I was chatting with a friend about his military career. He's late 30s, stellar career. On deck to become a Command Sergeant Major (if he waits long enough). He's asked me point-blank why I haven't become a reservist, or considered a military technology career.
And my honest answer is: they won't take me.
A 22-year-old with a fresh degree in any field is eligible for a commission. I'm not — sixteen years of shipping and securing federal systems, yet the missing credential makes me ineligible at any rank, through any door. The same credential that has never once blocked my career as a technology expert. I served three years at GS-15, senior expert advisor to a Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Still can't be direct commissioned. Service policy requires a degree to commission at all; and even if a service secretary decided my experience justified an exception, 10 U.S.C. § 12205 states:
No person may be appointed to a grade above the grade of first lieutenant in the Army Reserve, Air Force Reserve, or Marine Corps Reserve or to a grade above the grade of lieutenant (junior grade) in the Navy Reserve, or be federally recognized in a grade above the grade of first lieutenant as a member of the Army National Guard or Air National Guard, unless that person has been awarded a baccalaureate degree by a qualifying educational institution.
So policy closes the front door. And the rank a 16-year professional would actually enter at is precisely the range locked not by policy, but by law. The President of the United States could, at most, make me a second lieutenant, and no power in the Executive Branch could ever promote me past first. And starting at the bottom isn't the insult: plenty of great officers started there. The problem is that it isn't a bottom, but a ceiling. The Army's own direct commissions bring people with my experience in at captain to major, because that's where the work is. Their materials provide guidance:
- five to twenty years of documented technical experience, Python or C
- "emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning preferred."
Experience sets the rank — they calculate your constructive service credit and pin captain or major on you based on your number of years of experience. The degree sets nothing, except whether they're allowed to look at you at all. It's a checkbox. Commissioning to lieutenant, only to sit in a billet that's ineligible for promotion, isn't a career path, but little more than a favor to the government. It isn't a fair deal, and it should be fixed.
And there is a fix: amend § 12205.