> I find it ironic that being caught lying once is considered something that proves you're not officer material.
There seems no controversy that the middle management era of staff duty seems designed to filter out good officers and keep the worst or at least keep the folks unable to escape. Their point of view is if you start with a better pool of O-1 then as the good officers are eliminated on the march upward in rank, forcing the worst O-1 to none the less be better officers at the start will result in better O-4 range officers which eventually, in theory, will someday result in better O-9 officers.
Remember unlike corporations, the military promotes from within, so todays 2nd Lts will literally be the commanding generals in about 25 years. Most corporations do not promote from within, or rarely do, and life long careers are dead in corporate world, so there's no ethical or moral argument in trying to make superior paper filing clerks today so as to get a better CEO in forty years.
Its also worth considering that there's a peculiar form of hazing or abuse of junior military personnel where "caught" is really a combo of intelligence testing and social skills testing where at least one is required to pass. The reason for a baroquely complex process to take leave is to select for personnel who are some mixture of extremely smart able to outthink the opposition or good at social skills to schmooze successfully (which is a military intel or military police or green beret skill...). There's a power law distribution of importance where almost all decisions are not "newsworthy". Technically its an honor violation to fill out the wrong leave form and obtain the wrong signature in the wrong box and put it in the wrong mailbox, its an IQ and/or social skills test or hazing for juniors to avoid situations like that. In theory the kids are supposed to be selected via that process to be smart enough and observant enough to avoid making dumb mistakes when it actually counts. In practice once in a long while psychopaths get thru the process and bend the hazing to more self serving purposes, LOL, and THEN that stuff makes the news, not unlike a lot of corporate internal politics.
Or more explicitly, you're supposed to not "get caught" technically AWOL because you're supposed to be smart enough to read the policy book and/or friendly enough with the "old timer" O-2 who's been there an entire year before you, such that you file your paperwork properly and avoid being technically AWOL. With the hope that someday if you make it to O-9 rank, or perhaps earlier, you'll have absorbed via osmosis enough written regs and adopted a hopefully moral culture that when you have to make an important decision you won't screw up.
This is entirely branch and service dependent. You'll find plenty of 0-1s essentially filing paperwork in HHC, who have no subordinates reporting to them, across the Army. The overwhelming majority of 0-1s who are "line managers" will be in the Combat Arms branches (Infantry, Armor, Field Artillery, etc), and you'll still find 0-1s making slide decks for the Battalion Commander while they wait until it's their time for a Platoon.
Not OP but my guess is that he is referring to what happens after you finish your platoon leader time and basically wait around to go to the career course. You spend a lot of time pulling "staff duty" (think "Officer of the Watch" or something if a Naval reference is more familiar), where you're the representative of the Commander during off-duty hours. It's a time of extreme boredom, and a lot of lieutenants start experiencing FOMO for the first time since the "exciting" part of your career (being a PL in combat) is over.
Is the implication that those who have other good non-military options choose not to wait out the staff duties? Or that having the qualities that make you a good officer in combat hinder you in the staff roles?
If everyone has to rotate through, I’m trying to make the connection on why it’s “designed” to filter out the good officers while the less-good stick around.
Some jargon isn't translating well here, and designed is probably the wrong word to use. "Staff Duty" (a singular "duty" as opposed to the myriad of official staff officer positions) consists of sitting at a desk and monitoring the company or battalion area for 24 hours straight. You end up dealing with things like privates coming back to the barracks drunk and getting into fights, etc. There are other semi-permanent staff roles you can get on Battalion/Brigade staff, but a lot of times lieutenants who finish platoon leader time just end up waiting for the next training assignment and you get put in the duty roster rotation. This happened to about half of my PL cohort when we re-deployed from Afghanistan. Mind you everyone has to do staff duty, but younger officers will do it more often because, well, they're younger and there's more of them.
>Or that having the qualities that make you a good officer in combat hinder you in the staff roles?
Some people claim this and I've definitely seen it as a phenomenon, but I don't think it's necessarily a truism. Plenty of folks can do both. I think a lot of good officers just don't want to do staff officer time is all. It's not really sexy, it can be really boring, and you spend a lot of time getting exposed to the bureaucracy and politics of the military (yes the army still has politics). A lot of younger officers (so lieutenants and captains) see that for the first time and balk and get out (I was one of them). So the folks who end up staying are a) fully committed to the military as a career, b) don't think they have any better options so they just deal with it and stay in, or c) are the kind of officer who isn't smart enough to place themselves in category (a) or (b). You can imagine the filter effect this has, but it's not unique to the military imo.
There seems no controversy that the middle management era of staff duty seems designed to filter out good officers and keep the worst or at least keep the folks unable to escape. Their point of view is if you start with a better pool of O-1 then as the good officers are eliminated on the march upward in rank, forcing the worst O-1 to none the less be better officers at the start will result in better O-4 range officers which eventually, in theory, will someday result in better O-9 officers.
Remember unlike corporations, the military promotes from within, so todays 2nd Lts will literally be the commanding generals in about 25 years. Most corporations do not promote from within, or rarely do, and life long careers are dead in corporate world, so there's no ethical or moral argument in trying to make superior paper filing clerks today so as to get a better CEO in forty years.
Its also worth considering that there's a peculiar form of hazing or abuse of junior military personnel where "caught" is really a combo of intelligence testing and social skills testing where at least one is required to pass. The reason for a baroquely complex process to take leave is to select for personnel who are some mixture of extremely smart able to outthink the opposition or good at social skills to schmooze successfully (which is a military intel or military police or green beret skill...). There's a power law distribution of importance where almost all decisions are not "newsworthy". Technically its an honor violation to fill out the wrong leave form and obtain the wrong signature in the wrong box and put it in the wrong mailbox, its an IQ and/or social skills test or hazing for juniors to avoid situations like that. In theory the kids are supposed to be selected via that process to be smart enough and observant enough to avoid making dumb mistakes when it actually counts. In practice once in a long while psychopaths get thru the process and bend the hazing to more self serving purposes, LOL, and THEN that stuff makes the news, not unlike a lot of corporate internal politics.
Or more explicitly, you're supposed to not "get caught" technically AWOL because you're supposed to be smart enough to read the policy book and/or friendly enough with the "old timer" O-2 who's been there an entire year before you, such that you file your paperwork properly and avoid being technically AWOL. With the hope that someday if you make it to O-9 rank, or perhaps earlier, you'll have absorbed via osmosis enough written regs and adopted a hopefully moral culture that when you have to make an important decision you won't screw up.