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> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot. If you're willing to accept the failure modes of non-fighter military pilot, non-p
by travisjungroth 5y ago
> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot.
If you're willing to accept the failure modes of non-fighter military pilot, non-pilot military officer, person with a college degree or person with some college (depending on when things go wrong) it's not a bad track. Lots of hedging. Then you can transition to a career in civilian aviation or management.
Compare that to something like enlisted Special Operations. Wash out of SEAL selection and you could be scraping barnacles off the side of a ship. Maybe you wash out of Special Forces selection and you end up in infantry. But then you decide you want to stop blowing stuff up, and the highlight of your resume is 4 years experience blowing stuff, with a minor in sweeping barracks. Failure modes aren't as nice.
- potta_coffee 5y agoAnecdotally, I dropped out of officer selection once I realized I'd rather kick in doors than be a paper pusher. Didn't meet many officers I admired, I wanted to be an NCO even though it's a less privileged position. Then I blew stuff up for 4 years, came back to a wrecked economy, did odd jobs, failed to start two businesses, sold cars, and taught myself web development. I basically went through every failure mode before finding my "thing". Now I make six figures in cloud engineering, have a house, family etc. Long story short but the "blowing things up" part was pretty interesting and a formative experience for me (not that I'd do it again; I've come to believe we're not blowing up the correct things / people).
- true_religion 5y agoOne good thing about being an officer is that if you get high enough in the rankings you can help decide which people get blown up and how.
- potta_coffee 5y agoYou don't make it into the higher echelons unless you conform to the desired ideology.