provision-2017-national-defense-authorization-act-180-matthew-vinton

It's a damn if you do, damn if you don't thing. For all the retiring MILs, especially officers, hoping to pick up a DoD job seems a natural progression, makes full use of their talents, blah, blah, blah. If you take a look at the larger picture, someone suffers because of it either way. First, this only applies to DoD and not eligibility to work for any other Fed department. It doesn't affect working for a contractor so long as you comply with the cooling off period for "selling" to the Government. Those periods are longer for Flags vs others as I recall. Now the flip side that I've seen repetitively. An O-5 goes out the door and voila, they're the new GS-14 that stepped in while bypassing a bunch of career CS GS-13s. I've seen it so much in the NAVFAC community, it's a significant morale killer. Additionally, there frequently is too much "militarization" of many times primarily civilian organizations. The exMILs tend to be more autocratic (read only know how to be a MIL), lack knowledge and skill in dealing with CIVPERS, and there's a good correlation between that number and the number/types of grievances and union problems. When the bitching shows up in the climate surveys, the MILs go into denial. I had to walk a fine line being a long term AD and then Reserve working for the same organization as a CIV. In some ways it helped and others it hurt. Bottom line, the MILs don't understand the CIVs and vice versa as the culture divide is great. Some of my success was in being there to bridge some gaps, but many feel you're one or the other or worse, a traitor. Go figure. This is one of the more grey issues and neither way is right, or wrong for that matter. It just is.