I have posted this before, an argument in defense of stack ranking I had heard from a friend's father who was a long-time manager for a large industrial conglomerate from the 60's through the 80's. Simply put it was that they were far more willing to hire non-standard candidates on gut and hunches, knowing that if it didn't work out, it didn't work out they would be gone in 1-1.5 years and it would not be a ding against the hiring manager. Further, at least in that day, it was an environment where everyone was going in with their eyes open -- people were not blindsided by it, they expected it. But as you point out, the FAANG's are doing the opposite of this. They've got extremely difficult hiring processes and are pretending that it's not stack ranking.
Stack Ranking was pioneered by Jack Welch who was operating in an environment where labor was the dominant party in the labor-capital relationship, and he was taking over companies that had had decades of labor growth and power while capital was stagflating nationwide. Introducing stack ranking was a way of trimming excess fat from decades of build up within companies, while reasserting capital in the relationship within the company.
Long term, it has been a disaster in every company. Because eventually you run out of fat, and then what you describe as "far more willing to hire non-standard candidates on gut and hunches, knowing that if it didn't work out, it didn't work out they would be gone" becomes "I need to hire people I don't want to work with, so I have someone to fire in the next stack rank". And that's its own form of fat.
In short, stack ranking makes some sense if you have a fat organization, not unlike restricting calories to lose fat when working out. But once you've lost fat, continuing to restrict your calories results in losing more muscle than fat.
Jack Welch also mostly made his mark by juicing earnings via both financializing the whole company going into the GFC, and by doing various forms of (probably illegal then, definitely now) accounting tricks to smooth earnings to always make his number.
Having been a Navy officer for 20 years active and reserve, one of the other overlooked flaws of the stack rank is that it's a vehicle for cultivating egos. When the only way up is through many levels of being "1 of X, Early Promote," it's fascinating to watch a bright-eyed humble flight student turn into a condescending jerk of an instructor over the years. Turning the performance review system into "winners" and "losers" and telling a subset of people they're the winners tends to break some people's brains.
Because why should they have to listen to anyone who hasn't gotten as good performance reviews as them? Obviously, they care more and those other slackers just couldn't cut it.
I have a friend who is getting out (technically going reserve). It sounds like there are lot of factors impacting retention and most of them are being ignored. Why should the leaders focus on things they are a part of and admit fault if they can simply blame stuff on civilian cultural issues or subordinate "weakness"?
I heard some of the cyber warfare units are proposing to bring in people in as high as O5. No way that causes any related problems...
IMHO there's a huge blind spot in leadership exactly due to the stack rank, because how do you recommend changes to the system to someone who succeeded and owes their whole career and professional reputation to that system? The answer's going to be "well it worked for me, so it must not be that bad."
The other part of the problem is yes, there are times when the military has every right to expect folks to endure hardship. I mean, the whole point is to send folks into combat if needed, and combat sucks. Being in the field or underway for months at a time sucks, but they're necessary. But because of this, it's easy to slip into "just suck it up" as a response to a whole bunch of hardship, stupidity, or inefficiency that isn't necessary.
The reserves have their own breed of stupidity revolving around reserve center staff enforcing Kafkaesque bureaucratic "readiness" requirements on the drilling reservists. At some point, taking 1/4 of your weekends off to come in and be told you're delinquent on something you turned in three times already, or having to flail to complete some late-breaking tasker gets old. I loved supporting my gaining active duty commands. I retired because I got sick of the hoops I had to jump through to keep doing it.
Cyber is having to bring folks in at a high level to get the experience base they desperately need. This isn't totally unusual though. Surgeons have come in at that level when the military has needed their expertise. And in WWII, FDR brought in an automotive executive as a general officer to supervise wartime production.
I don't, even for the surgeon thing, they probably shouldn't be skipping ranks. If the MOS needs a specific level of pay, they should address it by changes to that duty pay and revamping the retirement system to look at that pay too. The automotive executive is a little different since you do what them to oversee everything since they are an industry expert, not just a individual contributor or midlevel manager.
Funny thing about the surgeon part. I know a surgeon who served and had a unique specialty with aerospace occupational preventative medicine. They didn't fight too hard to keep them other than offering a promotion. Even at O6, they could have been making 3x the money if they were a civilian. Bringing people in at a higher rank isn't going fix the pay issue and isn't necessarily going to place them in the right level of authority. They need to make some changes to how that's managed to ensure the right people are at the right levels. I'm sure there are career guys who would not be happy to have someone with limited experience come in over their rank and pay if they're doing the same job.
Docs in the military have a bonus structure based on their specialty area that's supposed to at least try to keep their pay from being ridiculously behind. And the idea behind bringing a surgeon in as an O-5 is that a surgeon has that level of seniority as a medical practitioner, so it aligns with their field. To bring an O-5 cyber person in, they would be expected to have enough experience as a cybersecurity professional to rate that rank. If they were entry-level but DOD needed entry-level cybersecurity folks badly enough, they would add a bonus but keep the rank lower.
"Docs in the military have a bonus structure based on their specialty area that's supposed to at least try to keep their pay from being ridiculously behind."
Tries is the key word there. Most of the time it's not even close unless you're a family practicioner or other lower paid specialty. On the other hand, there is a retirement program (although that's based on base pay and not as great for roles like this) and they don't need mal-practice. At least to me, it seems the biggest way they get docs is to pay for their med school if they commit to 8-12 years or whatever it is for them now.
"To bring an O-5 cyber person in, they would be expected to have enough experience as a cybersecurity professional to rate that rank."
I mean, that makes sense in a general sense, but doesn't really make sense the way it works now. There are plenty of people with experience that if they were external would come in at a higher rank than they are now. I'm not sure how you would design a good system for an industry where people jump companies every 2-3 years, are expecting high pay (at least O5 with 10 years), are used to rapid promotions, and are used to lots of perks. I mean, you could have someone with 5 years of internal experience with a great record be something like O3 and have someone external be called a senior analyst/dev or lead in 3-5 years and come in as an O5 with basically no difference in duties or performance.
Although I'm not sure how you would even measure performance in that role. The industry doesn't have clue how to measure it - just look at the article or all the stuff about interviews and leetcode. The military might set some more objective standards, but they're not going to remotely apply to external candidates.
I don't know, I guess in general I would imagine the best thing for stability, readiness, and even morale, would be to train and promote from within while focusing on retention. It sounds like they're already providing bonuses for all levels and saying they're focusing on retention, but clearly they have other issues. I doubt bringing people in at a higher rank will fix that.
Replying to this 3 days late, so likely this won’t be seen, but I assure you the retention factors are not being ignored. (Well … see my last sentence.). For 2 years in the early nineties I worked in software with an extensive, sophisticated retention model.
Direct pay, benefits, promotion velocity, source of commission were all extensively tracked and modeled. The problem at that point was that you can claim you want a 600 ship navy, but if you don’t have enough surface warfare officers with the right number of years (or dentists or chaplains or JAG lawyers) it’s not going to work.
On the other hand despite our multimillion dollar contract to work on this software, I have no idea if BUPERS actually used it.
I'm sure they're tracking the shit out of it. It just seems like they aren't doing anything effective with all that data. At least thats the vibe I get from the guys I know and the articles I've read.
I guess it's not all that much different than what we see in some areas of civilian industry. The lower paying companies know they can't compete on salary so they start implementing what I call "naturally capped" benefits. Stuff like parental leave, fertility help, etc. Stuff that, while excellent to have, either effects a small minority or where people only get to claim it an average of 2.5 times in their life (eg costs the employer less than higher pay). It's something recruiters can use in their pitch to distract from pay.
Part of the problem is that for all everyone (rightly) drags the Bureau, they also have their hands tied by Congress. You can only promote and move around officers as prescribed by Federal law, and until the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act gets reformed, you're ultimately stuck in the land of up-or-out where folks' promotion clocks are ticking the moment they commission. It's an industrial-age model that's strangely like a union seniority list, but without the employment guarantee.
As a flight attrite who ended up running a division on something grey, the Navy knocked me down more pegs than I was thought possible. Appreciate the forced opportunities to grow, but there's got to to be some better ways. Sounds like you're doing some good Sir.
I retired at 20 to make my way in my civilian tech career. I looked at the amount of effort you'd need to put into make Captain or above, and the knock-on effects on your civilian career, and said "nope." Tried to do the best I could. One of the best officers I worked with in the reserve dropped on request from helo training due to family issues, and ended up making a career as a support guy for the reserve Naval Special Warfare folks.
