
Office Life at the Pentagon Is Disconcertingly Retrograde - bill38
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-office-life-at-the-pentagon-is-disconcertingly-retrograde/
======
caseysoftware
> _In my senior-level meetings, roughly 95 percent of the participants were
> white, 90 percent men. If you believe diversity of experience and
> perspective improves decision making, this should worry you._

At my last startup, the local "accelerator" sent in a diversity consultant.
Because the CEO didn't want to deal with it, I was stuck with him.

After 10 minutes of me describing how our team of six represented 3 continents
including 13 citizenships; we spoke 13 languages; ranged in age from 24 to 48;
ranged in education from 3 days of college to dual PhDs; included Christians,
a devout Hindu, an atheist, and agnostics; single, married, and even arranged
marriage; and our company dinners consisted of us bringing our families
together (along with our angel investors and their families) and sharing
traditional dishes, the consultant complained that we "weren't diverse" and
complained for 20+ minutes on two things:

\- our team only had one woman

\- our team didn't have any LGBT representation

I threw him out.

If you're so closed-minded and ignorant, I don't want you around my team.

~~~
tuesdayrain
I can't stand the notion that a group consisting of white men is automatically
not diverse. It implies that people who belong to the same race or gender all
behave similarly. Also for some reason the "importance" of diversity seems to
only go one way. I only hear "there are too many white people, this group
needs more PoC". I have never in my life heard "there are too many PoC, you
need more white people".

~~~
ivraatiems
> I have never in my life heard "there are too many PoC, you need more white
> people".

You've been fortunate to never experience that kind of direct racism - but
people rarely say it directly like that. It's more in who is chosen to be
hired, and what kinds of "culture" and "fit" criteria are applied to
candidates.

> I can't stand the notion that a group consisting of white men is
> automatically not diverse.

Like the consultant in the parent's post pointed out, there are lots of
different kinds of diversity, and race is one of them. It's not wrong to say
"this group of all white men is not diverse in terms of racial or gender
identity" \- and it sounds like that's what was being said?

> Also for some reason the "importance" of diversity seems to only go one way.

It only goes one way because white men are already represented proportionately
or disproportinately. If the goal is representation of different groups and
people's voices, hiring more white men won't do it. Unless your company is
majority-POC?

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kevinventullo
The author points to three reasons they can’t hire civilians: bureaucratic
hiring process, preference for those with security clearance, and no dedicated
recruiting pipeline. They also mention the issue of salaries.

To me, this does not even scratch the surface. I’m a manager and I regularly
wear a t-shirt to work. At no point has anyone called me or have I called
anyone “sir”. In fact, everyone just refers to everyone else by their first
name, including interns addressing the CEO. Levels are hidden, and good ideas
can come from anywhere. There’s no way the Pentagon is making that kind of
cultural shift in my lifetime.

~~~
stormdennis
How horribly American. _Bill_ may earn 1000 more than you do and can sack you
on a whim but unlike in, say, Germany where you have less wage disparity and
greater job security you don't have to address him by his title, nor he, you.

~~~
snapetom
If you think Americans have to address superiors by their titles, you haven't
interacted with Americans nor been inside an American workplace.

~~~
jjj123
I think you have it backwards. He’s saying Americans don’t have to address
superiors by their titles and we act like that’s a victory when our workplaces
are totalitarian in every other way.

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hindsightbias
Well, when it’s only robots doing the killing and getting killed, we can let
IT managers run the wars.

On meetings, it sounds like a traditional hierarchical mgmt structure.
Briefers are a subset of the staff. If members of the staff are unable to get
their material or point of view into the powerpoint then they aren’t effective
at their jobs or their minority view is not of interest to the majority.
That’s where politics and persuasion become important and if you aren’t any
good at it you shouldn’t be there.

What makes large acquisitions unmanageable is probably feature creep, and
software people should certainly be able to relate to that. Imagine every
minority view getting their say on every program. We can’t afford ($) that.

IMO, the military is not heirarchical enough. The Navy has ~230 Admirals and
only some 490 active/reserve ships.

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bsanr2
As a Navy brat who's spent much of his life on the periphery of the culture
described in this article, I find it utterly familiar and darkly amusing. I
don't envy the people who will eventually be tasked with changing that
culture; there are real security concerns with opening up as the writer
describes is necessary. Yet, it _is_ necessary, and the effort will face
powerful headwinds from officials who are in no way prepared to separate
legitimate concerns from their own obstinacy and bias (e.g., in my brief stint
as a contractor [again, admittedly on the periphery], I saw at least two
egregious examples of wholly qualified individuals being passed over for
promotions, robbing the service of their expertise). The military demands so
much from servicepeople, one's center has to be "set", which often means a
disconnect between current leaders (who are not to be questioned) and would-be
future leaders (who must know when to question anyway), and that's before
"politics" come into play.

~~~
jessaustin
_Yet, it is necessary..._

Is it? What would happen if we just put a padlock on the door? Then no one
would have to do the hard work of reforming an inflexible organization; they
could all just retire. Sure we wouldn't buy any more F-35s, but we have enough
bureaucrats and politicians _outside_ the Pentagon that we'd figure out some
other way to waste money.

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laurent92
> We also need to tackle the Pentagon’s hermetic closure to civilian talent.

It will be hard to convince them after Edward Snowden, a civilian talent, fled
with his entire agency’s data ;)

More seriously, that may exactly be why they’d need to open up: Civilian
talent would see red where there is red, and it would upgrade their security
processes.

Apart from this, I’m having difficulty imagining an agency without the hurdles
quoted by the article: Yes a security clearance is heavy friction in the
recruitment/promotion, but it’s hard to do it any other way. However, like
Agile after Waterfall, there may be a revolutionary way to do this, which
gains so many orders of efficiency that it would make the CIA unbeatable, for
much less money.

Unfortunately, CIA is in need of neither. Only small countries with limited
means and influence (=nothing to lose) can afford to innovate here.

Other points raised in the article: \- Absence of mobile phone connectivity,
wifi, etc, \- Top-down management with no brainstorming and no whiteboards
(even physically, because they could be spied), \- Only traditional army
people, fee engineers/new generation kind of jobs.

Disclosure: I’m a French national (maybe you’d like to only discuss the
Pentagon security between Americans;) ).

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i_am_proteus
> Three barriers prevent greater flow of talent to the Pentagon from the
> private sector: an intensely bureaucratic hiring process that usually takes
> many months, causing interested talent to take jobs elsewhere before the
> government makes an offer; the strong (in most cases, insurmountable)
> preference for hiring people who already have security clearances, which
> virtually guarantees that jobs go to people who are already “in the system”
> and not from outside; and the lack of a dedicated private-sector talent-
> recruiting effort. Changing these could make an enormous difference in
> bringing new ideas and different perspectives to the Pentagon. Making pay
> more competitive would be great, too, but that is not the primary problem.
> Many will exchange a certain amount of compensation for a chance to work on
> vitally important matters and to serve their country, if only the system
> encouraged their recruitment.

The clearance process takes so long that hiring someone without a clearance
usually results in a months-long (could be over a year) wait before they can
actually start their job. Given that the nature of the job is a key
attraction, and the pay is often mediocre compared to private-sector
alternatives, this is a losing proposition for many people.

It's even worse if the clearance doesn't come through. For many first- or
second-generation Americans with family living abroad, this is a distinct
possibility. The clearance process is opaque enough, as well, that people who
experimented with recreational drugs in college can't be sure if they'll
qualify or not. If your clearance doesn't come through, your resume now has a
long "hole," and you have to explain to future potential employers that you
had to leave your last job because e.g. you have grandparents and cousins in
Indonesia or you tried cocaine twice when you were 19.

Those risks simply aren't worth it for many people.

------
panzagl
Pentagon culture is a subculture of the military, an influential one, but
hardly as dominant as portrayed.

Wifi, cell service and laptops are mostly distractions in an acquisition
environment. Being on a source selection is like being on a jury- you're not
allowed to do your own research, you have to choose based on the evidence
presented. These are rules Congress passes to make sure everything is 'fair',
if you want to reform the acquisition process you have to go higher than the
poor military stuck implementing the system.

The rest of the article is spot on, though the diversity argument is flimsy.

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kps
Several references to “my office”. Give me that kind of retrograde, please.

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C1sc0cat
Realy " To access the internet, I had to jack my computer into the wall." yes
well even in a declassified space id expect that and have mac filtering.

And the death by PowerPoint meme is very widespread in the US military

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blazespin
I am sure that one cell tower that reaches his office is under full
surveillance. This all makes sense to me.

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throwanem
[https://archive.is/UgYQP](https://archive.is/UgYQP)

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iron0013
All those hundreds of billions of dollars and they apparently haven’t used any
of it to update their IT infrastructure. As a taxpayer, my first thought is:
well where did all that money go? The pockets of unaccountable defense
industry executives with nothing to show for it?

~~~
Jtsummers
They try to upgrade the infrastructure but it’s not a cohesive effort. And the
bureaucracy involved delays things so that _now_ an office may be getting a
2010-state-of-the-art network. They also hijack civilian industry terms and
abuse them to the point they can claim to be working like industry without
changing a thing.

~~~
happycube
Heck, it sounds like the military equivalent of an 80's Bloomberg Terminal
would be revolutionary.

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throwanem
I don't really find any of this surprising in light of history. A standing
army that hasn't fought a real war in a long time just naturally seems to
break out in office politics, as the more ordinary paths to promotion and
power are unavailable, and the nature of the work shifts over time to mostly
what we today call "bullshit jobs". And our standing army hasn't fought a real
war in going on eighty years.

I agree that it's a problem, and I respect that the intent behind the article
is to disclose the problem in a popular forum - or, the choice of forum being
Wired, I suppose popular- _ish_ \- rather than to analyze and seek solutions.
But I'm not sure I see where simple disclosure devoid of context is likely to
elicit any useful result.

 _edit, 10:24 EDT_ : I might have better said "major war" than "real war", but
"total war" isn't _that_ far off in the modern period - but the comparison,
with periods prior to the modern codification of the total-war concept, I
think still holds merit. In any case, asymmetrical actions explicitly do not
qualify; the primary historical example I have in mind is that of how the
British imperial military behaved during, as opposed to outside, periods of
declared warfare against a comparable state adversary.

~~~
emteycz
I thought the US participates in multiple wars right now. I'm not from the US
but it is often aaid on HN.

~~~
Jtsummers
The present wars are very lopsided from a military strength perspective. They
aren’t fighting wars with comparable armies and navies but, primarily, against
much smaller forces with much lower levels of technology (or less powerful
technology). But they still value high cost, near worthless for the current
wars, aircraft and ships over working towards a set of tools and capabilities
appropriate to the present, multiple, wars they’re involved in.

~~~
devonkim
Yeah, the DoD is designed and structured historically against super power-ish
nation states, not insurgent, highly distributed, and non-state actors and
modern threats. This is part of why the whole “war on terror” initiative was
another forever war effort from the start. Similar to re-orgs of companies as
they grow starting to mirror their customers, DoD’s structure (albeit with
privatization masking its massive manpower now) in the back office grows to
meet perceived threats only from a militaristic view because that’s its entire
purpose.

As for the warships and physical warfare, they’re essentially a combination of
a federal jobs guarantee and supply chain independence exercise we’ve long
lost. In the event of a total war, I don’t think we’ll be able to get a lot of
equipment we need made anymore. The situation is true for most of the other
superpowers except arguably China

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op03
Its like watching a replay of the decline of the British Empires War and
Colonial Office.

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chance_state
>With no connectivity and little diversity, the military's hub may soon be a
threat to national security.

I guess you have to work in diversity issues to get clicks these days. Shame,
could have been an interesting article.

~~~
ape4
Having people with a variety of backgrounds would help with a bit of
understanding of the countries around the world where the military is engaged.

~~~
blantonl
And given that the United States armed forces are incredibly diverse, so
should it's representative leadership.

~~~
ReptileMan
Us armed forces are like 80% white when I skimmed the official data.

~~~
cmurf
Looking at "All officers", it's about the same as the civilian workforce. i.e.
both armed and civilian work forces under represent black Americans. Enlisted
is more diverse than the general population, and officers are less diverse
than the general population. [https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-
us-military](https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/demographics-us-military)

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jarym
Maybe this is part of the reason why the Pentagon has a dispensation to
continue buying Huawei 5G kit - sounds like they need it!

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travisoneill1
Does the added technology really increase productivity that much? Powerpoint
slides on a screen aren't really any better than printed. Is having wifi in
the office really that much of a productivity gain over a wired connection? I
guess you can't move around the office like in SV, but you already can't in
most places anyway. Not having cell service in the office is probably a
productivity gain.

Also, I'm sure the Chinese military is absolutely terrified of our
insurmountable diversity advantage.

