SPiF

This. Also got the 6-month UPT tour and ran into some med issues which found me getting reclass'd. Went into cyber, the AF let me do some really cool stuff for awhile, then punched to the reserves to take those skills to the outside where I've done really well. Not everyone goes to the big FAANG companies, but getting the AF to pay to get the cyber ops/cyber security stink and experience opens up a world of possibilities post-AF that many of my commissioning class who got out just haven't had. And it's a broad enough field that you can find something you enjoy with the training they give you.

Another plug for Jon and Trident. This was my third time financing with them, and my father even closed a loan with them the week prior. All over the paperwork and the ability to quickly turn stuff around helped me win the house I wanted and relatively painlessly go through all the mortgage hoops. Rate was at 2.99% on a conventional (ended up being a better option than VA in the market competition) which was lower than my VA refi last year. Was selling a house at the same time and the buyer's lender seemed insistent on screwing up as many things as they could. Of all the issues in play for a cross-country move, the loan for the house I was buying wasn't ever in question.

Went ANG to AFRES. Biggest hurdle was getting the wing to get off their rear and finish processing the 1288. There was some other medical shenanigans needed by the AFRES that the ANG hadn't documented, but the AFRES recruiter handled it for me. Still needed to go through a recruiter, even though I had a gaining unit with a position number.

I ended up only getting the unit to pay for some of my certs before I punched, the rest I paid for myself.

It's part of the AFPC Secure suite of apps. You just log into the AF Portal and you can search for it as one of the available sites. It'll let you search by all reserve vacancies, TR, IMA, or AGR.

You may want to look at the IMA program as well. All the billets I've seen are non-flying, and it's a lot easier to schedule your days in 1-2 blocks/year and be done with it. Looking at RMVS they've got a decent slate of 11X positions all over.

Or the reserves (Go IMA!). Made the jump from AD a few years ago, don't regret it for the quoted reasons and I still get to contribute to the mission. Every time I miss being AD my unit is more than happy to offer me days so I can remind myself why I punched...

Just closed with Trident last week. Called around to several different banks, and no one could beat their rate + lender credit. Especially as we decided to do 0% down with the low interest rates right now. Biggest takeaway for me is that, within about 20 minutes of emailing with some questions, Marty was giving me a call back to talk rough numbers (which were really close to on the money by the time we closed). We're up in Seattle where the housing market is really hot and they were able to quick turn on anything we needed, which ended up being the difference in getting our house. Bonus points for hiring military spouses. Highly recommend, and would use again/recommend to family.

I started doing an online MBA from the University of Texas - Dallas, which also allows you to switch between in-residence or all online classes. Ended up moving next to the University of Washington when I left AD for the reserves, switched to the in-res program. Fully agree that the classmates/on campus resources make the loss of the online convenience worth it.

Here's a good link: http://www.arpc.afrc.af.mil/Home/HQRIO.aspx They're all posted online under the reserve vacancies section of AFPC Secure.

Depends on your question. Left AD for a TR ANG job, transitioned to an AFRES IMA gig a few months ago. Honestly, I prefer it a lot more to the ANG. It's working within an AD unit but at least I get paid on time now.

Now that's wardriving!

AFI 36-2115 para 1.7 talks about what you're looking for wrt the reserves. My guard unit does this all the time (overages), but the ANG is currently allowed to be at 110% manned with overages. The catch I've found in manning my shop is that it's hard to get both overage and over grade. But, all officer spots in the ANG are Major slots. Reserves may be different, as I know they have officer slots up to the Capt level.

HOR move applies when you separate. I went Palace Front last year, and they paid what it would cost to move to my HOR (I moved about 3x further away). I had 7 years' AD. I believe there's a line around 12 years where they'll pay to move you anywhere in CONUS as you've been away from your HOR long enough, but I wasn't nearly close enough to it so I didn't pay much attention to it. And the dates can be before your orders by a certain amount. I did a full DITY and shipped my stuff (via UBox, didn't trust the Gov't to not screw me over on shipping/storage with their carrier) before my "first movement" date by about 2 weeks. Finance Guy probably knows the exact delimiter, but they paid out for me.

LinkedIn. They offer free premium membership for military for at least 12 months. Do a search for "military recruiter" or even "recruiter" for the location or companies you're interested in. I've gotten 2 jobs (one they reached out to me, one I reached out to them) and a few serious sets of interviews through it. Probably the only useful info I got out of TAP.

As a former AD (now Reserve) 17D and working for a big cloud provider at my day job, there is plenty of interest to provide services to the DoD. Biggest hurdle is that what keeps our costs down is the ability to essentially share that computing power with multiple customers (as well as a lot of non-US citizens doing dev/build/mx) which the DoD cloud service provider regs keep choking on. The regs are also in constant flux, which makes it hard to plan a business case for $XXXM+ in investment to folks who have very little concept of why the regs are written the way they are. DISA (as 17D_guy mentioned) is the big broker, and many of the regs are still written with traditional enterprise networks in mind. Some concerns are valid, some aren't, which defeats a lot of the cost savings. But, I think the next 18-24 months will show a lot of progress as the various branches start pushing DISA to compromise a bit more. And yes, we do have outages just like your traditional base server farms. The difference comes in the redundancy model that cloud offers and there are various pricing options to help with that. Of course, multi-region/multi-service outages can happen with things such as zero-day attacks, human error, bad rollover configs, etc..

I did just that. Got a W-2 for my AD pay, and a W-2 for my ANG pay. It was classified as a Reserve Component W-2, so I would think it's the same process for the Reserves. My AD W-2 showed my previous state of residence, TX, while the ANG one showed my new state, WA.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/jordan/11388486/Jordan-to-execute-Isil-prisoner-immediately-in-response-to-pilot-burned-alive-by-jihadists.html

Depends on what your new employer is willing to offer you. Most companies cover a large chunk of the cost for just the employee, but (in my experience) when you throw in the spouse/kids is when TRS can become a better deal.

http://www.tricare.mil/tamp If you go from AD directly into an ANG/Reserve spot, you'll get TAMP. Nothing showed up on MilConnect or anywhere in my records until I signed in to my ANG unit and they activated it. From what I've heard about the 5 years free medical, that's for any condition that is marked as "deployment related". And it's at a VA hospital. I got jack s**t on info from the AD side on TAMP. Walked into my ANG MPF and they processed it (once I was officially gained). But it takes them about 1-2 weeks to gain you, although mine took about a month due to buffoonery at the state level. They back-dated the paperwork to indicate no break in service and everything was fine. If you decide to purchase Tricare reserve select you have to wait until 30 days before your TAMP is up. Although I do recommend avoiding any medical appointments for you/dependents within the first 30 days as the Tricare claims re-processing process is a pain in the ass.

I completed my PMP while still on AD, and there are tons of things that work as project. The basic definition is that the project shouldn't be something that is a recurring process (i.e currency flying, etc.). I was able to use ORI/CUI prep (building a prep plan, tracking milestones, execution, and after-action). Same thing with major deployment workups. I was also able to count the execution of deployments (adjustment to how we were executing the project as part of the measure/verify/adjust process, etc..). Yes, these things occur on a semi-regular timeline, but each one involves its own planning process, scope definition, objectives, and measurable outcomes. Doing that it wasn't too hard to come up with 4500 hours. For most of the big projects like we go through the major PMI steps, we may not call it a kickoff meeting or plot points on a Gantt chart.

If you go direct without a break, you should get the TAMP for 180 days free coverage (but your MPF has to kick that process off, supposed to be smoother in the Reserves than the ANG). When you're within 60 days of that expiring you can go online and enroll for TRS to kick in the day after that expires, for no break in coverage. Otherwise, your Prime expires at midnight on your DOS. While they f***ed up my TR start date (but backed it up to be effective the day after I separated), had to take my son for an urgent care visit which was rejected the first time as we were showing as "lapsed". Was the typical Tricare PITA to fix, but overall they made good on it.

Was on a 4-year controlled tour, AAC 50. Applied for and was approved for a full separation that would have me out by the 2.5 year mark as I don't have any ADSCs. CC approved, WG/CC approved, and I never asked MPF for their opinion on the matter. Cleared without issue from AFPC. The AAC only means that you have to get approval to PCS (and in some cases PCA) before that time is up, saw a few folks who ran into that problem.

For other folks looking to get out soon: https://mycareer.deloitte.com/us/en/whatwedo/industries/core-leadership-program I know some folks who went through it (I didn't find out until it was too late), but it's supposed to be a really good program. I've used some of the nuggets that were handed down to folks that went while searching for employment myself, and it paid dividends.

I get SGLI as a drill status guardsmen, also get the spousal SGLI. Same rates as the AD folks pay, you just have to reaccomplish the paperwork once you sign in to your unit. I think I technically had a 1-month gap in coverage, no big deal.