Back a million years ago it was standard advice to avoid gaps in your work history because they invited scrutiny by potential employers.
Furthermore, there were some rules-of-thumb along the lines of "Six months without a job in your field reduces your employability by 75%" One of the reasons that was frequently cited was the half-life of your professional expertise and the half-life of your work-ethic.
In other words, six months without work was considered nearly fatal with regard to what employers assumed about your ability to adapt to the work-place culture.
Those "rules" seem to have all disappeared. People exit the work-force and there seems to be little pressure or advice to have them rejoin it.
Has anybody else noticed this?
Half-life of military skills
One of the notable things about Russia's misadventures in Ukraine is how inept their military leaders are.
I doubt that they were this bad when they exited Afghanistan. I wonder how quickly our military's functional skill-sets are succumbing to rust, rot, depreciation and the other forces of entropy.
They had a small pre-season warm-up game in 2014 against the JV but apparently their opponents learned more than the Varsity.
It is my impression that the US military's organization structure is fairly flat and relatively young compared to Corporate org structures. The military is very competitive. It is a "Get promoted or get separated" environment.
High attrition rates mean that the middle management is quickly hollowed out, especially if the promotional criteria involve lots of cosmetic fluff and little performance-in-the-field.
Which may have the benefit of putting a lot of combat experience back out into the civilian world. And they may have no great love for the elitist powers that try to dictate to us.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately our military chiefs seem to be going full-on woke and pushing D.I.E. and climate change rather than war-fighting readiness as the top goal of their respective forces which will drastically reduce our effectiveness in the name of political correctness.
ReplyDeleteAnd political "reliability" is a great factor for upper level leasers, and not having the "wrong" beliefs or associates for the middle level. Otherwise you get purged.
DeleteRussian ineptness a factor, but amplified by their military structure.
ReplyDeleteTheir small unit/area ops have been done well.
However...
Their military doesn't really have a professional non-commissioned officers (NCO) core, i.e. sergeants.
On the US side, privates do the work, sergeants see that the work gets done, captains tell sergeants what needs done.
Flexibility is not in the RUS military DNA.
Add to that, army can get away with more corruption and slacking.
Navy, Air Corps, screw ups are obvious with burning ships or tundra craters. That's an inducement to do things (mostly) right.
Army, other than small unit actions, parade around, run through fields with burning tires and shooting - check the box, done for the day.
Corruption in officer corps much, much easier to get away with in the Army.
Regardless, they're still not doing as badly in UKR as media is reporting. UKR has done a masterful job of putting out their side of the story - true or not.
However swiftly the natural entropy sets in on military preparedness, just imagine how much worse it is when the destruction of values is accelerated by diverting attention to wokeness and other social experiments.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, in the real world, one can see the effects any time a Customer Service function is engaged. 10-20 minutes spent on 'Hold', being told about 'abnormally heavy call volumes today', then shunted through the maze of robot question/answer. When you finally get a Live Human, they are often not empowered to take care of your problem. Escalation of your case is increasingly not an option that can be evoked. The result is, all of the time spent on the line trying to resolve a problem, sometimes even a simple problem, is wasted. Any one else seeing this?
It depends on who you call. I just called Arizona MVD to clarify what documents are required to prove residency, the web site implies you need a mailed bill. Once I got connected to an agent he repeated the requirement but when I pushed back and said I get my mortgage, APS, and cable bills electronically he put me on hold and started checking. A few minutes later he came back, apologized his initial answer was out of date, and confirmed a printed copy of an electronic bill that shows my residence is fine. Excellent customer service.
ReplyDeleteI would worry about the intelligence services more. They failed on a huge scale by getting the Russian invasion so wrong. For decades, the Russian military was a scary monster made to look almost invincible. Granted hyping a Russian boogeyman is good for jacking military budgets but truth matters when bullets fly. Part of Russia's problem is an inept and kleptocratic government. Without a strong civil service, things can degrade fast.
ReplyDeleteIt is notable that Trumpists and the right actively tried to degrade the civil service. Many top government postings were left unfilled or filled with hacks in that administration. All the better to loot the economy vis a vis Putin. Be careful what you wish for.
That sounds like the opposite of reality. The "civil service" rules that were put in place under Kennedy and Johnson led to the partisan Deep State we have today. Rather than "degrade" the civil service, I'd like to see a President and Congress with the common sense to decimate the "civil service" annually for about ten years. That would bring the executive branch down to a size commensurate with the federal government's legitimate functions under the Constitution.
DeleteAmen! That would be wonderful for our Republic.
DeleteToo bad it will never happen.
Obama's 8 year reign of anti-american mis-administration gutted the USA's top military brass that had any sensible patriotic characteristics.
ReplyDeleteThe "Civil service" mentioned above exists not to help our citizens, rather to help their political masters inside the beltway and in various state Capitals.
Removing unelected bureaucrats is a feature, not a bug.
DHS, Dept of Education, CDC, FDA EPA BATFE and most other national bureaus cause far more harm than good.
Russia and eth USSR have always been splendid players ate projecting power that was never there.
They have also been VERY good at penetrating our country with agents, spies and the like.
I would say the same is even more valid for the People's Army and Navy in China. No winning combat commanders since 1952? Played a scrimmage against India and Vietnam awhile ago.
ReplyDeleteThe US had not fought in a meaningful conflict against a peer level foe for decades. Even the "might Iraqi army" of 1991 wasn't much of a foe. The Russians haven't fought a meaningful war since WWII. And while the next dust up we see will likely involve the Chinese they haven't fought anyone in any meaningful way since Japan in WWII and didn't do well then. The only other people they have gone against were the Vietnamese and that didn't turn out all that well. So if we do have to go head to head with China at least they won't have any real world experience to help them. Sadly with our 'woke' and neutered command staff our odds aren't all that good regardless of who we face off against next time things go south.
ReplyDelete