Brasidas said:
Please explain your comment about how this is terrible for the trade.
Maybe terrible isn't the right word... But, unhealthy. How you ask? Simple... What happens when you have a Master Corporal actually in charge of troops that isn't even a half decent leader, never mind a natural leader. Or even worse, he's had his entire career screamed at him and he's been treated like a child for most of his career and then BAM! 5-6 years after going through basic, he's a MCpl now! BAD. BAD scoobies! He's setup to be a terrible leader, unless he's a super switched on, decent human being who realized the horrible examples of 'leadership' he's seen in his career are just that. Examples to steer clear of...
I've seen a ton of MCpl's in our trades that are absolute pieces of crap and really shouldn't be trusted to be let out the back of an LS with a Y shaped stick and told to find water never mind actually be in charge of people... That's what I mean.
Promoting 80-100 a year shows how many QUIT and how fast the turnover is. It's a meat grinder. Of course there is always good and bad examples of leadership but, as I just learned on PLQ, apparently the army and your chain is suppose to pick the few, awesome, truly amazing Cpl's to bring to the next level. Not... Everyone. Just because they lasted the longest in the waiting game.
Am I saying no one should be a 5 year Master Corporal? No. There absolutely should be some. You know, the ones who actually deserve and earned it. Ones who actually obtained a mastered, outstanding, immediate PER review for a couple years on actual merit and job knowledge & skill vice playing hockey really good and yelling at people.
With all that being said. What happens when you have a dipstick for a leader? Throw morale down the toilet instantly. Or, any faith in the chain of command and respect. It starts right at the MCpl level. If they don't respect that person... Well... Shit rolls downhill but faith shoots upwards it seems! And how can you respect your 'leader' if you know how to do everything trade related far better then them and all they ca do is fill out a leave pass for you and correct memos? What happens if that error code on the radio isn't being rectified the way you know how, what if you need him to be the SME and he just says, "Oh that's a senior Cpl's job now! FIGURE IT OUT!"... Having horrible leadership promotes an excellently TOXIC work environment. Promoting the wrong people propagates the chances of many crappy leaders. Promoting a ton of people all over the place just exacerbates the chances of said issues occuring. Yeah, I'm sure maybe it's 50/50 in the ACISS core that some guys are actually awesome Sig Ops and some others are good in other ways. But the other 50%?... One has to wonder.
TBH, so far in my career the best leadership I've seen has come from:
1.) Combat Arms trades (although they also have some SUPER bad examples too)
2.) LCIS - Far better old school leaders than 'Sig Op' old school leaders...
3.) Lineman - From everything I've seen, the junior leaders seem to have a much closer relationship with their boys due to the nature of the work than the other trades.
4.) IST - NEW, brand new, along with most of our junior leaders. Even still, I've seen some pretty awesome examples of dudes already.
5.) Sig Ops - Most brutal, horrible, terrible examples I've seen of poisonous, toxic leaders and chain gagging on ahhh... the Chain! Repeatedly. I think it's finally getting a little better because most of the old dinosaurs are retiring / broken / done and the junior leaders I've seen so far are mostly better. But there are still some that I wouldn't rely on to properly squat on a toilet.
Anyway, just my opinion, doesn't mean crap and that... Really... But promoting 38292843948234 people each year isn't healthy at the least. Ask the ACISS Core career manager what he thinks about it. The previous one for the Pte-Cpl ranks specifically mentioned he even thought the trade was 'sick' and promoting too fast, almost like bleeding out in a way. Survivors cling on and go up just because. And he's well known to not be the nicest guy but I think he was right about that...