graphics work for our unit. For this I got more recognition.
It's difficult to be selfish in the military. It's also difficult to work in a civilian job that has no overall purpose except to ship a couple more units of Product X.
What Mr. Bejtlich does seem to understand is that the officer corps in the military exists to provide a cadre of managerial generalists. That isn't to imply that managers don't need to learn and understand the work they supervise, but a good officer shouldn't be tied to a specific specialty. A good officer should become reasonably proficient in the skills required for his/her current assignment, while being open to learning an entirely new skill set as required by a subsequent assignment.
The military DOES absolutely need technical experts, but that's what the enlisted and civilian ranks are for. If every officer restricted themselves to learning about a specific specialty, you wouldn't have anyone competent to fills the ranks of generals and admirals.
Speaking as someone who is (a) a technical person, (b) a noncommissioned officer in the Air Force, and (c) a Pagan, I must say that your statement couldn't be more wrong.
Are evangelicals making a mess of things? Well, they certainly try, but the problem is nowhere near as bad in the Air Force as it is in the Army and Navy, at least from what I've gathered during my tenure. And people both inside and outside the military -- from NCOs to MEO officers to agencies like Mikey Weinstein's Military Religiouis Freedom Foundation -- do everything they can to make sure evangelicals inside the military don't violate servicemembers' First Amendment rights.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Why is this shit modded up as interesting? I can understand atheists being upset over having religion forced on them as a condition (subtle or not so subtle) of moving up the ranks, getting contracts, etc., but you seem to be like most atheists where the mere presence of a religious atmosphere drives you apoplectic.
You could also say that most technical people tend to not be macho and all of that which would make the Army and the Marine Corps far more hostile.
I am a reservist. My full time job is a sys admin for a fairly large engineering firm. When I deployed to Iraq last year, I spent my time providing security for a small FOB in Anbar. My job in the Marine Corps is Data. The government sent me to six months (of ultimately unnecessary) training in 29 palms. Yet, when I finally got the chance to deploy, I was a glorified MP. Instead, the Active Duty component and contractors supported the network infrastructure. Even when I pointed out areas they could improve the network, I was told to shut up and do the job I was deployed to do. Upon returning, I tried transferring to a reserve component where my skills as a sys admin could actually be used. I was told, "The training I had received and the investment the Corps made in me was too much to allow me to transfer." The Military could do a lot more at finding qualified reservists and leveraging their professional experience and expertise to help in areas where the military generally has problems finding qualified personnel. My $0.02... For what it's worth... I am proud to wear the uniform. I am proud to have served my country. Yet, I am constantly frustrated by the inefficiencies and lack of common sense. I guess they just needed a body with rifle.
Look at history. Alan Turing was an introverted nerd. He was gay in a society that persecuted gay people. Yet his ability to crack the Nazi enigma encryption system gave the allies huge advantages that saved countless lives on both sides and brought on the inevitable conclusion to that tragic war faster than would have been possible if he had been pushed away.
So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?
I'm not sure where to begin answering this. Let's look at the recent brouhaha about memory cards and DOD networks to understand why.
In November, the DOD instructed everyone to stop using devices like flash cards, memory sticks, etc. They didn't go into why until weeks later, and they didn't publicly release the "why" until last month, if I recall correctly. And the "why" turned out to be agent.btz, a virus released five months earlier that antivirus software should have stopped.
But beyond that, here are the problems the DOD had in allowing the agent.btz problem to get way out of proportion. First, they had people using memory sticks to transfer files from unclassified networks to classified networks, when the proper procedure is to burn a CD -- which is treated as classified the moment the door closes on the secure system's CD-ROM drive.
Second, they obviously had a massive failure to protect their classified systems against a virus that by that point should have been easily detected and removed ... which raises the question, what sort of antivirus software, if any, is installed on the DOD's secure networks?
Finally, let's look at the so-called "solution." Ban all USB storage devices from all government networks? Really? Isn't that a bit like hitting a fly with a sledgehammer? The existing procedures on transferring data to classified systems would have worked fine if it were followed and enforced, but if the DOD can't enforce those procedures, how does it expect to enforce even more draconian measures that seek to ban the use of USB storage devices altogether? No, the DOD's decision smacks of overreaction and panic.
And it's telling that the ban is still in place four months after the fact. What that tells me is that the DOD is not prepared to properly and adequately protect its own networks, much less engage in some lofty concept of "cyber warfare." The DOD is still struggling to define what cyberspace is -- how can they fight in a domain when they don't even know its boundaries?
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
First, a bit of background. I separated from the Air Force in 2006. When I left I had a CJR (waiting list number to keep my own job) in the 280s. That means just in the quarter I would have re-enlisted, 280 people would have to leave, choose other jobs, or fill spots before I got a spot to keep my own job. I left as a 3c051, Computer communications and operations, with the rank of SrA. I actually had a line number for Staff, which I got on my first try, mostly on the strength of my career knowledge. For those not in the know, advancement up to Senior Airman is automatic, and tied to time in grade, until the NCO (Sergeant) ranks. After that point, it's based on a point system comprised of time in grade, decorations, and your results in a test on general air force knowledge and career knowledge.
My assumption was, with as little relative time in grade as I had, that taking the tests was merely a day doing something different, and why not. But my scores, primarily on the career knowledge, was so high as to overcome my lack of points for time in rank and decorations.
So, ignoring any of my own opinions about how good or knowledgeable I am, by the measures that the Air Force has, I was the top of the class. I was also assigned to an Info Warfare Flight, exactly the unit that would be concerned with the things being discussed as priorities then, and today. None of it figured into Rank, or into my skill level, or if they tried to retain me.
The fact that I could run circles around the Staffs and Techs in my unit, and they knew it and deferred to me on technical matters, was irrelevant to what even my technical skill rating was, let alone pay or rank. By the standard of the air force, they had higher skill levels in technical proficiency than I did. Quite frankly, given that I had computer knowledge coming in, I'm certain I could have passed the 7 level class without any effort. However, it's not even offered till you've had Staff on for long enough to get scheduled for it, so, basically a year, mission requirements allowing. Further, as I was processing out, the unit First Shirt (kind of an HR Sergeant) gave a little speech to the airmen, saying those in overfilled career fields should stay in and retrain to something else, that we were young, therefore it was easy for us to do different things, therefore our experience at what we already were doing was irrelevant. I found it insulting to say the least.
The bottom line is this. The military is not setup to advance and reward those with technical ability. It is setup to have standard sized cogs. One airman's supposed to be exactly equivalent to another, One Staff equivalent to another staff. And if you're thinking from the mindset that one airman could be blown up, and his or her replacement must be ready to step in, it makes a kind of sense. It also doesn't make sense to promote up the ranks based on tech ability. NCO's are the equivalent of lower and middle management, Senior NCO's middle to upper, and officers filling out upper and executive levels. Just because you're an ace with networks certainly doesn't mean you are ready to lead people.
So, the system itself isn't designed to handle individuals that have technical ability, but who aren't ready/don't want to command lower level troops. None of this even TOUCHES on the way the military lifestyle itself clashes with the general hacker mentality. About the only draw the military has at all is that they will accept just about anyone, and if you can prove a certain aptitude, you will be allowed to do computer work, no previous provable experience or training required. For some of us who don't do well with traditional education, and don't want to work up through the hell desk ladder, it's got that as a draw. But that will only keep people in for 4 and out, and they then use that experience to go get a real job. And you can't run a realistic computer defense or offense program if your best people leave every 3 years (4 years minus the training), and all that's left and
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Speaking about things as a former USAF Programmer (3C0X2), there are a couple major problems with being in a highly technical area in the military, even if you are in a good unit that works with the technical fields.
One of the first issues that pops in to mind is culture, as at the end of the day, you are still military personnel and are expected to behave a certain way. For the most part this isn't as big of a personnel problem as you might think, as long as people know what they are getting into when they enlist, they typically don't have any problems. However, the bigger issue arises in part because the military likes to rotate people around to different bases and this can result in the loss of a knowledge base in a unit. So unless there are competent civilian employees (i.e. GS series, not contractors) that will be around for awhile, as people are transferred in and out of a unit, there is an overall loss of knowledge and productivity as people learn what they need know about the system they will be working on. For some of the larger applications it can take upwards of six months to a year to know everything about the application - and that is assuming that you know what you are doing as a programmer before you get there.
This leads to the second problem, namely, the majority of programmers in the USAF where young people that enlisted right out of high school. This means that a great deal of them either didn't know what they were doing when they arrived at tech school - which means that you have to spend more time teaching the basics - or they where self taught and had bad habits they needed to unlearn. This means that as a whole, the USAF was spending a lot of time and money training someone to be a programmer, but by the time they knew enough to do their job well, they were at the end of their enlistment and you don't know if someone is going to reenlist or not.
This brings us back to the military culture again as the USAF would likely be better off is getting into the AFSC required you to have advanced training of some sort outside of the military, but if that was the case then they would make you an officer and if that where the case, odds are you wouldn't be writing software. Due to this I always wondered if it might be a better idea to just bring back the warrant officer in the USAF and make the AFSC fall under that. Highly unlikely that such a suggestion would even be discussed at the higher levels though.
So the bottom line, in the USAF programmers and other technical fields, always took a bit of a back seat to the more "bombs on target" and medicine oriented fields and as far as I could tell when I was in and there was always a bit of an issue with retaining people with good technical talent when they came up for reenlistment. A couple ideas where kicked around in regards to how to solve these issues, but when I was in it seemed like the USAF was solving the problem by hiring more civilian contractors to do the jobs.
IT services are not the main mission of the armed forces - flying airplanes, driving ships, and pounding the ground are. It only makes sense that those are the guys who are going to be held in the highest esteem.
However, I think it's pretty dumb that you have to compete with the fly-boys for promotion. At least in the Navy, support types (supply guys, doctors, engineering duty types, etc) each had their own competitive pools, and if you were, say, a doctor, you could hope to be CO of a Naval hospital or something.
The holy-rollers disparage any knowledge that doesn't come from the Bible.
Bullshit. I know many Christians (although I am not one myself), and you know what they believe? They believe that scientific advances are a GOOD THING, because we're getting to understand God's creation better. Indeed, various prominent scientists have been Christians, and I think it was Maxwell who characterized his work as "thinking God's thoughts after him".
Don't get me wrong. Many religious people are great workers. Give them a job to do, convince them that Jesus or Allah will be pleased and they work their butts off. They just don't have leadership skills.
Again, bullshit. Religious people are just like any other people: some are great leaders, some aren't really meant for it, but will excel at their work nonetheless. And, just like any other person, they don't do their work just because "Jesus or Allah will be pleased" (although the Christians I know do believe that working hard is a virtue God favors), they do it because they actually enjoy it. Imagine that!?
Holy fuck, the atheist trolling and intolerance of religion is getting bad here.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Of course this was back in the cold war but my understanding is that my experience is still rather common.
Technical people are not given commissions. If they are, they are usually expected to take on a supervisory role only. During my 4 year stint as an Army programmer I met an MIT CompSci grad who got a commission and was never given a technical assignment. He was the XO for our data processing unit but that is only an administrative position. He was rightly pissed during his enlistment. It was a complete waste of his talent.
I also knew a guy who had a masters from Yale who became a programmer. They offered him a commission but he turned it down when he found our that he would not be doing programming work. He took the training, let the army pay off his considerable student loan and left with 4 years of experience under his belt and a masters degree.
Keeping programmers past their enlistment period was so hard that they changed the minimum enlistment period to 6 years. In my opinion they should have at the very least made highly technical positions warrant officer positions so they get more pay, more respect and with that, longer retention.
But the problem with the army is their heirarchical thinking. An enlisted position has very little chance of becoming anything more. If you do real work, you are considered less than an officer who largely does pretend work.
Let me preface this with the fact that I'm a pretty hardcore geek. I'm not quite the type to dress up in a Star Fleet uniform and go to a convention, but close. I was in the USAF for 8 years as a 3c0X1 (Computer Operations Specialist). I had two duty stations, the Pentagon and Langley AFB VA. I was an E-5 (Staff Sergeant) by the time I got out. I will say this, I was given the opportunity to excel or fall flat on my face.
My first year at the Pentagon I was a telephone operator. I had gone through 6 weeks of Basic and 3 months of non-stop technical training for Computer Operations (Sys Admin on the civilian side) and I was answering telephones from 11pm to 7am. Needless to say I was very disgruntled at my initial assignment and it showed. I fortunately got through my evaluations without a mark and never got into too much trouble but it was apparent I was a malcontent. Most of the 3c0x1's stationed at the Pentagon (used to) go through the switch first, it's all civilian now, thank God. From there they would evaluate you and put you in a different IT shop. My friend who put in a bit of effort now and again worked network security for 3 years. I got stuck working on a 30 year old mainframe, processing message traffic for the remainder of my time at the Pentagon.
Fortunately I was given an assignment to Langley where I did Sys Ad work for an Intel Squadron. I worked on all types of equipment with applications and systems that you don't see outside of government operations. I saw that if I showed up on time, uniform straight and put in some effort day in and day out I was rewarded accordingly. The Major I worked for (not directly he was 4 people higher in my chain) noticed my work, said it was appreciated and put me in charge of an even better network with MUCH higher visibility. I was in charge, I had 3 people that worked for me and if they screwed up, it was my screw up. We did everything from scripts to SAN to Email, UNIX, Linux, you name it. The only thing we didn't do was routers, switches and cables. Life was good, my job was great.
In 2006, when it was time for my second re-enlistment, I tested the waters with my resume and I was astounded that I got offers in the 6 figures with only 4 real years of experience (plus an AS in Information Systems and a TS/SCI clearence). I got out and took a job as a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Ironically, I stayed in Virginia for 8 years in the Air Force, minus the occasional training at Keesler AFB, MI. When I worked for the NGA, I went all over the place, Japan, UK, all over the US, etc. I attribute the success, I had, to the hard learning I had in the military.
Basically I would say that, at least in the AF, if you show up to work, look good, act professional and do your job, you will generally excel. There are of course exceptions to this, however overall, I think it compares very much to how you could, or could not, be treated in the civilian world.
Read Singer's Wired for War. That's about military robots, and covers some of the issues that arise as the computers start taking over weapons.
Pilots of remotely piloted vehicles occupy a strange place in the Air Force. Most of them are based in the US, controlling vehicles in Iraq. They're stuck in a fighter-jock culture. The RPV pilots, though, are the ones doing damage to the enemy. They're flying combat missions. The fighter jocks are mostly zooming around, but don't have anything to shoot at.
There's a messy command authority problem with RPV pilots. Do they belong to the base commander where they're physically located? The unit that launches the aircraft, often far from the combat zone? Or the unit that's actually in the combat zone?
Then there's the problem of who flies the things. The USAF used to task fighter pilots to fly RPVs. They hated it. Worse, it turned out enlisted men trained to operate RPVs did at least as well as the fighter jocks. The USAF is facing the possibility that the fighter jocks may become irrelevant.
It's happened before, with aircraft carriers. The U.S. Navy, until early in WWII, was dominated by the "battleship admirals". There was heavy opposition to aircraft carriers. Congress finally stepped in and, over Navy objections, made it law that the captain of an aircraft carrier must be an aviator. Today, the battleships are history, and the Navy is dominated by aircraft carrier types.
Initially I was going to just dismiss this, but then it struck me: yeah, they do. The latest Secretary of the Air Force had this dumbass idea that he would try to make the Air Force tougher. It basically consisted of sending horribly, horribly undertrained airmen out with Marines and Army to do things they weren't good at. A good friend of mine took a 2 week crash course before being sent to Afghanistan where he had to beg Marines to show him how to do things like install the IED countermeasures on the Hummer he was issued. Another friend was sent to Camp Victory in Baghdad without a weapon, and when he finally got one, no ammo.
It had nothing to do with making USAF personnel tougher. It had everything to do with a temporary shortage of ground personnel in the fields because the Army and Marines are fighting a two front war. They need every one they can to be shooting at bad guys. The Navy did this too. Both services were asked to by the SecDef because of troop shortages. The Navy and Air Force "infantrymen" were basically sent TDY to do things like camp security and combat logistics, so the Army and USMC could send every warm body to combat. Its not like the Secratary of the Air Force woke up one morning and went "We're not tough enough. I know! We'll make our own infantry divisions!".
I think the "picking on geeks" thing here is way overblown, especially considering that both the Navy and USAF are manned largely by technocrats in the enlisted ranks. Maybe if a geek joined the Marines he'd get some heat, but the Air Force? I think someone got their feelings hurt. You joined a military force, not the Boy Scouts.
There is one caveat here, and that's the officer corps in USAF, which is a fighter pilot culture, and thus tends to go off the macho scale. I can easily see where, say, a comp sci grad in charge of computer networks would be given the nasty eye by his fellow officers. In USAF's officer corps, if you don't turn and burn for a living, you're somewhat less than a man.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Between 1992 and 2005, my experience was the RAAF treated their nerds exactly like general society treated their nerds. It was fine to be a technical genius but only you were "cool" and in the "in crowd". Otherwise you were ostracised, just like civilian life. Unless you were hidden away underground in some concrete hole with a bunch of other like minded individuals. Generally though these people were often referred to as "REMF's" (rear eschillon mother fkrs) and "blunts" (non pointy end) type people. Often in these environments, the security and "secret squirrel" IT was so structured and controlled that there was little opportunity for creativity. There were enough people to compensate for the inefficiencies in the existing IT solutions. When it came to promotion and career prospects, the RAAF always tended to look after their "warriors". Even if it was an orderly room, admin type, staff member who sat in several air conditioned offices in several hot countries, shuffled papers and got a chest full of medals. IMHO with so much action over the last 10 years, military units around the world will continue be run by "tough", decorated warriors for a while yet, and generally they treat nerds as tools to be kept in their bottom drawer. Maybe its changed drastically in the last 4 years... actually, probably not.
I'm in the Navy in a very technical field, cryptology. I see two groups of people in my office, those that are good at their jobs, and those that are good at being in the Navy. The USN consistently rewards those who volunteer for fund raisers and know their 11 General Orders over those who know how to do their job. I spend about 20 hours a week training people as a "subject matter expert", and the rest of the time gathering info and getting out to the fleet. This accounts for very little on my evaluations. "Where's your volunteering?" they ask. PTA and my astronomy club, nor my teaching martial arts to kids doesn't count. They want honor guard and donut sales. "Where's your leadership?" they ask. I'm too busy teaching the new personnel how to do their job ... err... wait, that would be any reasonable person's definition of "leadership". Not the Navy's.
But the pay is good, especially in this economy, I get 2 hours a day to go to the gym, and 30 days paid vacation. Plus, I don't have to make up time lost for doctor visits, and I get to go on my kids' field trips as well.
Sorry, the US Military is another politicised beaurocracy, as all militaries become between wars and don't talk about Vietnam, Afganistan or Iraq, they are not wars, they were ill-considered military adventures conducted by insulated pols with no down-side to THEM.
As in real wars, command gets better with practice. While there is no chance of the US loosing, in any real sense, the game will go on, but not least a moment in any nation threatening conflict. Leaders, not ass-lickers, become generals. That is the entire difference. To understand look at WW2 and Chester Nimitz and George S Patton. The Admiral an General were military outsiders until Perl and the Bulge then Nimitz became an insider while Patton stayed outside the delicious military lifestyle. For those with a real interest in military history, and a sense of fun, look at General of the Army, George McArthur and the Washington generals and admirals (some of whom McArthur said should not be given command of a regiment, but was C JCS)
The bottom line is that a peace-time military does not like to fight wars, they winge,
Zapp Brannigan: The key to victory is discipline, and that means a well-made bed. You will practice until you can make your bed in your sleep.
Fry: You mean while I'm sleeping in it?
Zapp Brannigan: You won't have time for sleeping, soldier, not with all the bed-making you'll be doing.