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olevelo

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Posts posted by olevelo

  1. What are they odds they backtrack on this next year just in time for PRFs to be late?
    While this is a kick in the balls for folks that have been passed over for O-4 in the past, it's the right thing to do. Of the 5% not being promoted in the past, 2.5% have been good dudes getting hosed by the system. The other 2.5% with negative indicators will continue to be ID'd. But the real win is cutting out the insane amount of queep driven from the group and wing level. Maybe the O-6's will have time to actually leave the office and lead now that they're not stuck wasting time on Major PRFs. 
    Second order effect will be the lack of Christmas party planning and masters degrees since no one will be worried about making Major. Young wingman actually have time to study now. 

    There's nothing in the statements that indicate this will continue next year, much less in the future. For any of the "positives" to come out of this for both the upcoming captains as well as the leadership chain, this can't be announced year to year.
  2. The only reason Cleared Hot made it to where he is is because of his rank and position.  It had nothing to do with his talent, drive, or personality.  Nor with his ability to think big.  Plus, it's not possible to network with others until you get command and/or O-6+.  
    As someone who also never made SQ/CC, I recommend you give up and accept something less.  

    My point was some of the specifics about that position (high responsibility, ability to work from home, salary, etc) more than likely have a direct correlation with his previous positions. I have no doubt that his intangibles also had a direct correlation with him getting those CC positions as well.

    The point is that the O-3/4 separating today has probably a 5% chance of landing a position similar to what an O-6 is able to land, barring extreme circumstances. Talking management here of course.

    Again, not taking anything away from what he said, and his details are much appreciated.
  3. I wonder if sitting in the school house vice being at one of the test squadrons working on sexy programs made your PRF less competitive?  In my experience, the FTEs and even the human factors O-4s did well from having that ops stink.

    I was in a test squadron for 2.5 years, then OGV attached to the same squadron for another year, prior to being an instructor. But I had some pretty crappy leadership who didn't take care of folks with strats and awards during that time, so I probably would have been better off in the schoolhouse!

     

    And I was one of the first two AC-130J CSOs, so how much sexier can I get?!

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  4. FWIW, our O-6 recently mentioned to us that they are now looking for combat/deployment time on the Lt Col board PRF.

    That was mentioned in the AFPC feedback as well, because they don't see your whole SURF...they infer deployment history from the PRF and Decs. Mine was in both, but lack of recent deployment (because I'm a tester, not ops) might have hurt...but she thought what was in there was fine.

    On a slightly related note, our Wing has a new policy on OPRs that the first line of the rater's block has to have some sort of qualifier (strat like), in addition to any strat in the bottom line. Said it was due to what he saw in a promotion board he sat on, that it was a big discriminator. Anyone else hear of that or already have similar policy?
  5. The counselor at AFPC doesn't have a clue, really, as to why someone got passed over. All they do is compare your record against 10 promoted records. I want to say they are close to the cut line, but I'm not a confident in that assumption. What did that they have that yours didn't? That's it. They don't get access to any notes and they don't have any insight into what the board members were thinking.

    That's correct, except the records are a random sampling of P's who were promoted...she doesn't know which if any are near the cut line. While she doesn't know what the specific board looked at, she has seen the "random sampling" over the last several years so has seen the relative strength increase, for what it's worth.

    Meeting with your senior rater (hopefully one who has sat on a board previously) is much more valuable than the AFPC talk, but it's not entirely worthless either. Wish they had that for the RIF too. Instead it was "too bad so sad see ya later".
  6. Y'all should see the facial reactions I get when I tell the story in person. :) I will say, my Wg/CC did say before this board that he'd grade my record as basically an average score, so it would depend on how the board valued TPS and rated, and where the cut line ended up being. AFPC feedback was that with all of the RIFs, Force Shaping, and voluntary departures, its left mostly stronger performers so the cut line has moved up.

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  7. Pretty impressive, just poor OPRS or negative discriminator in your records?
    I would like to assume that TPS grad then instructor has to be above the run of the mill. 

    No negative discriminators. Well, except I was RIF'd in 2014, and then that was subsequently undone a year later (hence why I'm being my original year group). But I had all of that on my record in the RIF too...basically a function of being a 12M core and luck of the draw (I'm a 12S now). No one had any good answer for why it happened in the first place. But in any case, now I have an "OPR" (Form 77) that says "restored to active duty by order of the SECAF". The promotion board doesn't necessarily know why, but I'm guessing they can work it out by the dates....and it just looks weird.

    As for the rest of my records, I have a UNT DG, TPS of course, a smattering of quarterly awards, decent vectors, but not many strats at all (remember, competing against fighter pilots and other TPS grads...we can't all be #1!), and that's the killer. I have better recent strats (post-RIF) but not extraordinary.

    Meeting an SSB in September after getting another straggler correction fixed finally, so maybe the new board members will see differently. Or there's always next year!
  8. So I'm a nerd and wanted to analyze the source of the weakness in CSO numbers compared to the board average. I looked at 2016 Lt Col and 2017 Lt Col IPZ stats since back in 2015 the DP/P % was significantly different and thus harder to compare apples to apples.
    In 2016, CSOs were fairly in line-ish with the overall board selection rate (70.5% for CSOs vs 74.1% for the board). In 2017, CSOs were significantly underperforming (61.4% for CSOs vs 72.6% for the board).
    BL conclusion: about 1/3 of the difference is a lower rate of IDE + P dudes being promoted compared to the board average, and 2/3 of the difference is a lower rate of DP allocation for CSOs compared to the board average.
    Problems with the analysis are the small number of years (2) considered and the overall small data set (total # of CSOs on AD isn't that large), making definitive conclusions harder to draw. Overall there were about 22 CSOs who didn't make it in 2017 who "should have" for CSOs to perform at the board-average promotion rate. Is that a systematic issue or a few handfuls of dudes not quite being awesome enough? Hard to say. Pilots and mission support are easier to draw conclusions on since the numbers are larger...smaller data sets are more likely to be influenced by a few outliers.
    Super-duper BL: if we're in a rated manning crisis then we shouldn't be under-promoting rated aviators, that seems pretty obvious...the AF has no room to complain of 12X shortages now or in the near future since they've recently under-promoted CSOs and provided lower bonus numbers.
     
     

    So datapoint within those datapoints for you...I'm one of those IPZ pass-overs this year (should have been IPZ last year, but that's another story). TPS grad, TPS instructor, and currently in a Sq/CC equivalent position. But not enough strats and awards (because I compete with a bunch of high performer fighter pilots and such).
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  9. This is interesting to me...was the CSO promotion rate that bad in previous years for CSOs, or did AFGSC just perform exceptionally badly.  In my community, the rate to Lt Col was 47% for 12B.  Across all AFGSC, it was about 60%~ish.  Well below the 86% rate across the entire Air Force that was advertised by AFPC for previous years.

    I don't have the numbers in front of me, but overall rates for the last few years for CSO's have been around 60-65%. In other words, pretty much the lowest rate of all the categories.
  10. Commander's knowledge letter sounds like just the thing. Thanks! Won't be able to CRO the individual because won't  have 120 days supervision (or even 120 data in the AF) before the board.

    Letter of Intent is the proper terminology, and is detailed in the Performance Reports AFI.


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  11. Continuation offered is a maximum, not a minimum. Just because they offer continuation to 20 doesn't mean they can't decide to separate you earlier by changing the continuation criteria and reboarding your record for continuation again based on needs of the air force. If you are authorized X majors, you have to have a process to get rid of the excess majors (either through promotion, separation, or retirement). Up or out was one way to force separation of people to keep the end strength for the grade where it needed to be. The continuation board would be the logical place to assess which officers should be separated to maintain end strength, as the records are there for consideration already. Welcome to the hunger games.

    Plus, IPZ/APZ has been masked on the last few majors boards already, but board members can tell if you are APZ (count OPRs, look at dates, etc).



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    Umm, no. They can offer a year-to-year continuation, but it's very rare that they do. If they offer 20/24, you are guaranteed to that unless there's some other serious issue that causes an involuntary separation.

    As for the masking, it's really up to the individual board member if they pay attention. My SR told me last week that he recently sat on a board, and personally, he didn't look at a single date or pay attention to anything that would indicating I/APZ, and that was the direction given to them. He said the APZ's did pretty well on that board (couldn't tell me what board it was).


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  12. The biggest problem with the strat game is my #1 is not necessarily anywhere near your #1, and in fact, my #15 (which doesn't even show up on the OPR) might have been in your top 3. We have this problem in the TPS grad community, and I'm guessing there are WIC communities as well, but not as likely since those grads get spread out to other units.


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  13. My boss (the OG) told me a couple days ago they'd notify folks today. Since I'm on leave he said he'd call, but never heard anything. So not sure if our release was delayed, or they're just refusing to tell me bad news over the phone.


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  14. I'm pretty sure it's only a service commitment. I've never heard of anyone in a "flying commitment".

    As for flying as an IMA, AFMC/A3 said a few weeks ago that AFRC was granting NO flying waivers for IMA's. We used to have a bunch of flying IMA's but after the reg changed a few years ago they became all non-flying. We were trying to get waivers for some, but guess that's not happening now.


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  15. The rental market sucks right now. I had to move out of my current house because my landlord wants to move back in, and there was not much good. There were four rentals listed on military by owner, and one was perfect so snagged it. I have a buddy who will be renting his out in that area, but not until later in the summer. No pool though.

    There's tons of options if you buy. But then you have to deal with the crappy renters here when you move. And selling it might be difficult because there's so much competition.


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  16. I switched to Verizon Prepaid a few months ago because they're the only ones with decent service on base here. $50 a month plus tax (about $5 in CA) for 5 GB of rollover data, plus NFL Redzone streaming! (Does count against the data cap though unlike with postpaid).


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  17. Lear, thanks for the added explanation, although I still disagree with the logic of promoting someone who is not willing over someone who is probably just as deserving but is just below the cut line for that particular board (but might not be on another). You say you don't know what scores are the cut line...but you do know that by giving someone asking not to be promoted any score at all they have a chance of bumping someone else. I don't think you can equally compare the letters of those asking not to be promoted versus those asking for consideration to be promoted...they are vastly different concepts. One should be automatic (I nor most want a field grader around who doesn't want to be there at that rank), while the other should be considered. Also, you say you don't want to give folks an "out" from their commitments...come back to me when the air force stops kicking people out then two years later deciding it needs to add 30k airmen. But that's a whole other conversation!


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