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Retirement Age in the Honorverse

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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by cthia   » Fri Oct 12, 2018 6:57 am

cthia
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phillies wrote:Long careers and promotions?
There can still be lots of promotions.
You just need more ranks.

Senior Sergeant, 17th Class
Junior Vice Commodore, Second Class

The SLN really needd a lot more different flag ranks than it had. After all, how many promotion bribes can you collect if there are no promotions?

This sounds plausible, doable and logical. Simply break promotion into bite-sized pieces. After all other considerations have been satisfied, a promotion comes if one has gone X number of years without stepping on one's sword or embarrassing the Queen.

At any rate, retirement can be a killer as well. A mental killer. I've heard of some people going back out into the workforce after experiencing the boredom of fishing and fishing and fishing for years. Retiring for 100 years can slowly and torturously kill the brain. If your mind can't occupy you, you're a goner. It's like being stuck on an island alone. If you are not good company to those around you, you are not going to be good company to yourself.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Fri Oct 12, 2018 8:07 am

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cthia wrote:
phillies wrote:Long careers and promotions?
There can still be lots of promotions.
You just need more ranks.

Senior Sergeant, 17th Class
Junior Vice Commodore, Second Class

The SLN really needd a lot more different flag ranks than it had. After all, how many promotion bribes can you collect if there are no promotions?

This sounds plausible, doable and logical. Simply break promotion into bite-sized pieces. After all other considerations have been satisfied, a promotion comes if one has gone X number of years without stepping on one's sword or embarrassing the Queen.


That's basically what happens to officers on half pay in the RMN. Once you've made it to senior captain you eventually get bumped to flag rank by sheer seniority on the reserve list. It may take decades but you'll get there. Captain Bachfich was a reserve admiral when he appeared in WoH, despite being beached as a captain of the list 40 (?) years prior.

At any rate, retirement can be a killer as well. A mental killer. I've heard of some people going back out into the workforce after experiencing the boredom of fishing and fishing and fishing for years. Retiring for 100 years can slowly and torturously kill the brain. If your mind can't occupy you, you're a goner. It's like being stuck on an island alone. If you are not good company to those around you, you are not going to be good company to yourself.


I think they're discussing more retiring from the Navy and taking a second career rather than just retiring as we refer to it today. They'll still stay occupied in some way.

A guy I worked with years ago had spent 20 years in the Navy, then retired and spent a further 25 years as an exterminator. Retired from that and was starting a career at Walmart!
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by John Prigent   » Sat Oct 13, 2018 11:55 am

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I can relate to that. I retired early but soon got bored and started taking small local jobs. When those ran out as I passed the official retirement age I got bored again, so returned to writing magazine articles and book reviews in my hobby field. When my wife died I lost enthusiasm for anything, but after a couple of years I 'enlisted' as a Trustee of a local charity and became screamingly busy for months on end. Now the pressure has eased off there so I'm back writing book reviews and magazine articles. Keep yourself busy and the years simply fly past - I'm still active and alert at 78.

Cheers, John
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by cthia   » Sat Oct 13, 2018 4:26 pm

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Presently, the magic number for marriage seems to be five. Inasmuch as, if you survive past five years, the odds are in your favor against divorce. I have a friend from High School, female, who has already been married five times and she's cocked again. Cocked as in single.

If 300 is your life expectancy, and marriage occurs every five years, she could be married 50+ times.

W :o E! Imagine the list of hyphenated names.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by ldwechsler   » Sat Oct 13, 2018 10:46 pm

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Again, keeping people on for too long just does not work. It would be tough to have 100 year old petty officers dealing with 21 year old ensigns.

Chances are, people will leave. Not every ensign becomes an admiral. In wartime, if you don't die you stand a better chance of promotion. In peace time, it is likely that pull will become too important.

Note that pull still works on Manticore. Pavel Young was a contemporary of Honor but outranked her and he had never done much of anything. And Abigail was concerned at first with Oversteegan for the same thing although that turned out well.

Chances are there are a lot of second and even third careers.
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by cthia   » Sat Oct 13, 2018 11:08 pm

cthia
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ldwechsler wrote:Again, keeping people on for too long just does not work. It would be tough to have 100 year old petty officers dealing with 21 year old ensigns.

Chances are, people will leave. Not every ensign becomes an admiral. In wartime, if you don't die you stand a better chance of promotion. In peace time, it is likely that pull will become too important.

Note that pull still works on Manticore. Pavel Young was a contemporary of Honor but outranked her and he had never done much of anything. And Abigail was concerned at first with Oversteegan for the same thing although that turned out well.

Chances are there are a lot of second and even third careers.

My only concern would be the possible mistake of too hastily dismissing the value of a century of experience. Take Honor and the Graysons, it was very important to the Graysons for Honor to pass on her experience.

I wonder if Harkness' tendency to sabotage his promotions had anything to do with the fact that he knew he had plenty of time and was looking forward to settling down, in time.

OTOH, old timers can become stagnant and set in their ways. Like Hamish did before Honor shook his tree. I don't know how much technology will change the parameters of war again like Apollo did, but I can imagine some old timers reluctance to "Get with the program."

Can't imagine that ever happening to Honor.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by drothgery   » Sun Oct 14, 2018 10:50 am

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ldwechsler wrote:Chances are there are a lot of second and even third careers.

Terekhov had a 20-year career in the Foreign Service before returning to the Navy for the war.
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by tlb   » Sun Oct 14, 2018 11:02 am

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Time in grade need not automatically result in eventual promotion: the US Army had a policy that someone passed over for promotion three times in a row was discharged. The process was called riffing, from "Reduction In Force"; also known as "up or out".
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by cthia   » Sun Oct 14, 2018 12:36 pm

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There will always be openings in the Verge for teachers and professors willing to pass on their knowledge and naval experience to help alleviate many of the shortcomings of undereducated systems to help bring their programs into accreditation. Make no mistake, there are many inherent problems, people.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Retirement Age in the Honorverse
Post by Theemile   » Mon Oct 15, 2018 4:08 pm

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cthia wrote:There will always be openings in the Verge for teachers and professors willing to pass on their knowledge and naval experience to help alleviate many of the shortcomings of undereducated systems to help bring their programs into accreditation. Make no mistake, there are many inherent problems, people.



Manticore had been prolific in sending loaners to other alliance nations pre-war. Post war, Many officers and professional non-coms could be rotated out to loaner programs for new verge navies.

Also, Manticore tried to rotate it's force between shipborn, staff, and administration positions, so everyone got experience across the board. going forward, could officers and professionals look forward to rotations of fleet, staff, admin, training, and loaner? having a set system of tickets to be punched for each rank would help retain talent, while spreading out the talent pool.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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