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.
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.