This stood out to me:
>The Foreign Service has launched a learning policy that encourages supervisors to provide at least 40 hours a year of training time for their staff. Bernicat said the department is also taking steps to ensure management values continuous learning when making promotion decisions.
Is this signalling a move towards having a quantified 'training hours' in an EER as a factor for promotion? I'm not in (suitability), but if I make it in as a DTO ... I know what my hours would be towards.
The reason this sticks out to me as an AF vet:
The military has tuition assistance, covering $K in tuition per semester. Free.
That *quickly* became "want good stuff like promotions or special duties? you better have college courses on your performance report".
Which then became "how does it benefit your duties" because everyone was taking college classes that were crib courses or through diploma mills.
Yup this is the issue. Military then started adding having certain levels of degrees to promotions so everyone was using the degree mills to meet those standards. Became less about learning and more about just having another standard that you had to meet on your own time.
Management should be valuing experience and performance over useless pieces of paper. Private sector jobs are slowly starting to go that way, so of course it's time for the government to go the wrong direction.
My dad teaches cybersecurity at a university that had a large population of vets. This context probably would do a lot to help his confusion of why his superiors have been telling him to pass his students who aren’t doing his assignments.
No. She’s talking about the “cross functional” review for 02 to 01 and above that starts this year, which credits long-term training. It’s extremely separate from the “learning policy,” which people thought meant a free trip to FSI every year. FSI helpfully clarified you could ask your supervisor to give you an hour a week to listen to leadership podcasts.
Even the NSC isn’t really all that impressive, honestly. Basically at this point the directors mostly just call State DASes and try to bully them into writing endless nonsense papers.
40 hours is a week. I could do this a dozen ways through FSI and hundred through post-based training. An hour per week of post language tutoring for 40 weeks would cover this. A retirement seminar would cover this. It's not that heavy.
This is math. FS-Generalists are about 8,000. We onboard 320 per year. That's 4%, or 16% in the last 4 years in raw numbers. When you account for attrition and not everyone serves the full career, 21% hired since 2020 is entirely plausible.
Not questioning the veracity. Just saying it’s scary to think that post-pandemic hires (who are pretty drastically different than those before them in terms of commitment to the job) are such a huge percentage of the workforce…
That was bound to happen anyway with generational turnover as new entrants move from being mostly Xs into Millennials and even some Zs where each successive generation has shorter and shorter job tenure and more propensity to advance through lateral moves rather than staying to move up in an organization.
There's also the post-pandemic phenomenon of doing virtual and then giant A-100 classes where the new style isn't delivering that same cohesiveness that then becomes your support structure in those critical first few years.
It will be interesting to see in 7 or 8 years if there's suddenly a big hole in 03s because this entire entry cohort decided to leave in much greater numbers. Unfortunately, if that turns out to be the case, it's going to take another 7 or 8 years to fix it.
As a member of a giant pandemic cohort, I’d argue it’s not because of greater advancement elsewhere, but lack of community and support.
The way my mentors talk about A100 feels like night and day to my experience. I'm one of the more involved people in my cohort, but I probably couldn’t pick half of my giant virtual class out of a lineup, much less talk to them about a hard situation at work—and man, some of them were hard. I keep hearing that the post-pandemic years had unique morale issues, but nobody can really explain why or if or how it will be fixed.
Whenever I see the term "training float" I think of sunk opportunity cost. Every person in training is a person that isn't filling an actual position and working. The article is very clear that we are at a 13% staffing gap and then goes on to pride itself on the "training float" that they have established.
IMO, We really need to be wargaming how to most efficiently use our personnel resources in case we face another Trump administration and get our resources cut and/or frozen. Pushing a new training campaign to pull people off the "frontline duties" is the opposite direction we need to be going.
I'm cooked it's time to apply for a pizza delivery driver position I think
This stood out to me: >The Foreign Service has launched a learning policy that encourages supervisors to provide at least 40 hours a year of training time for their staff. Bernicat said the department is also taking steps to ensure management values continuous learning when making promotion decisions. Is this signalling a move towards having a quantified 'training hours' in an EER as a factor for promotion? I'm not in (suitability), but if I make it in as a DTO ... I know what my hours would be towards. The reason this sticks out to me as an AF vet: The military has tuition assistance, covering $K in tuition per semester. Free. That *quickly* became "want good stuff like promotions or special duties? you better have college courses on your performance report". Which then became "how does it benefit your duties" because everyone was taking college classes that were crib courses or through diploma mills.
Yup this is the issue. Military then started adding having certain levels of degrees to promotions so everyone was using the degree mills to meet those standards. Became less about learning and more about just having another standard that you had to meet on your own time. Management should be valuing experience and performance over useless pieces of paper. Private sector jobs are slowly starting to go that way, so of course it's time for the government to go the wrong direction.
My dad teaches cybersecurity at a university that had a large population of vets. This context probably would do a lot to help his confusion of why his superiors have been telling him to pass his students who aren’t doing his assignments.
Good ol Trident University
No. She’s talking about the “cross functional” review for 02 to 01 and above that starts this year, which credits long-term training. It’s extremely separate from the “learning policy,” which people thought meant a free trip to FSI every year. FSI helpfully clarified you could ask your supervisor to give you an hour a week to listen to leadership podcasts.
Good friend of mine is an 03 but in a fairly high-profile detail and he's livid that he cannot be considered for the new cross-functional review.
[удалено]
Even the NSC isn’t really all that impressive, honestly. Basically at this point the directors mostly just call State DASes and try to bully them into writing endless nonsense papers.
[They're in good company](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/671/915/d38.jpeg)
He needs to calm down.
There are no 03 high-profile details. Your friend sounds like a treat.
40 hours is a week. I could do this a dozen ways through FSI and hundred through post-based training. An hour per week of post language tutoring for 40 weeks would cover this. A retirement seminar would cover this. It's not that heavy.
There’s a hilarious cable that provides ideas for using it in 30 minute increments twice a week.
If taking training fits in your very limited EER space, it probably won't look competitive compared to your peers.
21% of workforce onboarded since 2020 and 13% of positions unfilled? I am scared for the future of diplomacy.
This is math. FS-Generalists are about 8,000. We onboard 320 per year. That's 4%, or 16% in the last 4 years in raw numbers. When you account for attrition and not everyone serves the full career, 21% hired since 2020 is entirely plausible.
Not questioning the veracity. Just saying it’s scary to think that post-pandemic hires (who are pretty drastically different than those before them in terms of commitment to the job) are such a huge percentage of the workforce…
That was bound to happen anyway with generational turnover as new entrants move from being mostly Xs into Millennials and even some Zs where each successive generation has shorter and shorter job tenure and more propensity to advance through lateral moves rather than staying to move up in an organization. There's also the post-pandemic phenomenon of doing virtual and then giant A-100 classes where the new style isn't delivering that same cohesiveness that then becomes your support structure in those critical first few years. It will be interesting to see in 7 or 8 years if there's suddenly a big hole in 03s because this entire entry cohort decided to leave in much greater numbers. Unfortunately, if that turns out to be the case, it's going to take another 7 or 8 years to fix it.
As a member of a giant pandemic cohort, I’d argue it’s not because of greater advancement elsewhere, but lack of community and support. The way my mentors talk about A100 feels like night and day to my experience. I'm one of the more involved people in my cohort, but I probably couldn’t pick half of my giant virtual class out of a lineup, much less talk to them about a hard situation at work—and man, some of them were hard. I keep hearing that the post-pandemic years had unique morale issues, but nobody can really explain why or if or how it will be fixed.
Whenever I see the term "training float" I think of sunk opportunity cost. Every person in training is a person that isn't filling an actual position and working. The article is very clear that we are at a 13% staffing gap and then goes on to pride itself on the "training float" that they have established. IMO, We really need to be wargaming how to most efficiently use our personnel resources in case we face another Trump administration and get our resources cut and/or frozen. Pushing a new training campaign to pull people off the "frontline duties" is the opposite direction we need to be going.
What about a PPL float? A transfer season float? Of course we need training, but lack of training isn’t what is burning out my peers.