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Mr. Nice! posted:FYI the navy needs around 20-25% of incoming SWO ensigns to stick around to department head. Despite this they still give free masters degrees and nearly six figures to anyone willing to do the job. sign me up bb
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Oct 12, 2016 05:21
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SWOs eat their young
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Oct 12, 2016 05:22
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sweg420blazeit posted:sign me up bb That was me pointing out that the job is poo poo. They only need 1/5th of the people to stick around yet they have to throw a quarter of a million in benefits at them to do it. SWO life has its perks, but don't put the cart before the horse here it loving sucks all the same. It's nowhere near as lovely as being a nuke, but unless you're the type of person that thrives in a SWO environment you will be miserable most of the time. Even if you are the type of person that thrives in it, you will still be miserable much of the time.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:27
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sweg420blazeit posted:wow. Literally use a drat headhunter I literally as a basic enlisted nuke was able to find my no poo poo dream job in my dream location in literally 4 weeks. Holy poo poo you loving gently caress don't do it.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:27
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Mr. Nice! posted:That was me pointing out that the job is poo poo. They only need 1/5th of the people to stick around yet they have to throw a quarter of a million in benefits at them to do it. SWO life has its perks, but don't put the cart before the horse here it loving sucks all the same. It's nowhere near as lovely as being a nuke, but unless you're the type of person that thrives in a SWO environment you will be miserable most of the time. Even if you are the type of person that thrives in it, you will still be miserable much of the time. sounds like nobody wins in the navy except the navy
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Oct 12, 2016 05:29
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Contractors. But we're not technically Navy.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:31
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sweg420blazeit posted:sounds like nobody wins in the navy except the navy Some games the only winning move is to not play.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:31
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Mr. Nice! posted:Some games the only winning move is to not play.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:36
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Ryand-Smith posted:Literally use a drat headhunter I literally as a basic enlisted nuke was able to find my no poo poo dream job in my dream location in literally 4 weeks. Holy poo poo you loving gently caress don't do it. You guys convinced me. definitely won't be going nuke. still looking for a civvie job but things aren't looking too swell. The ChemE job market is absolute poo poo right now (thanks oil and gas) so entry-level openings are extremely hard to get if you can even find one. 100 applications in, 3 first round interviews, only one of them MIGHT lead to a second interview. I've always had a huge interest in the navy, so that's why I'm looking into all this so seriously. combo of lifelong interest and a growing sense of desperation E: Engineering degree pro-tip: DO A loving CO-OP! sweg420blazeit fucked around with this message at 05:52 on Oct 12, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 05:39
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sweg420blazeit posted:You guys convinced me. definitely won't be going nuke. still looking for a civvie job but things aren't looking too swell. The ChemE job market is absolute poo poo right now (thanks oil and gas) so entry-level openings are extremely hard to get if you can even find one. 100 applications in, 3 first round interviews, only one of them MIGHT lead to a second interview. 1. If you are going Navy go Supply. All the female officers that were hot as gently caress were supply. Also they were all totally DTF. 2. JESUS gently caress YOU HAVE A CHEM E DEGREE!!! Unless you finished bottom of your class, and are literally a man child, you will get a job. Move to loving SF and shack up with four to 6 other desperate assholes and get a job in biopharm, even sleeping two to a couch in an overpriced studio appt. in Oakland will be better than the Navy.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:44
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I'm talking a lot of poo poo, but I will say that being a SWO has worked out for me. I have close friends and peers in a wide variety of designators and only 1 or 2 have more career freedom then I do now. Granted I had to deal with absolutely soul crushing and abysmal commands for almost a third of my career to get to this point but I am not unhappy about my position now or my future if I decide to stay active.
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Oct 12, 2016 05:47
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How sure are you that you aren't the soul crushing abysmal command now? Nah it's cool, all commands are abysmal. Abandon all hope all ye who rack here
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Oct 12, 2016 05:54
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M_Gargantua posted:How sure are you that you aren't the soul crushing abysmal command now? Because I ordered everyone to be happy.
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Oct 12, 2016 06:02
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The four months I spent in the shipyard as a nuke JO was the worst decade of my life.
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Oct 12, 2016 06:05
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Pilot/NFO is awesome, in case anybody was wondering. Not empty quoting.
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Oct 12, 2016 06:47
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Pilot/NFO is awesome, in case anybody was wondering. vulturesrow posted:Not empty quoting. Seeing these posts makes me all the happier that's what I applied for. 
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Oct 12, 2016 07:09
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Jimmy4400nav posted:Seeing these posts makes me all the happier that's what I applied for. You were only eligible for NFO, correct? If that is the case, stay the hell away from P3/P8/E6. Everything that flies off of a boat is cool and good though.
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Oct 12, 2016 07:30
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vulturesrow posted:You were only eligible for NFO, correct? If that is the case, stay the hell away from P3/P8/E6. Everything that flies off of a boat is cool and good though. On the other hand, being in a P3/P8 squadron means a hell of a lot of per diem dolla. Like our P3 and P8 crews when I was in Japan made a loving poo poo ton in per diem.
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Oct 12, 2016 08:43
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M_Gargantua posted:SWOs eat their young Expanding on this slightly: SWOs have an extraordinarily toxic community. You climb to the top using the knives you put in other people's backs, or so they say. sweg420blazeit posted:You guys convinced me. definitely won't be going nuke. still looking for a civvie job but things aren't looking too swell. The ChemE job market is absolute poo poo right now (thanks oil and gas) so entry-level openings are extremely hard to get if you can even find one. 100 applications in, 3 first round interviews, only one of them MIGHT lead to a second interview. Ok, realtalk: Apply to every manufacturing engineer, industrial engineer, process engineer, and whatever else engineer position you see. It doesn't have to be a chem-e titled position. Apply to non-chemE discipline positions. I am a degreed electrical engineer working as a mechanical engineer. It happens. Apply to software engineering positions if you have any idea how to code.
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Oct 12, 2016 11:06
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ManMythLegend posted:Because I ordered everyone to be happy. 
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Oct 12, 2016 12:49
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As said, find something in the engineering field over Navy, but if you truly feel the need to go in, there's also the Engineering Duty Officer system. They promote fast, and it's decidedly less backstabby than SWO. Still a miserable existence, but at least you'll see your house more often. Plus maybe you'll get to design the next lovely "armor" they slap onto LCSes to make them mission capable.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:03
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I definitely have this patch mounted in my cabin.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:24
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sweg420blazeit posted:I've always had a huge interest in the navy, so that's why I'm looking into all this so seriously. Well I don't want to discount that, because wanting to have (or more often wanting to have had) a career in the Navy, however long, is something some people won't ever satisfy until they do it. It's good that you seem to be taking on the thread's advice. I won't tell you not to join, but it's helpful to know the realities of what your hypothetical Thursday in mid-June 2019 is going to look like. Hint: you will be summoned from two hours sleep, trying not to get stains from your oozing heat rash on your wash khakis, to explain why SN Timmy gaffed off the roving logs and then got drunk, drove his car off the pier, and then shot his pregnant 19 year old wife. Go the contractor route if you want to make money and have a reasonable life outside work. If you want to be able to look in the mirror and say "I was a Naval Officer", Supply Corps is probably the most rational way to do that. You'll (probably) get to go to sea, do Navy stuff, and be an actual officer. You'll never have a command afloat, so if that's a huge deal then be aware of it, but it will set you up pretty well for a civilian career in logistics and inventory.
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Oct 12, 2016 13:35
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Or: Compromise and apply for work at the shipyards and manufacturing. Electric Boat, Newport News, Portsmouth, are all hiring engineers.
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Oct 12, 2016 14:16
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hogmartin posted:Hint: you will be summoned from two hours sleep, trying not to get stains from your oozing heat rash on your wash khakis, to explain why SN Timmy gaffed off the roving logs and then got drunk, drove his car off the pier, and then shot his pregnant 19 year old wife. This is true across all services, too. In the span of one year, I had troops who: "shot himself" in the hand (his wife shot him), got hit in the face by a loving taxi, drove 115 miles to violate a no-alcohol order where nobody could see (and got hit by a car afterwards), and one who routinely went to the shitter to take naps,. I also had a superior (by two years) who flunked his checkride because he hadn't updated his checklists since his last assignment at our base 4 years earlier, then less than a year later the squadron commander pulled his qual because he lost his required gear (there's a list of stuff you need on every flight), went to life support to check out a headset, and just flew without anything else. It was discovered while they were crossing Pakistan for a 12+ hour OEF mission. The following year's deployment, he got kicked off his crew and put to work for me because they'd had enough of his poo poo. While he was completely failing at every task I gave him, he was notified that he'd be promoted to O-4 in his first eligibility window.
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Oct 12, 2016 15:39
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Look in to the Civil Engineering Corps as well, they aren't very specific about what kind of engineering degree you need so you are probably good to go. The upshot is if you are lucky you will do civic action and disaster relief and no poo poo make peoples lives better. The downside is you will be leading Seabees who aren't exactly the sharpest tools left out in the rain next to the shed that someone just threw plywood over instead of putting away.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:04
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Or oil or gas drilling, from what I hear they can't hire people fast enough. So that's kind of the spectrum. If you just need a job soon, civilian engineering stuff and shipyard or other contractor work is profitable and available, presuming you don't mind relocating. Big upside is that if you find out 2 years in that it's not your thing, you can cash out and go do something else without much consequence. If you're going to regret 25 years from now that you never served, Supply Corps probably a good option. It seems a lot less backbitey than other communities, and you get to go to sea, and you're a no-poo poo commissioned officer in the United States Navy. My dad was a disbursing officer on a destroyer tender and got to go on westpacs during the 1970s and visit Japan and Hong Kong, then in the reserves he got to do his two weeks all over Europe and do interop stuff with other NATO forces. It's the Real Navy in every way, but you'll never command a ship. If what you actually want to do is command a ship, you're gonna have to go line. It's going to be tough and demanding and unpleasant, physically and mentally. You'll be woken up to verify tagouts and you'll have to play politics to survive, much less advance. Be aware of what it entails. In my admittedly-blueshirt experience, the quintessential Navy hardship isn't coming together to heroically overcome massive odds, it's realizing that you've been staring at a gauge that hasn't moved for five hours because someone got disqualified and you're genuinely happy about getting relieved in an hour to go eat freezerburned chicken wheels.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:43
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Seeing someone turned away from not only the nuclear program, but the officer nuclear program gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. When I was in the drop rate in the nuke program was pretty high. About 1/3 of the entire non-nuke crew on my sub was a nuke drop.
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Oct 12, 2016 16:51
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vulturesrow posted:You were only eligible for NFO, correct? If that is the case, stay the hell away from P3/P8/E6. Everything that flies off of a boat is cool and good though. Correct, technically not qualified for pilot since I didn't know how to do the depth perception test, but since NFO is the route I wanted to go anyways, I'm not too torn up about that. And is maritime patrol not a good option? Because I actually was hoping to qualify for work on a P8 if I got accepted. I grew up in the PNW and spent a lot of time around Whidbey Island so I got to watch the P3 patrols go out, and since the P8s are the new and improved version of that I was hoping to have that as my plane. no bones about it posted:On the other hand, being in a P3/P8 squadron means a hell of a lot of per diem dolla. Like our P3 and P8 crews when I was in Japan made a loving poo poo ton in per diem. How does the per diem work exactly? Is it every day your deployed outside CONUS?
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Oct 12, 2016 17:03
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You should probably just enlist instead. You recruiter should tell you that if you don't like you job, you can always choose a different rating later.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:15
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Ron Jeremy posted:You should probably just enlist instead. You recruiter should tell you that if you don't like you job, you can always choose a different rating later. ahem different NOS later.
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Oct 12, 2016 17:29
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The undesignated program is a really great, little known secret where you get to try out all the different NOS codes and see which one you like best...it's like a test drive for your career!
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Oct 12, 2016 17:46
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For those of you with SWO experience, I've heard a lot of negatives. What are some of the positives of the job? Also what's the day to day like for an NFO? Pilots have a pretty obvious job description, but the role of NFO seems a bit more nebulous. Thanks again everyone for all the advice. I've learned more here in a couple days than months of research elsewhere on the internet.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:17
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I miss driving ships out at sea. You don't get the same shiphandling experience with any other designator. Even the ones that start as swo like SWO/IP, SWO/ED, SWO(N), etc all pretty much end their shiphandling as soon as they get their pin and they move onto their final community. Taking care of my division and shielding them from bullshit as much as I could was a positive. I learned how to take charge of a group of people and get poo poo done in a way that I really didn't before. SWOs get thrown into leadership roles pretty much immediately and you don't see that anywhere else in the fleet. As a baby SWO you will be responsible for up to a dozen or so sailors or more. You will also be responsible for some portion of the ship whether it's electrical systems, the main engines, weapon systems, administration, or any of the other JO jobs your skipper assigns you. So you'll be the one that gets to wake the captain up at 3 am to tell him that X is broken and you're the one that's gonna get chewed out by the same person for any problems your sailors or equipment cause. Some wardrooms are extremely helpful and have great camaraderie. Others are toxic environments where JOs tattle on each other to the captain via the suggestion box outside his door. It's entirely luck of the draw where you end up and what job you do. You're expected as a SWO to an extent to be able to take over pretty much any other JOs job on the ship without too much fuss. You'll be responsible for the reporting and tracking of weekly maintenance. Depending on your individual job this could mean signing one sheet of paper or signing hundreds every monday (yay VLS PMS). You will be expected to hunt down and find information by yourself a large portion of the time. You will work long hours and be expected to go to a variety of officer related functions. You might go to awesome ports. You might spend your entire career in and out of shipyards in norfolk and never deploy. There is good and bad to everything in the military. SWO is no exception. There are rewarding parts, but there also is a high risk of ending up in a toxic environment. I know one person that got medically retired due to PTSD and other emotional related issues as a baby-SWO. This was someone who was enlisted for 3 years before getting selected for a very selective commissioning program. He cracked and had his first nervous breakdown on the ship at less than 6 months in. This was all just because of the workload and how much his seniors poo poo all over him and the rest of the JOs. I know others from the ship, and although they all fared significantly better than my friend (he was a really really bad fit for SWO life), none have had anything positive to say about the wardroom or environment after they experienced better ones elsewhere.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:38
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Note on the baby SWO who went out due to the PTSD thing, I met the guy a couple of times and talked to him and he was very obviously intelligent, articulate (albeit weird but hey Navy) and capable of taking in complex info and breaking it down and responding quick. Those are traits that I'd be loving thrilled if my guys had because you can mold and develop and build on their potential. But he got ran over by the blue machine due to weird nebulous SWO insanity that no matter how many times Mr. Nice! or another close friend of ours in the SWO community explains to me I can't understand. Go find a Civil Engineering Corps officer or two to talk to. Those guys enjoy their lives as long as their Seabees aren't getting arrested, not to mention you could be spending your LT time in a foreign country as the deputy officer of a public works department, which involves liasing with the foreign national workers, base personnel and sight seeing.
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Oct 12, 2016 18:46
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Jimmy4400nav posted:How does the per diem work exactly? Is it every day your deployed outside CONUS? Per diem works where you get paid extra for every day you are deployed away from your home command, without the rest of your squadron. P8s and P3s do this a lot. Your primary command might be in Whidbey Island or Japan or even somewhere in Florida, but often enough you will be sent along with your aircraft to the Middle East or Korea or the PI, and you will get paid a per diem rate to cover stuff while away from your home base. You can type "per diem rates dod" in to Google and it will bring up the defense travel website and show you per diem rates for almost every country in the world. E: the extra cash is supposed to cover lodging, meals, and incidentals for your TDY period, usually they overpay you. orange juche fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Oct 12, 2016 |
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Oct 12, 2016 19:15
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Mr. Nice! posted:Taking care of my division and shielding them from bullshit as much as I could was a positive. I learned how to take charge of a group of people and get poo poo done in a way that I really didn't before. SWOs get thrown into leadership roles pretty much immediately and you don't see that anywhere else in the fleet. As a baby SWO you will be responsible for up to a dozen or so sailors or more. You will also be responsible for some portion of the ship whether it's electrical systems, the main engines, weapon systems, administration, or any of the other JO jobs your skipper assigns you. So you'll be the one that gets to wake the captain up at 3 am to tell him that X is broken and you're the one that's gonna get chewed out by the same person for any problems your sailors or equipment cause. Some wardrooms are extremely helpful and have great camaraderie. Others are toxic environments where JOs tattle on each other to the captain via the suggestion box outside his door. It's entirely luck of the draw where you end up and what job you do. You're expected as a SWO to an extent to be able to take over pretty much any other JOs job on the ship without too much fuss. You'll be responsible for the reporting and tracking of weekly maintenance. Depending on your individual job this could mean signing one sheet of paper or signing hundreds every monday (yay VLS PMS). You will be expected to hunt down and find information by yourself a large portion of the time. You will work long hours and be expected to go to a variety of officer related functions. You might go to awesome ports. You might spend your entire career in and out of shipyards in norfolk and never deploy. I like the idea of being able to support a group of sailors. I've been in small-team leadership positions before and it was always great when I could directly help someone on my team. Mr. Nice! posted:There is good and bad to everything in the military. SWO is no exception. There are rewarding parts, but there also is a high risk of ending up in a toxic environment. I know one person that got medically retired due to PTSD and other emotional related issues as a baby-SWO. This was someone who was enlisted for 3 years before getting selected for a very selective commissioning program. He cracked and had his first nervous breakdown on the ship at less than 6 months in. This was all just because of the workload and how much his seniors poo poo all over him and the rest of the JOs. I know others from the ship, and although they all fared significantly better than my friend (he was a really really bad fit for SWO life), none have had anything positive to say about the wardroom or environment after they experienced better ones elsewhere. maffew buildings posted:Note on the baby SWO who went out due to the PTSD thing, I met the guy a couple of times and talked to him and he was very obviously intelligent, articulate (albeit weird but hey Navy) and capable of taking in complex info and breaking it down and responding quick. Those are traits that I'd be loving thrilled if my guys had because you can mold and develop and build on their potential. But he got ran over by the blue machine due to weird nebulous SWO insanity that no matter how many times Mr. Nice! or another close friend of ours in the SWO community explains to me I can't understand. Not to get too personal, but was he high-strung to begin with? Were his superiors particularly sadistic? maffew's description of him sounds a lot like me, so I'm curious what would make him snap like that. maffew buildings posted:Go find a Civil Engineering Corps officer or two to talk to. Those guys enjoy their lives as long as their Seabees aren't getting arrested, not to mention you could be spending your LT time in a foreign country as the deputy officer of a public works department, which involves liasing with the foreign national workers, base personnel and sight seeing. That actually sounds pretty cool.
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Oct 12, 2016 19:36
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Mr. Nice! would be the one to field questions about the gentleman, I only hung out with him on a few occasions. Do you like Ted Danson's Becker? If so then yes you are like that dude. Civil Engineering side there are a lot of niche opportunities for Seabees, officers and enlisted, that don't get talked about. The people that love this community loving love it. Seabees are a weird bunch but if it's a good fit for someone they'll thrive. If you want I can drop you my email and I can answer any questions to the best of my ability (I'm just a petty officer who hasn't been around it a super long time or anything) or I can get you in touch with people that can better answer anything. I'm pretty sure I could get you in contact with an officer in a few days of reaching out to my friends.
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Oct 12, 2016 19:44
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SWO life you will be expected to run your division while also meeting various qualification wickets. A number of these qualifications require boards with the captain and/or other senior officers. The boards vary by command, but they are a situation where you are in a room (often by yourself) and get basically grilled on the subject area. If you start to flub up or even show a lack of confidence in what is otherwise a correct answer, things can go south very fast. If you can't handle board pressure, you can't qualify. When you're not qualified, you can't stand watch or do some of the tasks that other JOs have to do, and a resentment builds. When you're delinquent in quals, you get mandatory study hours and other such fun things. My friend was someone that couldn't handle the pressure of a board and struggled in some of his basic qualifications as a result. He always has been a very high strung individual, so when he would start to flub and they'd ask him a bullshit question to gently caress with him, he'd melt down. Getting poo poo on by your peers and your chain of command will do that. His XO got fired when he was a captain for letting a goat stay onboard among other things. He was in a very toxic environment. Had he been on my ship, who knows if he would have survived, but the pressure might have got him there too. As a SWO you will have pressure on you from juniors, peers, and senior people constantly without a whole lot of room to relax. If high pressure environments wig you out, I cannot recommend being a SWO.
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Oct 12, 2016 20:01
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Not to interrupt SWO talk but, forgot to say last week: Happy 15 years in Afghanistan from this hell hole. Here's to 15 more.
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Oct 12, 2016 20:15
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