What is the purpose of "up or out"?

[William]

This policy would certainly have an effect on the management of a military one is describing, and an equally strong effect on the personnel history of a character involved with that. What I'm wondering is what makes a military prefer such a system. It seems strange to me. Is Master Chief due for a promotion if he survives a couple more years? What if he's a good Master Chief?

Now, in my own field -- academia -- there is a limited version of this policy. If I do not make tenure in five years, I will be asked to leave this university, and there is little chance that I would be hired to the tenure track somewhere else. But once I make tenure I am simply expected to continue in that position, publishing, teaching, and contributing to some administration of the department. Full professor is not even all that likely until late in a career, nor is it required; certainly not Department head.

Requiring regular improvement through study, training and experience is perfectly sensible to me, and rewarding improvement is understandable. But requiring that reward to come in the form of a promotion strikes me as very odd. I hear tales of officers (and the upper ranks of enlisted), where politics is an issue, being forced out of careers they loved and were good at simply because they could not be promoted.

So I'd like to ask those who have more experience with this policy than me. What does a military gain from it? Perhaps you have experience with a military that does not have this policy and made a point of considering and rejecting it -- if so, why?

(I am likely to be fairly quiet in this thread, simply listening to answers.)

[jason taylor]

High seniority officers tend to clog the promotion arteries and are not really any more experienced in actual warfare as low ranking ones because great wars in modern times come only once a generation, less so because of the Pax Atomica(the Middle Ages had it's own more terminal form of "up or out"). Their tactical theories will often have long reached obsolescence and their physical and psychological fitness for actual campaigning will have deteriorated long before an actual test. They will think themselves better soldiers then they are simply because they have chronological seniority.

What they are is experienced bureaucrats not experienced soldiers. These are also necessary to an army to maintain traditions and discipline. However assuming that seniority makes an effective leader is a fallacy.

By contrast a young and ambitious officer with the proverbial "eye of the tiger" is likely to be more aggressive and will provide more victories. He will also be more fit for action. At the subaltern ranks, an officer still needs to be as physically fit as a soldier; chateau generalship is only practical for generals.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by William

So I'd like to ask those who have more experience with this policy than me. What does a military gain from it?

In theory, I think it to ensure the people ready to be promoted into positions that don't turn over much are younger - and thus more fit and more recently trained.

Consider the other system, you have only a few slots for Generals and people hold them for decades, then if you don't kick people out at the next rank down if they can't be promoted into those slots, they too stay for decades, and so on down the line. When the High Grand Marshal General finally drops dead and needs to be replaced, all the potential replacements are his academy classmates, and may not be in a lot better shape, and when all of them die in the next few years, the next tier is composed of people from the next academy class who are a whole year younger.....

The equilibrium state for this system is *all* of your senior officers are around the mandatory retirement age, and as time goes the point your career freezes at until people above you die of old age creeps down the ranks. Leaving aside the reduced incentives to perform, since you aren't going to be promoted anyway, there is also the issue that should a war then show up after a long period of peace, the fact your entire officer corps consists of old men could be a serious problem.

Edit: Thinking about it a little, it's a problem in any hierarchical structure when the rank pyramid starts to narrow faster than people leave it for reasons other than old age. You don't have to use up or out, but you do need a mechanism of removing people fast enough not to reach that stagnation point.

And another moment's thought: many school districts in the US are actually facing this right now, in that the people hired for their highest enrollment period, the baby boom, being the most senior people, stayed on as enrollment shrank, and are now starting to retire en masse - which in some subjects and less desirable places means a real problem finding enough qualified people willing to work there to replace a bunch of them all at once.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

And another moment's thought: many school districts in the US are actually facing this right now, in that the people hired for their highest enrollment period, the baby boom, being the most senior people, stayed on as enrollment shrank, and are now starting to retire en masse - which in some subjects and less desirable places means a real problem finding enough qualified people willing to work there to replace a bunch of them all at once.

Not to mention the spike in pension costs in systems that often didn't prepare fully for it, or counted on high returns on investment that went away with the economic collapse of 2008.

Bill Stoddard

[cosmicfish]

"Up or out" has a couple of different goals.

The first is to improve the mining of young talent. Ultimately, "up or out" assumes (as many management theories do) that the highest ranking jobs are disproportionately valuable, and so cares less about losing the "competent" ones who can maintain and more about finding the "exceptional" ones who can advance. To do this, it discards the marginal (who aren't wanted anyway) and some of the competent (on the assumption that they are plentiful and readily replaceable) in the search for the exceptional (who are presumed rare and elusive).

The second is to ensure that there is a steady promotion flow available for the exceptional - if your best O-10 candidate leaves as an O-4 because no O-5 positions are available, then you have a problem. "Up or out" ensures that in any given period, a certain number of vacancies appear that can be used to keep advancing those candidates already identified as exceptional.

How well this policy accomplishes these tasks depends a lot on how well the advancement rates correspond to the external opportunities and talent pool in the community at large, but these are the goals nonetheless.

[ak_aramis]

In the US, the actual reasoning from the floor of congress included reducing the number of officers retiring.

Applying it to the other ranks was separate and not congress' fault.

Simply put - the primary benefit to the system is forcing mid-career folks out before retirement.

The higher aggressiveness of junior officers is not entirely nature - some of it is the knowledge that they have to be the best to get promoted if they plan to go career-to-retirement.

Up or out for enlisted reduces the pension load dramatically - the promotion eligibility rate exceeds available slots by some 2:1 at low ranks - and up to 6:1 in some fields.

[Þorkell]

Up or out started in the 1960s IIRC. Were there any major problems with not having it before that? Also, if you have a person that's good at his job in that slot he's in now, why retire him because he can't get promoted?

[Whitestreak]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Up or out started in the 1960s IIRC. Were there any major problems with not having it before that? Also, if you have a person that's good at his job in that slot he's in now, why retire him because he can't get promoted?

One of the problems with just keeping someone in a slot was that that person was not improving his own position, and by staying where he was, keeping someone else from improving their position.

Throughout US history, you will find examples of someone being an Army captain while in his late 40s to mid 50s. As captains in the Army are usually in charge of such things as infantry companies, and infantry companies usually have to perform more strenuous activities than, say, a supply company, eventually the much older captain will probably fail, either causing deaths in his unit or some other bad event.

If nothing else, up or out ensures that those who are eager to remain in the service work hard in order to do so. Since hard workers are more welcome than goldbricks, they should be rewarded by higher rank and more responsibility.

I went from E1 to E6 in less than 8 years, and that was between 79 and 87.

[vicky_molokh]

What about the 'everyone rises to the level of their incompetence' problem? A good sarge gets promoted to a higher position, at which it is no longer as good, and then gets out.

[Pomphis]

If it increases total number of people passing through, it also increases the number of available reserves. All those former soldiers can be drafted, and are already trained.