Military leadership has a great deal to recommend it.

For one thing, their principal mission is to deal with the unexpected, and come out on top.

That's nothing to sneeze at.

In the civilian world, first responders and mobsters are probably analogous, as most corporate leadership is about consistency and predictability.

First responders, however, only have goals to stop the unexpected, or repair damage. Mobsters figure out how to take advantage of the unexpected, and maybe make some hay from it.

I suspect you could relate.

As both an army officer (reserves) and a former corporate software developer the problems are different because the expectations are different. One might assume expectations would follow the problem state(s), the reality, but I promise this isn't the case.

When I say that expectations are different our culture prepares us to start with a foundation of assumptions and our expectations grow and blossom from these assumptions. We assume things like the power grid is reliable, that we will have internet, and the only malicious people are common thieves attempting to rob unwitting grandmothers of their personal piggy banks. We then expect certain conventions to be automatically in place when writing software for our employers, things like: CI/CD, frameworks, code editors, and so forth. When an employer fails to meet these assumed expectations, typically limited to tools and infrastructure, we as developers consider the employer a failure. Strangely, things like policies and the human element rarely (close to never) enter these preliminary expectations for most developers which frequently results in dire second and third order consequences.

On the military side we do not have the luxury of these expectations either because we may enter an austere environment lacking the conveniences of modern life or because the military culture is socially backwards with regards to modern software.

Seeing these differences in expectations and appropriately self-reflecting becomes a necessary factor in durability. In my 15 years of writing software as a corporate developer this, more than all other factors combined, accounts for why some organizations can build durable software products and others cannot. It always boils down to two things: 1) setting appropriate expectations for people (soft-skills and inclusion) and 2) setting appropriate expectations for building quality products. Rarely, as in almost never, have I seen an organization really master both of those but I have seen organizations try at one and fail at both. In order to achieve success on one or both items there must be something to measure against and a willingness to impose hard limits.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I appreciate the insight.

I write fairly robust software. Not milspec, but a bit tougher than your average app.

I'm interested in mesh systems, but have found Meshtastic a bit too "raw" for my tastes (but maybe later, when I'm done with this project I'm working on), and the proprietary ones won't share their API.

The reason is that I'm interested in writing software that helps people help people. For free.

It's kind of shocking how hard that is to do. No one wants to support or encourage that kind of thing, so I generally have to go it fairly alone.

Completely unrelated to the subject of this thread, but I too have similar interests that I have been working on for the past 4 years. I recently wrote a paper about the concept I am exploring: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master...

Historically, leadership has always been a military thing. This was really the time in which one had to lead many men and, furthermore, when the circumstances meant they would instinctively have pushed back on what was asked of them.

indeed historically.

since the dawn of the information age, men would not only instinctively push back, but also because they were better informed and could see throu the lies of their generals.

hence leadership increasinly became a civillian/political function.

Quality leadership is very rare. I can understand looking anywhere for information / inspiration.

I think that's just being wise by broadening your horizons. You've already gotten the Army's take on this matter from your training.

After a decade of both civilian and Army experience, the one thing I can say the US military teaches better than any other organization is how to lead people. It has its share of leaders that fail upwards just like anywhere else, but on average the people in upper levels got there primarily on meritocracy. Your Soldiers are a big part of that, as they can actively prop you up if you do them right or bring you down should you fail them.

My napkin theory is that any profession which has a known risk of serious injury or death requires more competent leadership abilities in order to align an organization in the direction you want or need it to go (everything I've said here probably applies for first-responders as well). The fear and stress that comes with these kinds of jobs requires a certain finesse and connection from leaders with subordinates in order to convince them to put themselves in harms way for the sake of the "mission."

Yes, you're probably right. By the time I was senior lieutenant, junior captain, in my mid-twenties I had already internalized a lot of what the Army teaches. At that point I was looking to fill in what felt like specific gaps; detailed things about managing time and information in a knowledge / office work environment (whereas most Army training focuses on the tactical, combat environment), effectively delegating and coaching and giving feedback to subordinates, running a staff meeting, etc. I found specific and helpful tips for that stuff in the business management / consulting literature.

That army metaphor is used by the late PATRICK WINSTON -0:19: The Uniform Code of Military Justice specifies court martial for any officer who sends a soldier into battle without a weapon. There ought to be a similar protection for students because students shouldn't go out into life without the ability to communicate, .... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY&t=520s

As a recently-retired Navy Reserve officer who works in tech, I think it's healthy to have both sides looking the other direction, to a point. If nothing else, it lets civilians and the military try to understand each other a bit more, and the huge cultural divide between them is a serious problem in American society.

Not enough civilians understand the military well enough to have informed opinions on what it does, and only see what Hollywood gives them. So we end up with this weird Madonna/Whore complex where vets are either shining heroes to be thanked for their service or broken, violent bums. Conversely, the military (especially the senior ranks) need to understand that they can't expect to transfer out immediately sideways into senior leadership roles in the private sector, any more than an attorney can become a software developer or a software developer can become a mechanical engineer. I mean, you CAN do these things, but only so many of your old skills and resume transfer over.

I've heard many times from many places "the military produces so many extraordinary leaders, I wonder how they do it". I don't know what your experience has been, but my experience in the Navy was that they "create" leaders the same way a blast furnace "creates" purified iron; by taking in vast quantities of low-quality ore and burning and discarding 95% of it. All of the programs I completed had attrition rates of 70-90%. I always got the impression military training programs knew how to select people who already had the skills required, and typically had no idea how to teach someone who didn't already know everything. But that's just my experience from the programs I completed. I certainly hope other people had different experiences.

You're not wrong. Service academy seats and ROTC scholarships are competitive to get (like getting into any top-tier college), and then there's a decent amount of attrition along the path to commissioning, followed by more rounds of competitive selection and attrition for certain military communities (aviation, special operations, etc.), followed by the brutal up-or-out promotion and assignment system. So the people who are left standing are often fairly impressive.

I‘ve done a book summary on The Art of Action by Stephen Bungay where he applies military principles to civilian life and it‘s one of the best ones in this field I‘ve read: https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/book-summary-art-of-ac...

As someone who has nothing to do with the army/military. There's two principals that I've always liked about it, maybe more but two stand out.

1. No one gets left behind. 2. People work together for mission wins and mutual survival.

I have had a rough time in my professional career finding either of those at places of employment even in small bits. my latest job being the best at it but still struggling sometimes.

Maybe that gets romanticized a bit in books and movies, but I think companies would be way more successful with more people operating on those principals.

US industry teach us to fiercely compete, be an individual, destroy our competition. US military says almost the exact opposite barring that the competition is outside your group. Somehow these are both the best but seem to be at complete odds with one another.

What I feel is there may be some princples of leadership which overlap, but Military and Civilian leadership is essentially different.

In the military the lower ranks are mostly trained with drills to follow orders unquestionningly. The creativity is mostly left to Specops/Intelligence.

In the civilian world, even the lower ranks get to at least debate.