>JAG

>URL JOs

>BAH

if only i knew what any of those words mean. Why haven't people learned to describe their abbreviation unless they already pre-established that the audience will definitely know them?

Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are.

The ELI5 is that the Navy pays officers who do the core ship/flying activities quite well. Compared to their civilian peers, Navy lawyers, doctors, and cyber people don’t get paid well.

The posted article is about rust on ships. A ships management team is paid well. Low pay is unlikely to be the cause of dissatisfaction.

To be clear, “paid well” is not “paid well” as measured by FAANG tech salaries. A submarine officer with 8 years of experience is making something equivalent to $200Ks if I am to believe the calculators that adjust for tax advantages of military pay, discounted value of future retirement cash flows, etc.

I was a SWO before going into medicine. My first divo tour was in the engineering dept and my second was in weapons. Did well in both. I'm not sure I agree with you about the SWOs or pilots getting paid well relative to their civilian peers.

Maybe it’s ultimately a subjective thing. If one feels underpaid, they are underpaid. Then it’s a matter if there’s an employer that agrees, and it just takes one.

I’d just note that the service academies crowd the rankings for highest paid graduates at early/mid career https://www.payscale.com/college-salary-report/bachelors#ful...

Anecdotally, I had a reservist friend with a Harvard MBA who realized he could pull down more money as an activated reservist in Bahrain than his role at BlackRock.

Your mileage may vary…

"Because I’m replying to someone who would know what those acronyms are."

That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.

It's curious that you are smart enough to come up with an arguement yet apparently at the same time innocently simple enough not to know why it's invalid.

>That only flies in an email or on a specialized forum.

Counterpoint: It doesn't.

They made a reply to a military member on a thread about military equipment. Googling a few acronyms + "military" would surely lead one to the answer.

It would indeed. But why push the burden onto all the non-specialist readers, who after all come here to both learn and to take part, rather than expand the initialisms the first time they're introduced in a thread?

I'm reminded of an acronym at work: CIM. They come in two variants, CIM-A and CIM-B. I'd been there a year before I finally decided I needed to ask a more senior colleague what they stood for, and he didn't know either. The intention was obvious from the context of their use (although whether -A or -B was more serious wasn't) but most of the people in the weekly meetings discussing Critical Incident Management didn't actually know that was what they were discussing. Nowadays we have a culture that better encourages definition of terms upon first use, and it's less common that someone needs to ask "stupid" questions.

lol I feel like this debate plays out at least weekly in a HN thread about a subculture, specialty, etc.

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrestricted_Line_Officer basically any officer that isn't a specialist. Doctors and lawyers have artificially high ranks compared to non specialists, but you wouldn't expect them to command a ship.

> but you wouldn't expect them to command a ship.

I know what you mean, but I don't think it would merely be unexpected if one did somehow. I'm pretty sure it isn't possible because, being specialists, they can't also be a line officer. It seems like logic stops them, but then leads me to wonder about the vague possibility of a horribly unfortunate event leaving only specialists on-board... what then? Would logic stop them from sailing, or inexperience and lack of expertise?

JAG was a TV show for like 10 years. Judge Advocate General. Lawyers.

BAH has a description in parens immediately following, but could be better.

Why do people on technical message board with lots of jargon refuses to do even a modicum of research? If I didn't drop a description of a monad after I said it here would you also be mad? How about Term Sheets. I see Alpha used all the time and I have to look it up.

Since this doesn’t seem to be answered down thread- URL refers to Unrestricted Line officers, for example officers in the aviation, surface or submarine warfare communities etc. Restricted line officers can be found in the medical, supply, or intelligence communities etc. A third type of officer, and one of my personal favorite abbreviations, is the Direct Input Limited Duty Officer. DILDOs are required to have prior enlisted experience, but not required to have a bachelors degree. Restricted line officers and DILDOs could be given command of a training unit, or medical facility, but would not be given command of a ship or squadron.

It's part of the indoctrination of military culture/mindset. The heavy use of acronyms especially in a public context like this serves to signal in group/out group status.

Quick googling reveals JAG = Judge Advocate General aka a military lawyer

If you have seen JAG or NCIS (tv shows), you probably know some of these and with NCIS being a top (broadcast) show for a few years, it is quite likely a lot of (dare I say older) people have heard of these

I was Navy for 5 years and a navy contractor for 10 and I’ve never seen URL in my life. (Besides, you know, the web meaning)

Only ~30% of people on HN are from the US and I'd assume that the number of non-US people who watched NCIS in the original language are comparatively low.

> Only ~30% of people on HN are from the US

Does anyone have time to cite a source for this? I was thinking this number was a lot higher.

Sure! There are no definitive numbers, but we have a few data points:

Dang mentions quite often that HN has a very international readership, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23363430 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23438403 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27052434

An old poll with 32% US (probably the number I remembered): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13819771

There's also a recent poll w/ 47% (2346 of 4891), although this might be timing related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378

> An old poll with 32% US

> There's also a recent poll w/ 47%

Clearly you need one more poll to decide this, as per XKCD 927.

People dont own TVs anymore?

You can't just look at enlisted pay broadly. You have to look at the troops that earn BAH and those who don't. Both are underpaid, but those who don't get BAH are inundated in very poor base services and are usually on the clock 24/7: https://veteran.com/2022-military-pay-charts/

Another point that I haven't seen brought up here is that usually the people who paint ships are school washouts. They couldn't get through school and have no classification, so this is what they do. I wasn't in the Navy but this is always what I heard.

Good point RE: sailors in barracks, who don’t receive BAH.

I was a submariner, so I’m not certain who ends up chipping paint on surface ships. Submarines don’t get the people who washed out of schools.

For Medical and JAG, are VA benefits (ie paid long-term care) worth the loss in income over the longer term?

You will never know. That is the great thing about “benefits”, the recipient has no control or knowledge.

The employer, or politicians, 5, 10, 20 years from now can cut funding and reduce access from MDs to NP/PA, or only cover certain meds, or require excessive prior authorizations to dissuade using the healthcare.

Exactly this. The VA already is hiring as many midlevels (NP/PA) as possible so that they don't have to hire MDs. You wouldn't believe how low the bar is to become an NP. PAs receive substantially better training, but at the end of the day they are still midlevels.

Worse still, many NP programs are now giving out "doctorates" of nursing practice so that NPs can introduce themselves to the patient as "Dr." Smith.

In short, the VA is willing to gamble with your life if it means saving a few bucks. It's pretty harrowing.

Is there any evidence that care by midlevels produces worse outcomes for routine cases?

Plenty. Here is perhaps the most recent: https://www.ama-assn.org/practice-management/scope-practice/...

But of course, nobody cares. The rich will get MDs and the poor will get midlevels.

$4000 is a (maybe nice?) 2 bedroom apartment in Point Loma at current rates