Nerding with Civilians – Unadulterated Nerdery

The Marine Corps gave me a pretty amazing opportunity where, for all intents and purposes, I was a civilian for a year. My entire adult life, I have been a Marine. While I have found it incredibly satisfying, I know there is a shelf life. Whether I get out after the two years I still owe, the 20 year mark, or I do something crazy like stay in 30 years, I am still going to end up transitioning. With that in mind, I have always wondered, if I am “good for the Marine Corps”, or if I am actually good at what I do without that caveat. Said another way: will the skills the Marine Corps taught me translate to the civilian world? I am sure a lot of you out there reading this will wonder the same thing, and I hope this post helps answer some of those questions. Also, a big disclaimer that not all civilian work environments are the same, so your mileage here may vary.

Let’s just start off right away with the answer – YES – it absolutely translates. I was actually really surprised how much it translates and how the military experience is really appreciated by my coworkers. With that said, understand that it is pretty unlikely you will end up doing the exact same thing you did while on active duty. If you stay on the technical side, expect to need to specialize to a greater degree than you were expected to in the Marine Corps. Another very interesting thing is that you won’t be forced into relevance. The civilian world won’t force you to transition from one outdated MOS to a more relevant and current MOS. If you fail to take the initiative to stay current with technology, you’ll just be put out to pasture. Using the moniker of “taking care of Marines”, we tend to let Marines lapse into irrelevance and we push leadership into figuring something out for them, rather than forcing them to determine a path to relevance.

At the time I was working in the civilian world, I thought the most valuable part of my experience was the exposure to the newest and most relevant technology, and seeing how someone else did so many of the IT-related tasks I was used to seeing. For instance, I have always like digging into how other units setup their routing, especially external routing. In hindsight, those things were massively beneficial and incredibly interesting, but not the most valuable. It took me about 6 months of being back with the military to realize that by far the most important thing I learned was working with others and building consensus.

The place I worked did not have a rigid rank structure, and there was no single person in charge of all of IT. That meant that building consensus was my new #1 priority. For the civilian readers, let’s just say the Marines are not necessarily a consensus organization. These types of challenges really were the type of thing that challenged me to develop skills outside of my comfort area, and contributed to the overall experience.

I’ve had this post in my queue for over 6 months, so instead of continuing to try to get everything I experienced out there in one post, I’m going to make it a multi-part series.

Rich Near says:

July 24, 2020 at 3:17 am

What a great point concerning the personal initiative to remain relevant and also potentially not performing in the same discipline/manner as employed in the service.

Of course being intimately familiar with a particular area will make you valuable but being able to use that skill set as a foothold to learn/move towards another should be the goal. No one wants to be the quite one in conversation due to subject ignorance, life is much more intriguing (as is the company you keep) if you can intelligently participate.

Thank you for the insight!

Steve says:

July 25, 2020 at 12:49 am

“ The place I worked did not have a rigid rank structure, and there was no single person in charge”

This right here is probably the *most* frustrating thing to come to grips with post Marine Corps

Dave G says:

January 16, 2021 at 3:22 pm

Hello John,

My first inclination to your experience in the civilian sector was to wonder where the LCpl was to make the morning coffee?

Of course, life in the Corps is structured. At least it was when I served in the early 70’s. Boundaries well established and defined. Some thrive in that environment. Others move on.

Life in the civilian world: My first gig out of the Corps was landing a job with Sperry UNIVAC in ‘76 as a field engineering tech. The requirements of the job was much more demanding then anything tossed at me while in the Corps. More accountability.

I’ve had many positions in my career and can relate many of the basic things I learned in the Corps.

Gung-Ho: One of the first terms you learned while in the Corps. Often taken as ‘unbridled enthusiasm’ the true meaning is working together.

In a civilian setting, leadership is delineated into de-facto leaders. People who mentor, people who have institutional knowledge, people from all levels have something to contribute. You work as a team. I often took the initiative to make coffee. The difference being that I wasn’t a LCpl that was made to do so.

You could excel in an environment that didn’t have the regimentation of the Corps. All it takes is to be a ‘hard charger’ and keeping focused to the goals.

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