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My new office has a collection of rotating O5s/O6s that do like 45 days at a time or something. They're just used for hey-you action officer stuff because they're only there for such a short time.
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Aug 1, 2019 20:52
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anything that puts your total payments or value into the hands of the free market is a scam
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Aug 2, 2019 15:19
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A Bad Poster posted:That blended retirement thing seemed like a scam to get people off the old, actually good, retirement program. "Hey instead of this guaranteed check that we'll have to give you every month for the rest of your life when you hit your 20 years, how about you let us gamble your money on the stock market instead, but you can cash out at 15 years!" I mean that's literally how it works. I'm possibly maybe wrong, but no change ever made to any benefits or retirement program in the history of ever has been for the increased benefit of the worker.
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Aug 2, 2019 15:55
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They changed our health benefits last year so instead of going to the doctor and getting a free physical + getting $900/pp on your plan put into your HSA, you have to do six events throughout the year and get $150/pp. So on paper it adds up to the same amount, except the events are like "schedule and attend a one-on-one with a wellness coach" and all sorts of similar bullshit that only a small percentage of people are actually going to go through with. ~shareholder value~
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Aug 2, 2019 16:39
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Crakkerjakk posted:I mean, you are wrong. There didn't use to be retirement plans or benefits, until people banded together and threatened their bosses or to shut down production. That's how benefits and retirement plans mostly came into existence in the first place. After pinkertons, local militia, and the army shot a fair number of unionists, socialists, and communists (and sometimes the outraged local populace responded by burning down the workplace) eventually they got a bit of their demands. "history of ever" was deliberate hyperbole, yeah. Realistically I'm talking modern corporate anything.
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Aug 2, 2019 16:52
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Post 9/11 GI Bill is also largely cheaper to the government because it no longer really covers certifications* and the utilization rate is actually very low. *It still does but it's not as good since it's percent/LOE and not flat cash anymore, also the list of supported certs is much more narrow Section 508 Compliance is a big thing in my line of work. People get paid A LOT of money to make sure materials/presentations/products are usable to as many people as possible.
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Aug 2, 2019 17:07
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Nostalgia4Ass posted:In very rare circumstances was the Montgomery G.I. Bill ever better for service members than the Post 9/11. It mostly just closed loopholes that allowed veterans to double dip and use state or other benefits to pay for their schooling while still collecting the the entire benefit that was paid directly to them. The narrowing of technical school benefits was also because of the proliferation of fly by night places that existed solely to fleece G.I. Bill money without providing any real training. It wasn't better, no, except in probably incredibly rare situations. But the MGIB was flat cash that the government had to carry a balance for for 10 years until your eligibility expired. Post 9/11 despite being better for the user is cheaper to the government because of that fact. It also ends up being cheaper because utilization is low (I haven't seen any recent numbers since I'm out of that industry but it was like single digit utilization 6-7 years ago). I mean this is a chicken/egg situation but I'm approaching this topic under the argument that being better for the end user was more of an accident that they spun into a win, rather than the intent out the gate (no matter what the political spin is on it)
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Aug 2, 2019 17:21
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Restriction of the transfer of benefits is a retention control issue. If people reach the end of the stick too early and get the carrot then get out, it's a readiness/retention problem. It's the same reason why in a corporate environment with tiered benefits it just so happens that most of the good stuff is conveniently parked past the average expected retention rate for employees. Like at my company the benefits go wildly up at the 2, 5, and 10 year mark. Average retention for juniors is 1.5 years, 3.5 for mids, and 7 for seniors  edit: It should also be noted that due to the sustainable readiness problem we're having a colossal motherfucker of a time with recruitment and retention. Which of course to us is a no-brainer but there's a huge contingent of people at the Pentagon that are confused as to why it's happening. Vasudus fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Aug 2, 2019 |
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Aug 2, 2019 17:51
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redneck nazgul posted:I'd like to see the correlation between recruiting numbers and localities that instituted higher minimum wages, personally. Seattle and other places that have a 15 dollar minimum wage have been effectively abandoned as part of the greater national recruitment model. The fun part is that despite this, recruiting command is still trying to squeeze blood from a stone and pushing their people just as hard if not harder knowing full well it's futile.
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Aug 2, 2019 18:15
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Proud Christian Mom posted:Recruiting is also getting hosed as people are just too loving unhealthy to enlist because they live in abject poverty. Yeah it's a very multi-faceted issue. But big papa DoD can't control that, so that's why benefits get shuffled around; it's one of the few things they can do to staunch the bleeding ever so slightly. The big generalizations are that 1) it's getting harder and harder to find qualified applicants, even with reduced standards 2) it's harder and harder to keep people in a healthy/active status due to sustainable readiness and 3) it's getting harder and harder to keep people in because of sustainable readiness (like 90%) and benefits (like 10%)
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Aug 2, 2019 18:36
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Weed use in the government has been an issue on everyone's radar for like five years. Unfortunately the answer has been to largely wait until someone else makes a move so it's been incredibly incremental and patchwork as gently caress. It most likely is going to require executive action (in either direction) so uh, the issue is largely on ice until January 2021 at the earliest.redneck nazgul posted:Pretty sure they haven't cared about weed for a while, provided you disclose it and don't have anything criminal. Most SSBIs don't care as long as it's disclosed and not concurrent with service. DoD has kinda skirted the issue by doing this in the meantime.
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Aug 2, 2019 19:44
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psydude posted:4) The military is a Kafkaesque hellscape of a career and not being in it is just generally better. I mean I'm not gonna dispute that but it's really funny sitting in a room with two or three ASDs watching them hem and haw about why number not go up anymore.
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Aug 2, 2019 21:35
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orange juche posted:What's their latest galaxy brain take on the source of the problem They're political appointees and/or careers in acting roles so they hemmed and hawed about how it's bad that number not go up but made zero conclusions or decisions. The recommended course of action from the briefers was to increase recruitment efforts with no other deviation in policy or procedure.
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Aug 2, 2019 22:00
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psydude posted:You'd think an organization that's managed to waste trillions on broken airplanes would be able to at least hire some overpriced consultants to tell them how to fix their problems (it's them, they're the problems). I said I was in the room! (in the back row quietly sitting)
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Aug 2, 2019 22:36
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Those briefings consume hundreds of working hours to prepare. Often enough with little notice and requiring the coordination of dozens of offices and staff. It's only been <checks notes> 3 weeks and I do not miss working at the Pentagon.
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Aug 2, 2019 23:12
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My client would come out of their office and be like 'so we have to present our data to [listing of last names for ASDs/DASDs] on Wednesday at noon. Final slides are due COB Tuesday.' when it was past 3pm on Monday. And a proper data pull takes like 8 hours because there's three dozen databases. And we can't build the narrative until we do the data pull.
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Aug 2, 2019 23:44
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Laranzu posted:Tell me how many databases are down. I'm almost finished. It's less that the databases are down, more that we need to fill out about six or seven different forms for the data permission then properly declass/sterilize it so we can actually use it. Then we plug it into the model, press the 'graph' button and paste it into powerpoint. Because the data is owned by the services, not OSD, so we can't just instantly get it. Doc Hawkins posted:Briefings do not consume working hours, they provide them. It's true, they're paying for the beer I'm drinking right now. edit: It's probably one part YOSPOS, one part GIP as to how data sharing agreements work between OSD/NGB/JS/Services but I can't get into it because  so use your imagination and it's probably correct.
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Aug 3, 2019 00:24
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This year I wrote several DoDIs/CJCSIs/CNGBIs and I refused to do that. poo poo is insanely annoying. It was overruled by the staff action office because that's the policy.
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Aug 3, 2019 01:34
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The best part about being a consultant aside from the pay is the fact that no matter what, the work will end and I'll have to find something new to do. And also being able to say 'sorry, out of scope' and just not do a lot of bullshit. That part is nice too.
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Aug 3, 2019 03:55
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Page Intentionally Left Blank still be used in large publications is an anachronism because there's been longstanding policies for at least 5 years that printing policy documents is forbidden. At least at all the orgs that I've worked. The printers at the Pentagon won't even print DoDIs off the official library, you have to save it to your computer and print from there as I found out. I don't even think you can request official printed copies anymore. It's also dumb and I hate it  Ceiling fan posted:Oh, yeah? Well, at least I get to be  Corporate memes are terrible. And for content:  That's the Arctic with ice less than 1m in thickness removed as of 31 July 19. This level of melt wasn't anticipated until 2050 or 2070. We're 0-3 years away from a Blue Ocean Event. Don't read the CSPAM climate change thread if you have a problem with existential crisis.
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Aug 3, 2019 14:47
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signing off on the invoice paying your company $500/hour knowing you're only going see a tenth of that. HA! Enjoy your six figure salary now.
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I honestly blame public education for some of it. But only because in elementary school, we were taught that there's theories and laws and only the laws are universally true. Now, of course in middle school and high school you were taught that no, theories like the theory of evolution are not up for interpretation; or at least not the kind of interpretation that would allow a debate on fundamental levels. But if you were outside of a good, well funded public school district before NCLB came around or your science programs were a joke you never learned that critical second part. Or you did, but you never remembered or retained it because you never paid attention since it was high school. This is of course one of many things that could contribute to this mindset, but I've personally had to deal with 'if it was really true it would be a law' on several occasions and that was the root cause of it.
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Aug 3, 2019 16:03
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oh and it's really telling that proper climate discourse right now is between two different schools of thought: the first is that we're megafucked and there's nothing that can stop it the second is that we're only partially megafucked and that the real megafucking is still down the road and there's nothing that can stop it
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Aug 3, 2019 18:03
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Yeah there's actual global climate change being caused by industry and humanity as a whole and then on top of that you have localized events from pollution, overfishing/overhunting, clearcutting for livestock, etc. which is ruining local ecosystems independent of the larger global picture. An actual serious, coordinated effort to combat it would be a colossal undertaking. Which is also the reason that nothing will be done because ~shareholder value~ People, politicians, and the media will clump it all together when convenient though and you get idiots screaming about how plastic straws can't possibly be the reason it's so hot out.
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Aug 3, 2019 18:10
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my favorite is people confusing weather and climate like don't get me wrong folks, i'm a total loving idiot and i can prove that effortlessly however comma you'll never catch me unironically saying that since it's cold out one weekend in september that means climate change is a lie
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Aug 3, 2019 18:33
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Yeah the soil can't support large scale agriculture even if the climate does. There's no escaping to magical lands now made fertile.
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Aug 3, 2019 19:36
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BUG JUG posted:Hope he got got so that earpro was fuckin useless in preserving his hearing when he hits 60. He's in police custody because of course.
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Aug 3, 2019 22:43
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Maybe they think you're from THE GOV'MENT running OBUMMERS SECRET HAARP MACHINE.
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Aug 4, 2019 15:25
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Members of congress should have to use the VA.
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Aug 5, 2019 13:50
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BigDave posted:Do we really want Rand Paul back in office but with a painkiller addiction? ...yes? He represents Kentucky. It would only be fair.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:03
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I got a letter in the mail from the New Haven VA a few years ago about how anybody that had surgery there from 2010-2012 may have been exposed to CJD. Which yeah, I get it, it's very hard to kill and you have to specifically be aware of it. But why was I getting the letter in 2016 is a better question.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:40
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If I lived in the area I would make it a point to go to that doctor's practice. If people asked who my doctor was, I would say 'it was the guy that kicked Rand Paul's rear end' as a point of pride.
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Aug 5, 2019 14:52
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The bar is low enough that it's honestly impressive he even knows the name of one city in Ohio unprompted.
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Aug 5, 2019 15:51
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I suppose in the good news category, the invisible hand of the free market just went so far up 8Chan's rear end they can...taste the ring? gently caress I'm not good at these things but they're getting rightly turbofucked. Apparently the anti-DDoS service that hosts such treasures as the Daily Stormer that 8Chan moved to just had their own access cut off at the backbone level or some poo poo. I don't know it's levels of levels of corporations going 'woah now, I guess hosting this stuff isn't cool after all' like some kind of hosed up game of hot potato.
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Aug 5, 2019 17:58
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I usually take my best guess and then accept whatever the correction is.
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Aug 5, 2019 18:12
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My solution to dealing with my MENA colleagues has been to just take note of wherever they're from and use that unless I get very specific guidance otherwise. One of the women I mentor is from Sudan and she spent like 20 minutes explaining the political dynamics over there and I was like '...so is it cool to just say Sudanese or do you have a better term' and she was like 'most people can't even point to it on a map, so yes that's fine'. This method however is not foolproof, as one of my teammates is from Iran but uses Persian as their identifier and got kinda salty about it. edit: and yes, this topic comes up very frequently in my office. We're mega diverse (four white people out of a team of 23) so people talk about their backgrounds all the time. Vasudus fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Aug 5, 2019 |
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Aug 5, 2019 18:30
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Persian is an ethnicity, it just so happens to be the majority ethnicity in Iran but not as much as you would think, only like 60%. And there's also a pre vs. post revolution thing that depends on when they came over and so on.
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Aug 6, 2019 00:15
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It's thundering like a motherfucker out here in Falls Church. But no rain.
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Aug 7, 2019 01:18
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Yeah the Epstein stuff is as bad as you would expect it to be, it's circulating Twitter right now. I'm trying to not really look into it too deeply except to read excerpts naming famous people, because I know that part is coming sooner or later.
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Aug 9, 2019 15:48
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I try and disconnect the various high level people from the jobs they do and the actual person they are. Like I served under McMaster in Iraq. He was a fantastic BDE commander. Then he got his first star and hosed off elsewhere and years later ended up being the NSA and turns out that whoops, he's a horrible loving person. Shim is probably the same w/ Flynn. Mattis is the same way. He was by all means a good general, and then he got out and did literally the same thing that almost every general does and got in on the grift. Then he became SecDef and objectively did a good job there that was considerably amplified by the fact that every other appointee in the administration is a horrible monster. Now he's back on the grift train on GD's board. I don't blame him, and seeing some people melt down over it has been incredibly amusing. People are not saints.
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Aug 9, 2019 16:05
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I don't like using Uber Eats. I use Uber proper because I need to, not because I want to.
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Aug 9, 2019 16:47
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