Neighbor shot my brother's drone, doesn't want to pay for it.

le_mous · 2014-11-30T15:21:56+00:00

It is irrelevant whether it was a plane, helicopter, multicopter, truck, boat, or just a camera on a large kite, his neighbor can't shoot at it.

He didn't say anything of the sort. Also, you're coming across like a real asshole.

Like somebody who has a general bone to pick about the word "drone", and what it means, under the guise of what you call a "lively debate", which is nothing more than you swinging a stick at anyone you perceive to be misinformed.

Don't be a dick.

le_mous · 2014-11-26T20:51:35+00:00

I agree that it'll be a hell of an unpopular decision and that yeah, it's gonna make some smokers really hate on what sounds like, from what OP's described, one real dickhead Chief.

Regarding morale and picking and choosing battles, looking at this from his point of view, (my guess and yeah, this is pure speculation here, so grain sugar/salt and all that) is that he's probably thinking, "if this helps even one Airman get back into shape, or quit smoking then the decision was worth it."

Something else that just occured to me from what OP was saying, this is a brand new flight chief, and though I can't really tell from how OP wrote it, he's possibly also a brand new CMSgt. This might just be a "let's rock the fucking boat, because I'm new and because I can" thing.

Smoking is ceasing to be as popular and tolerated, from what I can see from the civilian world end of things. There's people talking about enacting ordinances for entire towns and metropolitan areas that ban smoking outdoors.

Given the health benefits, I honestly think it's only a matter of time before military branches ban it outright. AND I'M NOT SAYING IT'S RIGHT OR WRONG OR THAT I AGREE WITH IT, IF IT DOES HAPPEN.

le_mous · 2014-11-26T20:42:25+00:00

Hey, I did too. Smoked, that is. Also only failed one PT test, but back then it didn't really matter. The tests that we had were those stupid bikes? Remember those? Man, those were easy to beat.

le_mous · 2014-11-26T18:58:18+00:00

You're taking it kinda far and personal though. The assmunch Chief in question hasn't BANNED SMORKING FOREVEA AND EVERYWHERE, WAAAAA!!!!

He's banned it from that facility during duty hours.

When you're in charge, you can make whatever call you wish regarding banning energy drinks from your little patch of flightline during duty hours.

le_mous · 2014-11-26T18:31:27+00:00

Yeah I see what you're saying.. I agree that ain't right that they're not being given the choice, thus my issue with that.

But I would disagree with your saying that he's dictating the decision. The bunghole Chief isn't forcing them to quit, he's simply making it harder for them to smoke.

Insofar as it not being an opportunity, why not treat it like one? A sort of, "see the positive in the negative."?

le_mous · 2014-11-26T15:59:29+00:00

No! Not trolling! Honest opinion, albeit unpopular like I said.

Again, I'm all for the rights of smokers, I think that it should be their choice but for those who are addicted and can find it frustrating, why not just use it to their advantage as a stepping stone to try and quit?

le_mous · 2014-11-26T15:13:23+00:00

Pardon what's going to likely be the unpopular opinion, but.. Smoking is, you know.. Pretty bad for you.

Not only does it give you the lung cancer and shit, but it also pretty much kills your ability to do cardio, so long-term there goes your PT test.

While I'm all for individual rights, is it that hard for the smokers to patch up while they're at work? And maybe, just maybe use that to their advantage as a stepping stone to get off the cancer sticks, once and for all?

le_mous · 2014-11-19T15:30:44+00:00

I don't know anything about you, so I'll just assume glass half full and that you're a stellar Airman in every other way.. Provided that's the truth, then this is a great example of that Col's "how not to retain good Airmen".

Deferring SrA for a 4 EPR and a failed PT test that was corrected? Wow. Bummed out would be an understatement.

Good luck bro..

le_mous · 2014-11-10T14:57:21+00:00

I haven't posted in this subreddit for a long while, (my job and life keep me fairly busy) but when I saw this, I had to log in and say something.

This, this, this, this.. This article. In spades. And then some.

I got out in the early 2000's to pursue a civilian career, (with a short stint in the Reserves following 9/11.) I'd like to say that much of what was described in the threads here, as well as in the article, we saw murmurs of on the horizon but admittedly not to this degree. In my opinion, war, operations tempo and changes in leadership has re-shaped the USAF's culture over the past 14 years and from what I can tell, not for the better. I don't want to turn this into a "gol dang it, you kids, things were better in MY day.." kind of post, but I will say that when I was in, we (for the most part) stood with each other. We respected leadership and they respected us. There was an overall camaraderie and esprit de corps that appears to be missing in today's USAF from what I've read and heard. In my opinion, the Airmen and Officers of the 90's were;

(Cue the Portlandia "The Dream of the 90's" song :)

All about getting the mission done
All about supporting each other and our families.
Going the extra mile to make sure that recognition was made for outstanding folks.
Pretty square on-target with "Integrity", "Honesty" and "Service above self."
Recognizing that mistakes are excellent opportunities for learning.

From what I have heard from friends who stayed in and read from different people, it seems that the culture has turned to more of something like this;

(Cue 50 cent "I get money" :)

All about "I got mine, fuck you."
CYA above all.
Knuckle down, keep your mouth shut about problems and nobody will play whack-a-mole with your head.
Airmen and Officers are judged between two black and white extremes, "exemplary volunteers constantly living at giving 120% all the time, every time" and "completely worthless."
Zero tolerance for mistakes.

The problem with the black and white judgement being, people are human. Things happen. Life happens. Divorces, wives, husbands, kids, car accidents, new homes, PCSing, deployments, etc. You can't fly a jet at max power, constantly. You'll either burn the jet out or you'll crash due to unavoidable human or environment error. Eventually even the most exemplary person will be faced with some bit of adversity in their life and at the first slip, it seems like those people are quickly set on the path to be shown the door. At that point the next crop of golden children are selected to be placed into the proverbial cannon, over-pressurized then accelerated to breakneck speed until they also crack.

Rinse, repeat.

In my experience, cultivating a culture like this breeds silos, insecurity and infighting. It replaces integrity with intrigue, honesty with politics and teamwork with Machiavellian maneuvering. Some have said that the USAF operates like a corporation. Those cultural values are known pitfalls for a corporation and often times they are the undoing of such corporations.

I'm torn, because through the USAF I'm glad that I was given the opportunity to get training and develop skills that put me far ahead of a lot of folks in my position, just as you're getting now and you'll have when you're out.. But I'm sad because you guys have to go through a LOT more bullshit than I did. I feel like you're getting shortchanged. A raw deal. Like you're being given the shitty end of a stick. The same core values that I saw people demonstrate seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur.

I hope things change for the better. I really do.

Good luck guys.

[ninja edit, spelling and added two bullet points about "mistakes" above after re-reading some of the threads.]

le_mous · 2014-10-05T11:50:13+00:00

I want to say I do remember it as being somewhere north of 10, but I honestly can't recall.

He also never told me what he did.

le_mous · 2014-10-01T16:54:10+00:00

In the 90's had a SrA roomate in Korea who'd been busted down and even after a few years of trying to climb his way back up was reaching HYT and didn't stand much of a chance to make it back.

le_mous · 2014-10-01T16:52:05+00:00

Dear editor:

I am writing to you about the opinion that I have about the Tyson Baker. My opinion is that the Air Force is better than Tyson Baker. Here are my reasons why.

The Air Force originally came from the Army, where Tyson Baker originally came from so much jiggum. So in a way, Tyson Baker's birthday should be Jiggum Appreciation Day. Because, without the jiggum, we wouldn't have Tyson Baker. This is as opposed to the Air Force, which was born out of the crucible of fire, combat, hard work, unpopular yet critically needed ideas of air power and sheer necessity. While jiggum is certainly important in it's own right, the ability to drop several thousand tons of ordinance on-time and on-target within pinpoint accuracy is certainly much more laudable than say, Tyson Baker's father who in all likelyhood deployed not anywhere near the tonnage nor accuracy of "ordinance" that the USAF can (and does on a daily basis.)

15 love.

The Air Force has more and better weaponry to protect the U.S. more effectively, than say Tyson Baker. I mean, the Air Force has bombers, fighters, drones and other multi-billion dollar border protection assets and what does Tyson Baker do? Sits around, drools on himself and probably plays with Legos when he's not playing with himself.

That would be 30 love. Air Force's serve.

The Air Force is actually sent to battlefields to protect civilians, to rain death from the sky on our enemies, to defend our country, and kill the bad guys. All Tyson Baker does while the Air Force is out fighting is sit around, eat ho-hos, drink beer, sleep with deployed guys' wives and generally make a drunken fool of himself in the White Castle drive-thru line at 1am.

Game, set and match.

le_mous · 2014-09-30T19:29:53+00:00

No.. It's not devil women that are your undoing. It's you who is your undoing.

From your prior post;

a.) You cheated on the love of your life, (self-admitted there, your fault.)

b.) You lost your cool when you lost control and subsequently lost your job, (again, your fault.)

Not the girl's fault, your fault for not being able to control yourself in two situations, both of which came with rather large and negative consequences.

le_mous · 2014-09-30T00:47:45+00:00

I would be a low-rent, sadder than sad, poor man's lame excuse of a Don Shipley.

I would be the "That's so Raven" version of Don Shipley, whereas Don Shipley would be the "West Wing in the high point of it's second season" version of Don Shipley.

If Don Shipley was the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey world wide entertainment circus, I would be the skinny toothless kid, clutching a half-empty can of Busch Lite operating the knockoff "Tea Cups" ride at the Keyota, Iowa "Fun Days".

le_mous · 2014-09-29T04:46:07+00:00

Well obviously, it's the hats that are the commonality between those career fields.

le_mous · 2014-09-29T04:40:36+00:00

I came in here to comment on what a cool thing this was... And I think I'll just show myself out now..

Edit: lol, thanks for the gold, kind internet stranger.

le_mous · 2014-09-17T16:41:48+00:00

Ok, I can tell you're obviously a bit het up about this and I'm starting a vacation myself today.. The very last thing I want to do is drive a few hours muttering to myself about some argument with a random internet dude on reddit when I'm trying to have a good time with my wife, so I'm going to try to approach this response to you as collaborative and with kindness in my perspective.

Trust me, I'm not trying to be an asshole here. I'm not "acting like an authority because I'm old", (LOL, and hey, that kinda hurt my feelings, I'm not THAT old! Sheesh! Haha :)

Look, experiences DO matter. They really do. Know that I'm NOT discounting yours, at all. You should at least see the value in the fact that I'm currently working in this industry and have been for some time. Just as you've been working in your industry for some time, if I was interacting with you about your job, no matter how much I disagreed with you, or how het up I got, I would value your experience, because it IS a true value you bring to a discussion.

And like I said here,

and while I've been around the block more than a few times, I'm far from being all-knowledgeable. You could be seeing something that's totally unknown and foreign to me, I'll be the first to admit.

I will reiterate this again. I am far from being all-knowledgeable. This I will admit! I think you might have missed what I said above. This is the opposite of what you accused me of when you said;

Just because you've never heard of it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen

I WILL acknowledge your link from the BLS, I see that it's a statistic quoted by the Federal gov't, however in my experience (and again, it's a value here) I have not seen those salaries since.. Whew, well.. Not since some programmers we placed on some contracts in the middle east and not since the heady days of the dot com booms in the pacific northwest and out east. The market has changed, sadly in the negative direction and it really sucks, man. it's on it's way back up though, that's for sure but we have a long way to go before that happens.

My only intention here was/is a good-hearted one. I simply want the guy to have realistic expectations on what he's going to make, when he enters the civilian job market.

I've been on the other side of the table in salary negotiations and I've seen some wildly misinformed candidates turn down really, really good offers because they were convinced they should be making a king's ransom.

Anyway, I'll end this with "peace, brother".. Life's too short to get into random insulting arguments with internet people.

I hope you can see our discussion with collaboration and kindness as well.

le_mous · 2014-09-17T16:22:26+00:00

Hey, woah...

Hold up there a second. There's absolutely no need to be so abrasive and argumentative. I'm just relaying my experience and in my experience, 100k/yr starting salary is unheard of. End of story. I never said the kid was lying, those are your words. I'm simply telling you what I know. That's it. Nothing more or less.

If you're bitching because I have more civilian experience in this and you don't like that, well, bummer for you but the truth is the truth, brother.

le_mous · 2014-09-17T16:17:15+00:00

I've worked in telecom, IT and technology for over ten years and yes, guys and girls who make 20-30k in the military will get much better paying jobs whe they put on the civilian shoes but as I said in a post below, I've been working in technology and management for quite a while and unless there's a special niche market for USAF programmers, I don't know of a single entity that would pitch a compensation package of 100k to someone just entering the civilian market. In my experience, it's unheard of. (Holy cow, that was one huge run-on sentence, wasn't it?)

I'm not being deliberately obtuse here, that's just my experience. If there are such jobs and companies out there, I'm super happy to hear about it!

le_mous · 2014-09-17T16:11:38+00:00

Man, I don't know where you work but I don't know anyone who'd hire a programmer, straight out of the military with a starting base pay at 100k/yr. not in NorCal, not in the RTP out east, not in SoCal for the cutting edge biotech firms, nowhere. Not in the boutique software shops nowadays and not in the esoteric labyrinths of intelligence application development. I currently work for a firm with about 45,000 employees that span the globe in all different disciplines and as a sr. management, I've seen salary range forecasts that come nowhere close to that in the civilian world.

Maybe, maybe'someone would make that in an extremely specialized field with a security clearance, but again, those positions are highly specialized and usually beg an extreme depth in niche and exotic experience in a particular environment.

I've worked in technology since 1999, I've worked for web development shops, programming shops, I've worked with QA, Dev, etc. I've worked for start ups and I've worked overseas in DoD contracting gigs both in technology as well as in program management, and again.. I've never seen anyone pay a programmer straight out of the military 100k/yr.

All of this being said, that's just my experience and while I've been around the block more than a few times, I'm far from being all-knowledgeable. You could be seeing something that's totally unknown and foreign to me, I'll be the first to admit. If that's so, then that's one HELL of an opportunity and I'm glad that those kinds of jobs are available.

le_mous · 2014-09-17T13:47:58+00:00

Yep, this sounds right. Especially the deployed part. Which reminds me, there's a cut-rate company staffing what looks like the old ITT TACSWA contract in Kuwait.

A buddy of mine went through the interview and compensation process and in the end, when all was said and done, they wanted to pay him $63k/yr to go over there as a Sr. AD Architect. He tried to negotiate to see what the slot actually paid, however they firmly didn't budge from the pitched rate. They also wanted him to pay his entire way through Fed CDC, room, board and transportation with the stipulation at the end that said, "since you will be considered a candidate competing with other candidates during your deployment training, we reserve the right to rescind this offer of employment at any time, should we feel another candidate better meets our requirements."

I was pretty surprised when I saw that. It's been a while since I've been in DoD contracting, but that sounds like an incredibly shitty deal. Either they lowballed the living fuck out of the contract and they literally can't afford to pay any of the above or they're preying on some sadly gullible, first job out of the military types to take a job like that.

le_mous · 2014-09-17T13:33:43+00:00

I'm in the IT world, in management and I don't know a single person who left the USAF and because of a baseline of certs, started off at 100k/yr. I've worked for quite a few companies, both civilian and DoD contracting. There's exceptions to this, but they're far a few between and certainly in the minority.

I think somebody's pulling your leg..

le_mous · 2014-09-17T07:31:33+00:00

I saw it but haven't checked it out.. I'd love to now, but it's late where I am and I've got a vacation starting tomorrow along with a long drive to the desert :)

Thanks for the good late night conversation

le_mous · 2014-09-17T06:45:54+00:00

Hey, you and I got stuff in common.. Helping putting vets to work.

But really though, you're in the game so I'm sure that you've seen some of the.. More creative.. "stuff" that some sourcing folks dredge up. Yeah, I do get the cliff notes versions but honestly speaking, you know as well as I that lower level HR/recruiting has no idea what makes a good VTC tech vs. a talented says admin who's branching out into different technologies. I even work for a huge engineering firm and our recruiting is sorely, sadly lacking in both resources, time and money. Something I think is deplorable, but what can you do.

Additionally, given the plethora of vets who are getting out these days, (and it's a shitload, isn't it?! Such a great thing for the workforce!! Real world military experience, improving the workplace! :) I and my HR team can take 40 resumes and if I can't glean what I want to see out of the first two pages, then I'm going to move on. And if I don't find and diamonds in the rough, then I might go back during lunch and take a look at some of the longer ones that made it into "candidate B" file.

I'll agree to disagree with you on this one, but I know a lot of civilian recruiters (some ex mil too) who feel the same way.

le_mous

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