[hugh3]

Many of the enlisted men in the military aren't all that smart, and most of 'em are pretty darn cheap.

If there's a takeaway lesson it's that even not-so-smart, cheap-to-hire people are actually surprisingly capable of doing stuff, if you create a management environment where they have to do it and know they aren't gonna get any mollycoddling from the higher-ups. Here is the task. Go do it. Come back to me when it's done.

[rdl]

The argument of elite selection vs. elite training is interesting. I think USMC, particularly in WW2 and in general during the draft period, had general-population induction, but through training and organization produced an elite force. Other elite units, like the Navy SEALs, seem to focus on elite recruitment and selection.

I'm not sure which works better for a tech company. Clearly only the USMC process scales once you need to hire a lot of people.

[lucasjung]

The SEALs do both: they are very picky about who gets into BUD/S, BUD/S weeds out all but the best, and then they continuously train to stay the best.

I actually believe that the USMC's formula for success doesn't scale without limit. They are way smaller than the Army, and I'm sure that's a big part of how they are able to maintain the kind of cohesive culture needed to sustain excellence.

Also, even during the draft era, the Marines had another tool that you didn't consider: attrition. I don't mean the combat kind, I mean washing out the people who can't cut it. It's amazing how thoroughly they can transform a young person, but even so there are some people that just aren't good enough, and the Marine Corps has always been the most willing of all services to get rid of dead weight. So it's not selection vs. training, it's a three-way combination of selection, training, and attrition.

[nhangen]

"Many of the enlisted men in the military aren't all that smart, and most of 'em are pretty darn cheap."

That's one of the most asinine statements I've ever read here.