...or he can fly now and also be an engineer now.
www.goang.com
LOL Yeah,right. The reality of that situation is much more complex than you're portraying.
I think you know all this already, but I'll spell it out for the benefit of the gallery..
BTW **TL;DR warning**
For those still reading. Here we go:
Here's the dirty little secret about American Patriotism: it's riddled with fine print. I hate the fact I'm writing this in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend, but it needs to be said.
I have
first hand knowledge of the opportunity costs of attempting to do a non-shoe-clerk military job in the Guard/Reserves, while attempting to hold a banker's hour pedestrian job. The short and skinny of it? It's very difficult to pull off long term, and your civilian career progression inevitably suffers for it. Hardly the layup being suggested it is.
People need to first understand what a Guard/Reserves job is. One weekend a month, two weeks a year right? WRONG. That's "nonner" AFSC/MOS drill duty, plus two weeks of AT (annual tour). That's not AIRCREW. Aircrew jobs have requirements that far exceed that minimal level of advertised participation. Nobody is going to be combat effective, let alone training effective, with 48 UTA periods (generally burned at the rate of 2 periods per day) and 15 AT days. Because the military recognizes that, most flying units provide 48-72 AFTP (additional flying training period) in order to provide the required level of proficiency, and even that is kinda lowish, but it's accepted under the guise of the old model of "Strategic Reserves", which the military wipes their rear with these days, but that's for another thread.
At any rate. So for our hypothetical engineer, that means he will be asking for time off during the week to go fly, go on trips of week+ duration, and attend upgrade training at the tune of 90+ days at a time. In an employer with 10,000 carbon copies of yourself, and a scheduling system based on the premise of absence/sickout management, this isn't a problem. And surprise surprise, the ANG/AFRC was built with the airline schedule in mind. For an engineering firm with 3-4 dudes working on a project? LOL Guess who doesn't survive the furloughs or doesn't make the promotion when it comes time to fold shop and go chase your job to Seattle or whatever life-altering transcontinental relocation is expected of you in order to maintain professional parity these days in those eyeball-gouging engineering jobs.
I'm not conjecturing, this was my life. I was right there, asking for civilian jobs 6 months removed from UPT as a Reserve baby, and I got a ton of doors shoved in my face once it became known I was a Reservist pilot. Illegal btw, to withhold employment from someone based on military affiliation. GOOD LUCK proving it in court. Google the Weather Channel chick that got canned because she refused to get back from a trip with the Hurricane Hunters. And that was a female, with the right key between her legs and a national PR podium from which to shout bloody murder from. They had to settle out of court, good for her. The point is, that this nobody right here never had that PR option, so the options become limited.
I was in the middle of interviewing for a tenure track assistant professorship at a Southeast US technical public 4 year university I shall not name, and during the interview the subject of Reserve participation came up (red flag #1). When I exercised the courtesy and transparency to acknowledge my military membership (why should I be ashamed to admit my military status in my own g-d Country in the first place?), he went on great lengths to affirm their support for military service.......aaaaand then proceeded to qualify his answer by saying and I quote: "but we still expect you here and available all five weekedays during office hours".
And then I get admonished by my civilian ex-wife as she showed support for the position of said prospective employer. Yellow ribbons around the tree for all my brothers, but no jobs? Yeah in the words of Goodfellas: "F--k you, pay me".
So all due respect, I disagree with boilerplate advice to fly part-time for the Guard. The devil is in the details. Civilian employers ARE NOT reservist friendly. They only support you as long as you're some red horse guy attending drill on Saturday and Sunday, days when they couldn't care less what you do or where you go. But for those of us who require a commitment that actually comes out of family's hide, yeah you'd be ill-advised to attempt to pursue a pedestrian career like engineer, UNLESS it was a federal job that happened to be co-located in the military installation you drill at. Ironically, that's almost what an Air Reserve Technician is (for a huge paycut mind you), but I digress.
So what happened to me? Well, that dynamic forced me into a vocational cross-roads early in life. So crappy was the aero engineering and the academic civilian market compensation, that when I did the math, as a Reserve trougher (i.e. someone who isn't an ART or AGR at the unit, but cobbles up man days to the tune of an income enough to cover the rent, but absent many entitlements and sick/leave benefits, and no salary guarantee) I made
more money as an O-2 AND had better than even airline-schedule flexibility (basically free agent work schedule, cherry picking days or weeks), than if I was a straight part-timer with a primary civilian career in said fields as a new entrant. Then he offered a 6 year probationary period and I just stood up and left, the phone proverbially hanging off the desk unhooked. What a joke.
So, I told the civilian market thanks but no thanks, went into freelancer mode for 4 years as a trougher, built up hours in a B-52 and then became a full timer in the training world making more than I would have made in either civilian field. Today I qualify to apply for major airline employment, which would provide me with income parity from my military income within 2-3 years. So I've made lemonade. No regrets.
But this wasn't the plan. This was what the sheer lack of reserve support and respect in the civilian market forced me to do in order to feed my family while serving my Country. I'm certainly not going to apologize for my service, but it hasn't been free. Most Active Duty folks are skeptical of civilian work life because of the take-home pay sticker shock and medical insurance cost issue. As a Reservist my reservations against the civilian sector deal more with their doublespeak rather than budgeting fears, since as a de facto civilian I was already aware of the much lower take home pay a civilian gross income yields.
My advice? Unless one plans to work for civilian employers with 5-10,000 copies of yourself in the same job bucket, I'd either make your pedestrian civilian career the priority, or go full time military. Because in the end, even if it's your legal recourse, do you really want to work for someone you have to sue in order to retain your employment rights? I sure don't. Not to mention the wonders that does for peer to peer relationships at work and promotion potential. Like I said, I live in the real world of human pettiness, being a flyer and working for proverbial "Initech" is largely an either/or proposition. Caveat emptor.
