You're right, I was a rank off. That being said, a Colonel is often still in charge of a couple thousand people.

Absolutely, and the comparisons get kind of hairy sometimes. GS-12+ aren't all supervisory, it's possible to have GS-14 and 15s that are mostly specialists with few or no individuals in their direct charge. For those curious, the general mapping of GS grades to officer ranks:

GS-15 = O-6 (Colonel/Navy Captain)

GS-14 = O-5 (Lt Colonel/Commander)

GS-13 = O-4 (Major)

GS-12 = O-3 (Captain, this is the journeyman level for engineesr)

GS-9/11 = O-1/2 (Lt's, apprentice stage)

GS doesn't start at 9, though. The lower grades are typically limited scope, no supervisory responsibility, office jobs (secretaries, mail room, clerk, data entry, etc.). Or they're training positions, straight out of college an engineer may be a GS-5/7 and after 2-4 years a GS-11/12. They don't really have a clean comparison to military ranks, that I know of.

> They don't really have a clean comparison to military ranks, that I know of.

They do, but you have to start going into the enlisted ranks for best comparisons. GS-7 might be E-6/E-7, GS-5 would be E-4/E-5, etc.

It gets fuzzy. Enlisted responsibility is not strictly below officer responsibility, it's just different and somewhat overlapping once you get to higher NCO ranks. A high ranked NCO could be on par with a GS-12 in terms of responsibility scope, though perhaps not in pay. I'd agree that low GS grades (say 5-9) are probably akin to E1-E4, but starting at E5 or so (AF) you start gaining responsibilities (either personnel or materiel) that are more akin, not in kind but in scope, to lower ranked officers.

If you look at pay, a GS-7 makes less than I did as an E-4 in the DC/Baltimore area.

If you look at responsibility, it seems to fit.

I disagree. I worked with plenty of AF Col's in the 5-sided-puzzle-palace that managed offices with 15-30 folks. They worked alongside a GS-13 to GS-15 types.

What happens in D.C. isn't really representative of the rest of the military. A normal Colonel will be a Brigade Commander, in charge of at least 3 battalions, which each contain hundreds of people.

Well it simply depends on the scenario of the given agency/unit. In the Navy an O-6 may very well have a "Major" command that still doesn't involve more than 180 people and an individual ship.

Likewise just as D.C. has peculiar effects on the military rank of typical workers, so does it have peculiar effects on the civilian grade of workers, due to the position classification principle of "scope of effect".

I'm less familiar with the Navy than I am with the Army and the Marines, but wouldn't the captain of a ship with a crew of 180 warrant a sizable paycheck in the private sector? I began by talking about the number of personnel they would be responsible for, but someone else described the situation a bit better than I. AS they said, it really comes down to the level of responsibility. The government probably determined that being the captain of a ship worth tens of millions of dollars is probably roughly equivalent to leading a brigade of infantrymen.

I would say the CO deserves it.

But the Navy normally uses O5 to command ships of similar crew size. Very rarely, even O4... it all depends on what exactly the ship is, and what the expected mission set of that ship is.

Obviously the Navy wouldn't slot a random O4 into minesweeper command even though it's a small ship, so you're really talking about a "better than average" O4 even for those, it just reflects back to how scope of responsibility can change things even for the Navy.

This is where it starts breaking down though, as rank increases (GS or other) responsibility increases. This is often most clearly seen with the number of people you're charged with, but less clearly is when it's the work itself. Either as a specialist or leading a group of specialists, or managing particularly big projects (so you don't directly manage thousands, but the scope of the project may place you indirectly in charge of them).

Colonels at the Pentagon are a dime a dozen. But a Colonel in the field - away from DC - might be a base commander. When I was a civilian working for the military and participating in/attending meetings, briefings, etc., we didn't even stand for Generals entering the room (which is protocol) unless the General had at least 2 stars. . .and not always then, depending on the level of the brass in the room.