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Making Military Service More Attractive for Modern Spouses

dauertewigkeit 3y ago
Academia is just as hostile. It is even a stated policy that you are supposed to move countries between your undergrad (up to masters), Ph.d, multiple postdocs, all the way until you get tenure, to the point that some specific funding schemes require this. At the same time and without even a single bit of irony, they advertise a family friendly environment and a women first hiring policy.
- sgt 3y ago
  So people will inevitably postpone having children due to this (in addition to all the other reasons that may exist for you).
  - mnky9800n 3y ago
    Or just not have them at all. Children are expensive and postdoc salaries suck.
    - vt85 3y ago
      [dead]
  - BenoitP 3y ago
    Indeed. This coupled to the fact that female fertility is easier when younger (easier to become pregnant, fewer complications, better physical shape, not menopaused, etc.), is IMHO the number one factor in a lot of male/female statistical discrepancies. My wife studied law, and we saw every single one of her female friends abandon or pause a successful career in order to have children. Just like academia, careers in law often tend to invade nights and weekends; and that's just not compatible with having children.
    - escapedmoose 3y ago
      Fertility doesn’t have much to do with it after the kid is already born, and that’s when parental leave becomes relevant. The fact that women are still seen as the de facto parent responsible for childcare for all those nights and weekends is more a cultural thing than biological.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        In my experience, for at least the first year, there is no replacing women as the de facto parent responsible for childcare due to breastfeeding, and the child’s emotional needs. Well into the post breastfeeding toddler years, no one but my wife would have been able to satisfy the needs of my kids, and I feel like that is probably nature more than nurture. Mothers should be given at least a year of bonding leave, and fathers too just so the market does not reward men over women.
      - rtkwe 3y ago
        Well there's one massive factor, at least until the kid is weaned, the mom is the easiest food supply for the kid. It's vastly easier than pump and bottle or even formula and bottle. Beyond that phase though it's true it's mostly societal, once the kid is eating real food there's little reason for a particular parent to be the primary care giver.
      - michaelt 3y ago
        True, but fertility will still matter if they decide to have another. Decide you want four kids at age 20? No problem. Start at age 33, though? I hope you weren't planning to drink beer for the next decade.
      - sgt 3y ago
        I can't explain it, but there's definitely a biological aspect too that matters a lot. The mother understands deeper things about the bond with the baby that us dads don't have a clue about.
    - cge 3y ago
      Academia often involves a lot of time, but often in informal and flexible ways, with relatively little inflexible time (eg, lectures), and campuses that are not necessarily child-unfriendly. Unlike law, most likely, it isn't necessarily incompatible with having children if the university accommodates it. In some ways universities can even have particular advantages in accommodating children: they may well have entire departments of students being taught to educate and care for children (this can also include both educators and medical students), and spaces and resources that can be useful, especially for older children, like libraries. They might already manage things like housing, and can help with some worries, like trying to look forward to college tuition. Neither my parents nor most of the academic parents I knew growing up paused or abandoned their academic careers. We just spent a lot of time on university campuses. Departments were often fine with even infants being brought to offices, and classes their parents were teaching, as long as they weren't too disruptive. Quite a bit of work could be done at home, and home was often quite close to campus. While I was usually was with my mother, I think there was also easily accessible childcare. By the time I was an undergraduate, I knew the campus and library very well, and many faculty and staff knew me.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Sounds like a good thing to me in terms of the climate emergency.
    - vt85 3y ago
      [dead]
    - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
      I don't like this line of thinking. Climate change isn't caused by population, but by industry, corporations and capitalism. Individuals and their choices are the least impactful pieces when it comes to reducing emissions and the like.
      - greedo 3y ago
        The world's population has more grown by 4.5B since I was born. The idea that this hasn't impacted climate change is naive at best.
        hnbad 3y ago
        If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems. Luckily they don't. But if you want to cull population based on carbon footprint, you should start with the billionaire class, then work your way down the income brackets of the US and then the rest of the West. The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population. In terms of resources we could also feed and provide shelter to every single person alive today, which would reduce population growth as child mortality, lack of access to reproductive care (including safe and legal abortions) and parental socio-economic distress are the biggest contributors to high birth rates. But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.
        gruez 3y ago
        >If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems Good luck convincing everyone on earth to downgrade their lifestyles. The amount of people who are committed to living a ascetic lifestyle to save the planet is negligible. >The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population Without lifestyle downgrades? Given how much environmental problems we're running into already I find this to be unlikely. >But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing. How much is the "billionaire class"'s contribution to global warming?
- DiabloD3 3y ago
  Academia has always seemed like a colossal joke to me. You pay a lot of money, give up a lot of opportunities to advance in life that are offered to everyone else, have no skills relevant to working in any industry related to your field of study, forced to give up family and community, will probably end up marrying someone who is also from Academia, all so you can have three little letters next to your name. Ain't worth it, man.
  - chongli 3y ago
    That’s how status and externalities work. People choose academia for the non-monetary compensation. They want to work in a field that feels deeply meaningful to them. And they want the status that comes with being a professor.
  - kemiller2002 3y ago
    I read an article a little while ago where someone recounted their academic career in Physics. What really hit home was his retelling of a class in undergrad where his professor (paraphrased here), "What you learn here really isn't physics, and most of you in this class aren't smart enough to learn physics." He got his PhD in physics, so it wasn't just him giving up. Everything I look at seems to add up to that statement across multiple disciplines. We place such an emphasis on academia which really teaches almost nothing useful to a career, etc. to the majority of people. I don't use my degree at all.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    That’s one view. Another view is that getting paid (or even having a career) to study philosophy or art history or a similar topic is better than just about any job out there, no matter how little the pay or how many hoops you have to jump through. For reference, I have a degree in philosophy but ultimately decided not to go for a PhD.
  - jasonhong 3y ago
    I'm a professor in computer science, so things are probably quite different than in other academic fields. There are some clear downsides to academia (lower salary, always looking for funding, limited geography, lots and lots of meetings), but there are also many positive aspects too. These include: (a) teaching can be really fun, in terms of inspiring the next generation and opening their minds to new topics, (b) no one tells us what to do, we can work on what we personally think is important (though funding that is a separate question), (c) we're considered experts that can be called on by journalists, government agencies, patent lawyers, and immigration lawyers to help out, (d) we can do consulting to help with tech transfer and to learn more about industry problems, (e) thanks to Bayh-Dole act in USA we can also commercialize the technologies we develop. Again, computer science is quite different, in that there are a lot more industry jobs available, a lot more money sloshing around compared to other fields, and less of a need to do multiple postdocs. Also, don't underestimate the value of teaching. Not only is it a great value to society as a whole, but it can be highly intrinsically rewarding. I have a large stack of thank you cards and small gifts from students over the many years, and still occasionally get fun emails from students sending me new examples to use in class or stories of how they're applying what they learned. So yes, there are a lot of tradeoffs involved with academia. But for me personally, I feel that I've made a positive difference in many people's lives, through my teaching, my research, and my advocacy, in ways that I wouldn't have been able to elsewhere.
- pyrale 3y ago
  Academia also has a lot of work to do to reconcile the idea of an expanding research sector, and environmental responsibility. It's kind of hard to reconcile exotic conference destinations and increased travel to visit your family with a future with less planes, and academia being a very small ivory tower with few people is a thing of the past, so this can't be pushed under the rug anymore.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  In the United States, there are medical programs that average more than one divorce per resident.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    I don't doubt it. Do you have a link for this?
    - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
      https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/divorce-because-of-medicine.1054600/ https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/divorce-because-of-... Second-hand, but the best I could find on short notice. The money quote: 'I remember someone saying that their residency program advertised a "110%" divorce rate: every one of their residents divorced, and of the ones who remarried, 10% of those divorced as well.'
- cge 3y ago
  Academia in a certain era, at least in the US, used to acknowledge that it posed several specific difficulties for relationships and families, and addressed them through policies and programs, for example, spousal hiring policies, family housing, university-run childcare, child-friendly working policies, preferential admission and tuition for children of university staff, etc. I was born and raised in academia; for a while, it worked reasonably well. There was the sense that universities often saw themselves as being a bit like villages in that respect. It has been depressing to see how much of that is now gone, seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness. Of course, before that time, there were also problems, like the embarrassment of refusing to hire Goeppert-Mayer, that may have led to the relationship accommodations in the first place.
  - dfxm12 3y ago
    seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness. Nah, university presidents are just greedy and wanted to play with that money themselves.
    - cge 3y ago
      Of course. It's just that fairness is often given as a reason, especially since the accommodations often might be unfair in other professions, but were meant to counteract specific unfair problems. For example, spousal hiring could be seen as nepotism; in the case of Goeppert-Mayer, it famously wasn't allowed because of that. Yet outside of a handful of major cities, the local university is often the only place in the area someone can have a strong academic career, and academic careers often involve moving, so for a couple to both have academic careers, they often need to find a university willing to hire them both, and to search for positions together, something that is very difficult, especially when in different fields, unless the university has procedures to handle it. Add to this that academics often have social lives within academia, and this can become a very common difficulty.
killjoywashere 3y ago
[deleted.]
- Aloha 3y ago
  I'd gladly take a government job - I was interested in a Military career when I was in my teens, but DADT put that out of reach - and now I'm too old and too out of shape. I'd be interested in performing some form of public service now, but most government jobs seem to suffer from the worst kind of credential requirement inflation imaginable, so that's not an option either - I have no degree, just lots of experience.
  - killjoywashere 3y ago
    The most impactful PM I know from Defense Digital Service doesn't have a degree in Fahrenheit. He did arrive with a 20 year track record at Microsoft though. Have a look at US Digital Service, Defense Digital Service, Defense Innovation Unit or 18F. Check out usajobs.gov. If you're in the Bay Area, feel free to PM me.
  - 23B1 3y ago
    There's a TON of great jobs out there in defense tech! You could get paid well to build interesting projects (that occasionally are used, if you're lucky, to whack bad guys) and none of those jobs/founders GAF about credentials, they just care if you can do the job.
- _a_a_a_ 3y ago
  well speaking for the UK not the USA... > and dedicated people, anywhere BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH OMG yeah right sure, carry on my good man. (Edit: I agree with your larger point though)
  - tyjen 3y ago
    I'm assuming you're referring to predominately the enlisted side? This also isn't a jab at enlisted people in general, just that many enlisted people come from economically disadvantaged positions in life. And, yes, many of them can yield a behavior that is questionably dedicated, but the people who continue to stay in are largely dedicated and others are rooted out in time.
WentFullRetard 3y ago
[dead]
michaelt 3y ago
> Required permanent changes-of-station every two to three years Well, there's your problem. Good luck starting a business if you lose your entire customer base, reputation and all your employees every two years. Good luck trying to keep your well paid Wall Street job when you're forced to move to Wyoming, or your Silicon Valley job when you're sent to Vermont. Good luck practising law, if you leave the state where you passed the bar. These policies might have worked in the 1950s when two thirds of women were home-makers, but that's no longer the world we live in.
23B1 3y ago
Army vet here! This is GREAT for a couple of reasons: 1. Moving around made building a career an impossibility for my brilliant wife, because military bases are typically situated a ways away from major economic zones. 2. This will improve retention because there is a lot of pressure on the (relatively underpaid) service member to make ends meet, especially when the best your spouse can do is like, become a realtor. 3. Great for employers. IMO (and you can fight me on this one) military families embrace duty, leadership, and hard work. If you can hire a vet or their spouse, you're going to get more out of them. 4. Great for military bases/areas which are typically economically depressed. 5. Great for family life. When I was in I was deployed for almost half of our marriage. That was really tough on my wife with nothing to do. A lot of spouses can't handle that, get into trouble, put undue pressure on the marriage, etc. For those of you who've ever been in an FRG you know what I'm talking about ;)
- hef19898 3y ago
  Back before Covid I seriously considered joining the armed forces in Germany as a side entry OCS candidate. They were looking for people, still do, so the offered package wasn't to bad. Go through basic, go through OCS, get a rank in accordance to your academic degree (with a Master it was Captain for me, no idea how the rest of the service men think about that so) and sign on for 15 years doing something more meaningful than making sure rich people get even richer. Even passed the assessment center. What turned out to be the deal braker was exactly what you pointed out: despite quite a few military bases close to where we live, bases that had a need for someone with my background at that (so no infantry combat units, but rather hardware and logistics heavy units like fighters and helicopters and the like), they were unable to give a gurantee to serve at the same location for longer than the initial year or so. Having family, a wife with a career and a house, moving every 3 years max just cause simply is a no go. Heck, even 6 months deployment were acceptable, if not ok, for my better half. I doubt so, that the Germany armed forces really understand how much of a problem that posses for recruiting when you need skilled people and not only people anymore. Which actually is a pitty. Funny thing so, this constant shuffeling around of folks even causes serious issues internally because a ton of knowledge is lost (confirmed by ex service members), so offering more stability would solve a bunch of problems. At the same time, they would also offer flexibility, because if transfers are still a thing, military spouses have so much more options pursuing their careers when serving partner can "simply" transfer to another post.
adolph 3y ago
I’m imagining how a remote/wfh military job would work with all the quirky parts of military life. You roll out of your rack in the morning, get into PTs and onto something like a Peloton, only it doesn’t fit and works like it was build by the lowest bidder, which it was. They do roll call and you wake up the rest of the house hollering “Here first sergeant!”
- nradov 3y ago
  The executive order was to expand remote work opportunities for civilian federal government employees who are military spouses.
tyjen 3y ago
I'll try to keep my rant shortish. I can speak from serving in the military and as a military spouse, and can without any hesitation, state that being a military spouse is more challenging than being an active-duty military member in the long-run. I came from a fatherless, disadvantaged household, dropped out of high school, and the military provided opportunities I would not have had access to otherwise. While in the military, I met my civilian wife, who later on joined the military herself and I exited service to finish university with the intent to apply to medical school. This seemed reasonable to a young idealist at the time. Everything was lining up, then she was stationed in a remote area with a less than stellar university. The university I transferred to not only did not have chemical engineering but did not accept around 2 years' worth of mathematics and science courses; so, I was forced to change majors if I wanted to graduate before she changed stations. I didn't care too much about the ramifications from a career perspective, because medical school was my end game. A couple of semesters before graduating, she was promoted early, and we were scheduled to move. I would not graduate on time. We moved to an even remoter area with a worse university. Basically, it was a community college with university credentials. Was forced to repeat some courses, again, and was forced to take this university's required general credits, again. It was at this juncture, I decided to give up on pursuing medical school. We could not afford the application process from where we were stationed to fly around to medical school interviews (each would be 7+ hour flights) and the situation difficulty was compounded with having a child. Even if I were accepted, I would not see my child or wife regularly for 4-5 years. The whole fiasco drained and wasted what are largely considered to be prime productive years and left me feeling like I was caught in a hamster wheel with no meaningful career trajectories in sight--too much work and effort with for no foreseeable benefit. Plus, most spouse programs target women and preferential hiring practices are for low-impact positions without meaningful promotability. There is an additional degree of isolation for male spouses, when most of your potential spouse community are women. I decided to quit traditional career aspirations and there was a fairly deep depression period, but I climbed out of it by focusing on ensuring that my child would have access to education and economic opportunities that I would've never dreamed about during my childhood. By the time I finally graduated with my bachelors, I had over 200 credits due to all courses I was required to take between the several universities I attended and had tutored people in math and chemistry as a university side job. When the local schools available to our child were poor, I used my overeducation and tutoring skills to home school. We pinched pennies to purchase fixer upper homes and I learned to remodel homes in between moves to earn an "income" that provided enough flexibility to wholly support our child's extracurricular activities in both money and time. The self-sacrifice paid off. Our child is graduating high school 2023-24, scored a 1580 SAT, and will be competitively applying to the best schools in the country. She will escape all the worries I faced at her age, so mission success on that front. My wife has a very fruitful career trajectory in her respective military service. Post-child life for me will be making up for lost time. I'm not worried, because I've made decent money from flipping houses and have not lost or diminished my competitiveness or desire to learn. If anything, those characteristics have increased due feeling slighted by my lack of traditional opportunities across time. Looking forward to the future as I transition back to focusing on myself.

Academia is just as hostile. It is even a stated policy that you are supposed to move countries between your undergrad (up to masters), Ph.d, multiple postdocs, all the way until you get tenure, to the point that some specific funding schemes require this. At the same time and without even a single bit of irony, they advertise a family friendly environment and a women first hiring policy.

sgt 3y ago
So people will inevitably postpone having children due to this (in addition to all the other reasons that may exist for you).
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  Or just not have them at all. Children are expensive and postdoc salaries suck.
  - vt85 3y ago
    [dead]
- BenoitP 3y ago
  Indeed. This coupled to the fact that female fertility is easier when younger (easier to become pregnant, fewer complications, better physical shape, not menopaused, etc.), is IMHO the number one factor in a lot of male/female statistical discrepancies. My wife studied law, and we saw every single one of her female friends abandon or pause a successful career in order to have children. Just like academia, careers in law often tend to invade nights and weekends; and that's just not compatible with having children.
  - escapedmoose 3y ago
    Fertility doesn’t have much to do with it after the kid is already born, and that’s when parental leave becomes relevant. The fact that women are still seen as the de facto parent responsible for childcare for all those nights and weekends is more a cultural thing than biological.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      In my experience, for at least the first year, there is no replacing women as the de facto parent responsible for childcare due to breastfeeding, and the child’s emotional needs. Well into the post breastfeeding toddler years, no one but my wife would have been able to satisfy the needs of my kids, and I feel like that is probably nature more than nurture. Mothers should be given at least a year of bonding leave, and fathers too just so the market does not reward men over women.
    - rtkwe 3y ago
      Well there's one massive factor, at least until the kid is weaned, the mom is the easiest food supply for the kid. It's vastly easier than pump and bottle or even formula and bottle. Beyond that phase though it's true it's mostly societal, once the kid is eating real food there's little reason for a particular parent to be the primary care giver.
    - michaelt 3y ago
      True, but fertility will still matter if they decide to have another. Decide you want four kids at age 20? No problem. Start at age 33, though? I hope you weren't planning to drink beer for the next decade.
    - sgt 3y ago
      I can't explain it, but there's definitely a biological aspect too that matters a lot. The mother understands deeper things about the bond with the baby that us dads don't have a clue about.
  - cge 3y ago
    Academia often involves a lot of time, but often in informal and flexible ways, with relatively little inflexible time (eg, lectures), and campuses that are not necessarily child-unfriendly. Unlike law, most likely, it isn't necessarily incompatible with having children if the university accommodates it. In some ways universities can even have particular advantages in accommodating children: they may well have entire departments of students being taught to educate and care for children (this can also include both educators and medical students), and spaces and resources that can be useful, especially for older children, like libraries. They might already manage things like housing, and can help with some worries, like trying to look forward to college tuition. Neither my parents nor most of the academic parents I knew growing up paused or abandoned their academic careers. We just spent a lot of time on university campuses. Departments were often fine with even infants being brought to offices, and classes their parents were teaching, as long as they weren't too disruptive. Quite a bit of work could be done at home, and home was often quite close to campus. While I was usually was with my mother, I think there was also easily accessible childcare. By the time I was an undergraduate, I knew the campus and library very well, and many faculty and staff knew me.
- fsflover 3y ago
  Sounds like a good thing to me in terms of the climate emergency.
  - vt85 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    I don't like this line of thinking. Climate change isn't caused by population, but by industry, corporations and capitalism. Individuals and their choices are the least impactful pieces when it comes to reducing emissions and the like.
    - greedo 3y ago
      The world's population has more grown by 4.5B since I was born. The idea that this hasn't impacted climate change is naive at best.
      - hnbad 3y ago
        If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems. Luckily they don't. But if you want to cull population based on carbon footprint, you should start with the billionaire class, then work your way down the income brackets of the US and then the rest of the West. The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population. In terms of resources we could also feed and provide shelter to every single person alive today, which would reduce population growth as child mortality, lack of access to reproductive care (including safe and legal abortions) and parental socio-economic distress are the biggest contributors to high birth rates. But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing.
        gruez 3y ago
        >If those 4.5B lived like Americans, yeah, that'd be the cause of all of our problems Good luck convincing everyone on earth to downgrade their lifestyles. The amount of people who are committed to living a ascetic lifestyle to save the planet is negligible. >The Earth's resources could comfortably sustain the current population Without lifestyle downgrades? Given how much environmental problems we're running into already I find this to be unlikely. >But we can't do all of that AND run the Global North's economy the way we do AND afford a billionaire class. Alas that seems to be what we are currently doing. How much is the "billionaire class"'s contribution to global warming?
DiabloD3 3y ago
Academia has always seemed like a colossal joke to me. You pay a lot of money, give up a lot of opportunities to advance in life that are offered to everyone else, have no skills relevant to working in any industry related to your field of study, forced to give up family and community, will probably end up marrying someone who is also from Academia, all so you can have three little letters next to your name. Ain't worth it, man.
- chongli 3y ago
  That’s how status and externalities work. People choose academia for the non-monetary compensation. They want to work in a field that feels deeply meaningful to them. And they want the status that comes with being a professor.
- kemiller2002 3y ago
  I read an article a little while ago where someone recounted their academic career in Physics. What really hit home was his retelling of a class in undergrad where his professor (paraphrased here), "What you learn here really isn't physics, and most of you in this class aren't smart enough to learn physics." He got his PhD in physics, so it wasn't just him giving up. Everything I look at seems to add up to that statement across multiple disciplines. We place such an emphasis on academia which really teaches almost nothing useful to a career, etc. to the majority of people. I don't use my degree at all.
- keiferski 3y ago
  That’s one view. Another view is that getting paid (or even having a career) to study philosophy or art history or a similar topic is better than just about any job out there, no matter how little the pay or how many hoops you have to jump through. For reference, I have a degree in philosophy but ultimately decided not to go for a PhD.
- jasonhong 3y ago
  I'm a professor in computer science, so things are probably quite different than in other academic fields. There are some clear downsides to academia (lower salary, always looking for funding, limited geography, lots and lots of meetings), but there are also many positive aspects too. These include: (a) teaching can be really fun, in terms of inspiring the next generation and opening their minds to new topics, (b) no one tells us what to do, we can work on what we personally think is important (though funding that is a separate question), (c) we're considered experts that can be called on by journalists, government agencies, patent lawyers, and immigration lawyers to help out, (d) we can do consulting to help with tech transfer and to learn more about industry problems, (e) thanks to Bayh-Dole act in USA we can also commercialize the technologies we develop. Again, computer science is quite different, in that there are a lot more industry jobs available, a lot more money sloshing around compared to other fields, and less of a need to do multiple postdocs. Also, don't underestimate the value of teaching. Not only is it a great value to society as a whole, but it can be highly intrinsically rewarding. I have a large stack of thank you cards and small gifts from students over the many years, and still occasionally get fun emails from students sending me new examples to use in class or stories of how they're applying what they learned. So yes, there are a lot of tradeoffs involved with academia. But for me personally, I feel that I've made a positive difference in many people's lives, through my teaching, my research, and my advocacy, in ways that I wouldn't have been able to elsewhere.
pyrale 3y ago
Academia also has a lot of work to do to reconcile the idea of an expanding research sector, and environmental responsibility. It's kind of hard to reconcile exotic conference destinations and increased travel to visit your family with a future with less planes, and academia being a very small ivory tower with few people is a thing of the past, so this can't be pushed under the rug anymore.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
In the United States, there are medical programs that average more than one divorce per resident.
- flerchin 3y ago
  I don't doubt it. Do you have a link for this?
  - AnimalMuppet 3y ago
    https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/divorce-because-of-medicine.1054600/ https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/divorce-because-of-... Second-hand, but the best I could find on short notice. The money quote: 'I remember someone saying that their residency program advertised a "110%" divorce rate: every one of their residents divorced, and of the ones who remarried, 10% of those divorced as well.'
cge 3y ago
Academia in a certain era, at least in the US, used to acknowledge that it posed several specific difficulties for relationships and families, and addressed them through policies and programs, for example, spousal hiring policies, family housing, university-run childcare, child-friendly working policies, preferential admission and tuition for children of university staff, etc. I was born and raised in academia; for a while, it worked reasonably well. There was the sense that universities often saw themselves as being a bit like villages in that respect. It has been depressing to see how much of that is now gone, seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness. Of course, before that time, there were also problems, like the embarrassment of refusing to hire Goeppert-Mayer, that may have led to the relationship accommodations in the first place.
- dfxm12 3y ago
  seemingly often ostensibly for reasons of fairness. Nah, university presidents are just greedy and wanted to play with that money themselves.
  - cge 3y ago
    Of course. It's just that fairness is often given as a reason, especially since the accommodations often might be unfair in other professions, but were meant to counteract specific unfair problems. For example, spousal hiring could be seen as nepotism; in the case of Goeppert-Mayer, it famously wasn't allowed because of that. Yet outside of a handful of major cities, the local university is often the only place in the area someone can have a strong academic career, and academic careers often involve moving, so for a couple to both have academic careers, they often need to find a university willing to hire them both, and to search for positions together, something that is very difficult, especially when in different fields, unless the university has procedures to handle it. Add to this that academics often have social lives within academia, and this can become a very common difficulty.

killjoywashere 3y ago

[deleted.]

Aloha 3y ago
I'd gladly take a government job - I was interested in a Military career when I was in my teens, but DADT put that out of reach - and now I'm too old and too out of shape. I'd be interested in performing some form of public service now, but most government jobs seem to suffer from the worst kind of credential requirement inflation imaginable, so that's not an option either - I have no degree, just lots of experience.
- killjoywashere 3y ago
  The most impactful PM I know from Defense Digital Service doesn't have a degree in Fahrenheit. He did arrive with a 20 year track record at Microsoft though. Have a look at US Digital Service, Defense Digital Service, Defense Innovation Unit or 18F. Check out usajobs.gov. If you're in the Bay Area, feel free to PM me.
- 23B1 3y ago
  There's a TON of great jobs out there in defense tech! You could get paid well to build interesting projects (that occasionally are used, if you're lucky, to whack bad guys) and none of those jobs/founders GAF about credentials, they just care if you can do the job.
_a_a_a_ 3y ago
well speaking for the UK not the USA... > and dedicated people, anywhere BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH OMG yeah right sure, carry on my good man. (Edit: I agree with your larger point though)
- tyjen 3y ago
  I'm assuming you're referring to predominately the enlisted side? This also isn't a jab at enlisted people in general, just that many enlisted people come from economically disadvantaged positions in life. And, yes, many of them can yield a behavior that is questionably dedicated, but the people who continue to stay in are largely dedicated and others are rooted out in time.

WentFullRetard 3y ago

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michaelt 3y ago

> Required permanent changes-of-station every two to three years Well, there's your problem. Good luck starting a business if you lose your entire customer base, reputation and all your employees every two years. Good luck trying to keep your well paid Wall Street job when you're forced to move to Wyoming, or your Silicon Valley job when you're sent to Vermont. Good luck practising law, if you leave the state where you passed the bar. These policies might have worked in the 1950s when two thirds of women were home-makers, but that's no longer the world we live in.

23B1 3y ago

Army vet here! This is GREAT for a couple of reasons: 1. Moving around made building a career an impossibility for my brilliant wife, because military bases are typically situated a ways away from major economic zones. 2. This will improve retention because there is a lot of pressure on the (relatively underpaid) service member to make ends meet, especially when the best your spouse can do is like, become a realtor. 3. Great for employers. IMO (and you can fight me on this one) military families embrace duty, leadership, and hard work. If you can hire a vet or their spouse, you're going to get more out of them. 4. Great for military bases/areas which are typically economically depressed. 5. Great for family life. When I was in I was deployed for almost half of our marriage. That was really tough on my wife with nothing to do. A lot of spouses can't handle that, get into trouble, put undue pressure on the marriage, etc. For those of you who've ever been in an FRG you know what I'm talking about ;)

hef19898 3y ago
Back before Covid I seriously considered joining the armed forces in Germany as a side entry OCS candidate. They were looking for people, still do, so the offered package wasn't to bad. Go through basic, go through OCS, get a rank in accordance to your academic degree (with a Master it was Captain for me, no idea how the rest of the service men think about that so) and sign on for 15 years doing something more meaningful than making sure rich people get even richer. Even passed the assessment center. What turned out to be the deal braker was exactly what you pointed out: despite quite a few military bases close to where we live, bases that had a need for someone with my background at that (so no infantry combat units, but rather hardware and logistics heavy units like fighters and helicopters and the like), they were unable to give a gurantee to serve at the same location for longer than the initial year or so. Having family, a wife with a career and a house, moving every 3 years max just cause simply is a no go. Heck, even 6 months deployment were acceptable, if not ok, for my better half. I doubt so, that the Germany armed forces really understand how much of a problem that posses for recruiting when you need skilled people and not only people anymore. Which actually is a pitty. Funny thing so, this constant shuffeling around of folks even causes serious issues internally because a ton of knowledge is lost (confirmed by ex service members), so offering more stability would solve a bunch of problems. At the same time, they would also offer flexibility, because if transfers are still a thing, military spouses have so much more options pursuing their careers when serving partner can "simply" transfer to another post.

adolph 3y ago

I’m imagining how a remote/wfh military job would work with all the quirky parts of military life. You roll out of your rack in the morning, get into PTs and onto something like a Peloton, only it doesn’t fit and works like it was build by the lowest bidder, which it was. They do roll call and you wake up the rest of the house hollering “Here first sergeant!”

nradov 3y ago
The executive order was to expand remote work opportunities for civilian federal government employees who are military spouses.

tyjen 3y ago

I'll try to keep my rant shortish. I can speak from serving in the military and as a military spouse, and can without any hesitation, state that being a military spouse is more challenging than being an active-duty military member in the long-run. I came from a fatherless, disadvantaged household, dropped out of high school, and the military provided opportunities I would not have had access to otherwise. While in the military, I met my civilian wife, who later on joined the military herself and I exited service to finish university with the intent to apply to medical school. This seemed reasonable to a young idealist at the time. Everything was lining up, then she was stationed in a remote area with a less than stellar university. The university I transferred to not only did not have chemical engineering but did not accept around 2 years' worth of mathematics and science courses; so, I was forced to change majors if I wanted to graduate before she changed stations. I didn't care too much about the ramifications from a career perspective, because medical school was my end game. A couple of semesters before graduating, she was promoted early, and we were scheduled to move. I would not graduate on time. We moved to an even remoter area with a worse university. Basically, it was a community college with university credentials. Was forced to repeat some courses, again, and was forced to take this university's required general credits, again. It was at this juncture, I decided to give up on pursuing medical school. We could not afford the application process from where we were stationed to fly around to medical school interviews (each would be 7+ hour flights) and the situation difficulty was compounded with having a child. Even if I were accepted, I would not see my child or wife regularly for 4-5 years. The whole fiasco drained and wasted what are largely considered to be prime productive years and left me feeling like I was caught in a hamster wheel with no meaningful career trajectories in sight--too much work and effort with for no foreseeable benefit. Plus, most spouse programs target women and preferential hiring practices are for low-impact positions without meaningful promotability. There is an additional degree of isolation for male spouses, when most of your potential spouse community are women. I decided to quit traditional career aspirations and there was a fairly deep depression period, but I climbed out of it by focusing on ensuring that my child would have access to education and economic opportunities that I would've never dreamed about during my childhood. By the time I finally graduated with my bachelors, I had over 200 credits due to all courses I was required to take between the several universities I attended and had tutored people in math and chemistry as a university side job. When the local schools available to our child were poor, I used my overeducation and tutoring skills to home school. We pinched pennies to purchase fixer upper homes and I learned to remodel homes in between moves to earn an "income" that provided enough flexibility to wholly support our child's extracurricular activities in both money and time. The self-sacrifice paid off. Our child is graduating high school 2023-24, scored a 1580 SAT, and will be competitively applying to the best schools in the country. She will escape all the worries I faced at her age, so mission success on that front. My wife has a very fruitful career trajectory in her respective military service. Post-child life for me will be making up for lost time. I'm not worried, because I've made decent money from flipping houses and have not lost or diminished my competitiveness or desire to learn. If anything, those characteristics have increased due feeling slighted by my lack of traditional opportunities across time. Looking forward to the future as I transition back to focusing on myself.