| Contrary to popular belief the personalities that appear most successful in the military are those that tend to be the most independent and anti-conformist. As a counterpoint everybody follows a chain of command. In all the corporate jobs I have held I never experienced a chain of command noticeably different from the military. Just like in corporate world the military allows you some latitude to push back on your leaders if they make a completely disastrous decision. The primary difference there is that you are more motivated to push back if a bad decision could mean increased risk to security (people's lives). I have never experienced this level of critical impasse in the corporate world. The military is mostly like working for a corporate employer with some key differences: * In theory the military expects everybody to be a leader, though in practice not everybody is willing to step up and make leader-like decisions or in some cases toxic leaders will suppress the opportunity. * The military is a really big bureaucracy, which can constrict many creative (unorthodox) leadership decisions, but sometimes produces extremely unorthodox solutions to work around the bureaucracy. * There are points in the military where you are demanded to work really long hours (like 12-16 hours, 6 or 7 days a week). In that amount of time everybody's personality is hyper-amplified. Some people can make this work really make their teams gel, where other people become terminal destructive forces. * The military is often really bad at a constant work pace. Consider the phrase "hurry up and wait". You tend to get really good at accomplishing tasks at 4x human speed so that you can go back to being paid to self-study or watch movies. * Look at how hard your corporate CEO works, the number of simultaneous tasks they have to balance, and the constant uncertainty in their schedules and travel. When you deploy in the military the entire team works at that tempo all the time. * You don't get to be a conformist tool as a military technician, because then the bureaucracy will crush your soul. You quickly learn to invent your own solution to many common problems. This is substantially less true of many corporate software developers. |