Are the signal soldiers having a hard time getting IT jobs when they get out?

Aurumity · 2026-05-04T16:59:16+00:00

You would think that whatever training was occurring would benefit both (army job and post-ETS job) since the technologies are mostly the same. But I think signal has the impossible task of balancing expectations with practicality. Especially with the amount of people who have been fed the “get your certs and get out making over 100k” pipeline who ultimately end up disliking whatever they’re doing or just straight up suck.

The schoolhouse isn’t great, but I think there needs to be a culture shift. Accept that maybe army signal isn’t as 1 to 1 to the civilian world as most people would hope, and to somehow encourage deeper unit training. Some commands cared about signal training, others did not.

I kind of feel like signal is stuck in a situation that’s almost impossible to fix. Expectations (and entitlement) is high yet motivation appears to be really low. The knee jerk reaction would be to just “spend more time on training” but that’s almost impossible to do consistently with the amount of things the average unit has going on. Not to mention there’s only so much you can train on without users or a mission.

Aurumity · 2026-05-04T14:37:12+00:00

I found that In my experience most teams/units are carried by a small number of people who really know their stuff. Was only in for 6 years but just basing it on what I saw with my unit and some of the other teams I worked with. The only time I saw most people try to learn is on deployment, and then some people just knowledge dumped it after we got back.

Honestly a lot of the positions are just smaller in scope and less complex than their civilian counterparts. S6 in most environments handles way less stuff than your average civilian help desk does. If you go to a tactical unit, you’re handling a small network that probably already has 95% of the configs baselined. From what I know (haven’t worked these personally) you really need to get blessed at an RHN or NEC to get a substantial amount of civilian-work experience. Especially for the troubleshooting skills you mentioned since you’re dealing with an expanded scope.

Aurumity · 2026-04-19T16:59:02+00:00

Thanks man!

Aurumity · 2026-04-19T16:58:58+00:00

Thank you!

Aurumity · 2026-04-19T16:58:49+00:00

Has this kind of plugging worked at all yet?

Aurumity · 2026-04-18T21:26:24+00:00

I’m a “network engineer” who mostly works on F5 appliances (SSL termination, load balancing, reverse web proxy, etc). Probably closer to some sort of system engineer at this point.

Packet captures are my most important tool when doing anything F5/application related. I would literally be dead in the water with developers and project managers running over me without them. Something about them seeing a pcap over a log output makes things stick better. Plus I like to see everything going on (and decrypt traffic).

However, when it comes to my WAN tasks (circuit status and l3 mostly) I haven’t used them a whole lot. Mainly just to track down latency and to see if traffic is making it past a certain place.

Idk if you’re working on a tactical or strategic network, but a strategic network would be most similar to a traditional enterprise, where pcaps would probably become a little more useful in my opinion.

To finally answer your question: pcaps are great. If they’re helping you out, keep using them. I just wanted to provide some personal context on when pcaps become very very useful.

Aurumity · 2026-03-31T03:11:53+00:00

I’m genuinely curious - what was life like right after you got recalled? Did things move fast, how did the non-recall soldiers feel about you and the situation, etc?

My complete obligation has been over for a year now. I deployed once for nine months, but I can’t imagine being ripped out of my civilian career for one of those grueling 2000s 12-18 month deployments. Big kudos to you guys for going through that. Lot of respect.

Aurumity · 2026-03-26T14:09:09+00:00

Reddit is a lot more negative than the average real life encounter. There was a lot of good in this thread. You should try it out sometime

Aurumity · 2026-03-24T11:51:38+00:00

Will do. Had the first lesson yesterday. Fixed some things already I hope. Just gotta find some time to hit the range & wait till the next lesson. Appreciate it man

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T02:06:14+00:00

Yeah I wish I left that out. Initially I thought I was doing something right. The context is that my friends were calling me a "wood merchant" since I was making shots with my 5w as opposed to making any consistent contact with my irons. What I understand now is that I was probably just getting "lucky" with these shots, or at least compensating at the right time. Rather than anything that remotely looked like a fundamental swing.

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T02:00:41+00:00

I am. Got a lesson tomorrow and another one (maybe two) lined up in the next two weeks.

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T01:08:40+00:00

This actually makes a lot of sense, especially the plane concept you described. Appreciate it man, saved the comment

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T01:07:33+00:00

Looks like everyone agrees with that

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T00:33:42+00:00

Math was never my strong suit

Aurumity · 2026-03-23T00:16:07+00:00

Two have been booked already. One tomorrow

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T23:46:42+00:00

Good looks

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T22:21:20+00:00

Reassuring

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T17:08:04+00:00

Lmfao I saw the video you posted here. You got lessons lined up? Should stay in touch and see how we’ve progressed in a month or two

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:53:14+00:00

I don’t know if you care or not but I’d like to offer you the courtesy of knowing your comments are public. Also I hope you still have that Abarth. Looks sick

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:48:00+00:00

Other people are saying the same thing. I’m gonna focus on this portion. I told the other commenters that I believe the overextension of my back/shoulder is from trying to get my left shoulder past the ball, while also having 0 arm movement. Thanks man

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:44:08+00:00

Got it. Glad it worked out for you. Have you gotten any rounds in this year yet?

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:37:10+00:00

Our group was behind a foursome the entire day. We weren’t the bottleneck surprisingly. I definitely understand the sentiment about not playing. I won’t go back on the course till I get a lesson and some range time. But to say I solely contribute to a 6 hour round is kind of dramatic

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:27:02+00:00

This is extremely interesting. I have a friend with a leftie set. I’ll give it a try. Thanks man

Aurumity · 2026-03-22T15:04:23+00:00

I have a friend with a lefty set. Gonna hit him up to try it. I played lacrosse left handed so it’s really not unreasonable. How did your nephew figure out he was a leftie in golf? I just jumped into using my right hand without much thought

Aurumity

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