quote:

... As for being underway making you a beter COASTIE come on. What about the ratings that have over 90% of their billets on land, what about the Preventions, Response career officers, are you saying they are step beneath because they do not go to sea...

One could take that point to mean that a member's land service and sea service are of the same value to the coast guard.

If that is the case, the coast guard would value me just as much on land and there should be no reason that I ever have to go back to sea.

They (the people who made this decison) are making this change to try and entice members who've already been to sea to return, but they don't realize that trivializing past sacrifice (yes months at a time separated from everything and everyone IS a sacrifice) for the service will only discourage future sacrifice.

Good Evening Master Chief,

One of the stated goals of the change was to "eventually help to level the playing field for all of our people." But, as onewhl750 pointed out on this board and AET1 Lyman discussed at the All Hands Blog there is and will continue to be a "generation gap" between pre 2010 and post 2010 advancements. Potentially this gap can never be made up.
The only equitable way to close this new "generation gap" is to reset everyone's points. Not reset the points for some and not for others. Resetting all points at once, except those achieved in the current pay grade, also eliminates the "eventually" part of MCPOCG's statement. This would instantly level the playing field.

Middle Aged Salt:

Well said. Sacrifice and recognition of it are key concepts in the argument of just how "equal" Coast Guardsmen truly are: cuttermen generally are first among peers (primus inter pares).

Just to be clear, just because you managed to skate thru your career and not have to go to sea, you think that is unfair. Its supposed to be a sea service. We are earning the nickname puddle jumpers. And going through a water filled pothole on the way to the Sector should not count the same as having my ass kicked in the north pacific. I EARNED THOSE POINTS......

Well with all do respect I have th CG Medal for Heroism and I will lose them and yes I earned it attached to a cutter so wanna talk about fair.

I cannot agree with you more.

All,
I feel many people are spurned by this news. Why I feel your anger and know many of you pound your fists as "this is a sea-going service", remember the other backbone of our service was the Life Saving Service which had nothing to do with going to sea. Don't hound on station people as sand peeps who don't want to go to sea, the service had a need and put them in that job. They fill as vital a roll as you do on your cutter. (yes, i'm at a station. It's my 2nd. I'm PCSing to my 3rd cutter next month)I feel this implementation is as fair as possible. After writing high enough to make the cut off 07's SWE, I tumbled down the list way out of contention. What was I told? "You need to wait your time". Screw that, according to COMDT Policy I have waited my time or else I wouldn't be eligible to take the test! The only way to surpass all those "dinosaurs" is to buckle down, study and write a great test. Don't let people who have been too lazy to or too scared of increased responsibility tell you your too young. STUDY and DO YOUR JOB and none of this will matter. Sorry if I offended any. V/R

quote:

STUDY and DO YOUR JOB and none of this will matter.

I agree!

quote:

STUDY and DO YOUR JOB and none of this will matter.

then guarantee me a land billet so I will have the free time neccessary to study, it's certainly not a very "level playing field" when I stand double 4-8's underway competeing against someone who goes home at 1530 every day.

quote:

After writing high enough to make the cut off 07's SWE, I tumbled down the list way out of contention.

ATONMK;
I have had a lot of folks come to me with this statement, clearly upset and believing it was a sea time issue. After walkin through all of their scores, and comparing thise to just the 'average' in each element, it is normally clear that they had ways to improve in all areas. I doubt it is just a 'wait your time' issue for you. That is not a knock on you shipmate, just a thought. I advise everyone who drops on a SWE to criticaly compare each of their scores on a SWE to the averages so that they have a really good idea of why they dropped.

MC a quick question I have the CG Medal an award that almost killed me to receive and has killed others who received it. The policy basically turns the CG Medal or any other medal to one life equals one advancement. Please exlpain how this policy makes it fair for those who have sacrificed there bodys, and life in any sar case and have been lucky enough to come out on top to now have something that should be a source of pride and assistance in advancement for there entire carreer equal one advancement. It would be a shame to waste it on advanceing to E5 then lose the points.

Being retired I do not have the info readily available to me so could some one answer a quick question for me? If some one is going for advancement in a rating that is not competitive (meaning the service wide is waved) do they still end up losing their sea service points and award point upon advancement?

Marklf

87 & Mark;
As the policy is written, Sea Time Points, Surf Points and Award points reset to zero when you advance. It is no more complicated than that. You can toss out all the what if scenarios you can think of and the answer is the same. When you compete for advancement, you will recieve extra points for Sea Time and Surf time earned in your current paygrade and for awards approved in your current paygrade.

I could come up with a lot of thing that do not seem right. For instance, in this policy and in the former policy, if you had earned a permanent cuttermans pin within the time period covered, it would be worth MORE than a Medal of Honor. Of course, all through our history, I can only think of one person who recieved the Medal of Honor while standing upright in formation in his CG Uniform, so that example is not likely to ever come to life. (Of course, they would probably be given a meritorious advancement, and loose those points! )

I think the best way to think of this is you don't ever 'loose' points. I know that is not gonna be popular or sit well with folks, but that is the new system. Points receieved in a given paygrade help you out for just the next paygrade.

Let's take an example close to what 87 said. Let's say that an SA who is en route boot camp to his first unit see someone in distress off the beach, pulls over and rescue's the person. His actions are determined to be significant enough to merit award of the Gold Lifesaving Medal. For the next 14 years, he is nothing but an average sailor. He even looses good conduct eligibility a couple of times. The last couple of years though he has come back around and has good evals. He is competing for CPO against another PO1 who has receieved an Comdt LOC, an Ach Medal and a Commendation Medal as a PO1. Should they compete evenly?

MC can we use the example of the CG Medal and make not make the person a low performer? It would help in my question that I asked pervious.

87;
Actually, I was hoping you would ask that! Sure, we can do that one too. Now, how would YOU write the policy so that YOU could get it, but the person I described doesn't?

MC,

Thanks for the response, as I stated being retired I do not have the new policy in front of me so I just wanted clarification. Now that you given that clarification it does seem that the new policy will be counter productive! If one is in a rating that does not have a SWE until going up for Chief then those members will not be seeking sea duty until they make first class. Those in that rating that are assigned to sea duty as thirds or seconds will in fact be at a disadvantage as they will have less study time available to them then those assigned ashore.
As to your hypothetical about the Medal of Honor winner, you are assuming that the Medal of Honor recipient does not also have sea time but I cannot think of any recipient, standing or otherwise, that did not also have sea time.
This policy appears to be another myopic change that ignores the rule of unintended consequences! As a Chief if you are now counseling a junior member, on which billets they should be seeking in order to best advance, then Sea duty would NOT be as beneficial to their career as would be shore duty.

Marklf

Any Presidential Citation should keep the points through there career

I guess I am still confused on how we think this will make people want to go to sea. I was an FT and it was a very sea going heavy rate. The only way you were going to compete for advancement was if you went to sea. Everyone knew this and everyone tried to go to sea. Now that the points are going to be reset everytime someone advances, the point discrepancy will never really get out of balance, and it will remain small enough that the extra study time you get on land can easily overcome the additional points earned.

If I know that I am competing against people with a lot of sea time, I know I have to go to sea to be competitive, so I put ship's on my e-resume. If I know that everyone is going to be reset, why would I give up time at home for what equates to 5 or 6 questions right on the test?

For rates that don't normally go to sea, the points would never be that skewed. No offense but how many YN's do you see with 20 sea time points? In underway rates, you see people with 20 points, but most people competing have a reasonable number, usually around the average at least.

I think this was change for the sake of change and not the big crisis that the ALCOAST made it out to be. As upset as it may have made people, the fair way to do this would have been to reset everyone to their appropriate points earned at their current paygrade now or upon completion of this advancement cycle. As I previously stated, this policy will certainly hold people up in their advancement for a number of years. The playing field has actually become more lopsided for who knows how many years. It will vary by rate, but every E8 that is already an E8 will now be that much further seperated from me competing for E9, same goes for current E7's cometing against those who make E7 next year, etc. etc.

quote:

Originally posted by Mightyz90_93:
87;
Actually, I was hoping you would ask that! Sure, we can do that one too. Now, how would YOU write the policy so that YOU could get it, but the person I described doesn't?

That is easy! Follow the policy that was in place. Under that policy the "low performer" that happenes to have a high medal would have evals that reflected his low performance and therefore offset the points for the medal.

Marklf

It's simple, you cannot. No matter how you rewrite, change, or do anything different, there will always be people out there who think that it is unfair. Some of them probably legitimately so. However, everyone in the Coast Guard should by now know that everything changes over time. Sometimes drastic and other times so miniscule that no one notices. That being said, the change has been made, there is nothing that I know of that we can do about it. (except maybe complain to each other on the forum, which can be satisfying in some ways) After all, every one of us have been taught to always be ready, so get ready, change is coming and its time to adapt and move on. As a person getting underway on his third boat and possibly making E-7 in the process, I am a little bitter. After all, I set my career up so that this would be my last underway tour before retirement. Isn't eight years at sea enough in the end. Well, not anymore. No use crying over it. Just break out the Vaseline and move on, its not the first nor the last time the USCG hierarchy is going to think of something "great" to "even the playing field". "After all, its only fair"