How has the change been from military work/leadership to civilian work/leadership since you left?
I have been in the military for seven years now. Worked on submarines for almost five of those years. Pulling 70, 80, 90 hour work weeks. And that was when we were in port and not on deployment. At my rank getting paid around 2500 a month for the last three years. The Navy messed up my pay for housing last year and they owe me around 30k that I am trying to get paid back. I specialize in information technology, servers, networks, radars, the like. I am burnt out and done. My years spent in this institution have consistently been spent being exploited and being made to work at a much higher level, effectively taking on the job of someone two to three ranks above me for multiple years. I was denied the ability to be officially slotted in that role so they could deny me the special school and the extra pay it would have come with.
I tried numerous times to get help over the course of two years while being denied the time or assistance with getting help. The boat simply needed me too much. I never took a single sick day. I worked six days a week twice a month, and five days a week twice a month. Sometimes six days a week three times out of the month. I was required to come in my offtime to fix anything that broke as well, because no one else bothered to learn the systems well enough to do the job. One time I fell down a hatch and tore my meniscus and my ACL, resulting in crutches. Guess what? I still worked on the boat. All of this and spending the majority of the last two years under the ocean was what culminated in me having a mental breakdown and endless panic attacks for two weeks straight. I lost fifteen lbs due to not having any hunger. And they still had me go to work, even though I was openly telling them I was a danger to myself. Eventually they allowed me some form of treatment but they diagnosed me with “adaptive disorder”, even though I've lived in seven different places in the last several years, and they denied me any medication to help with the panic attacks and horrible depression.
I am nervous about getting out, but the thought of staying in this institution makes my hair fall out. I know the civilian sector can be just as bad, but there is something about the military that I feel can be uniquely harrowing. I don't know what I'm getting into because I've been in so long, but I don't have a choice. The only good thing about my job was that I don't think it can realistically get worse for me as far as a job.
I wonder what fellow military people think and what your experiences have been exiting this great, great force.