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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (126023)	12/2/2009 10:00:39 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543651

I think we're agreeing on most points. It is just not cost effective as a job training program. Yes, there is a military preference in hiring at a lot of companies because of the factors you mentioned. The distribution of labor and skills, though, is different in the military and civilian economies. From firsthand experience as a technician and now engineer, it is not real close in the details. Plus, there are more people trained in specialties that just exist in smaller numbers outside. The support jobs don't reflect the greater economy nor do they provide equivalent training. Being mess cook doesn't mean you get out and run the banquet line at the Holiday Inn. There are differences. A common misconception is that military is cutting edge. That is just not true. Military hardware is robust and robust hardware comes from MATURE technologies with long design cycles of 7 to 10 years. When I was in, a lot of our circuitry was one generation back from civilian hardware. Integrated circuits were relatively newfangled and didn't have the proven operational reliability of discrete components needed for military working conditions. Even new airplanes use conservative designs. Employers using current technology find those trained in the military are not up to date on current test equipment. Same is true for the guy in the motor pool. The differences are even greater there.