Does the ‘Up-Or-Out’ Promotion System hurt the Military?

I say yes, like it was stated, some lead better, some work smarter with more knowledge. Someone has to do the work. As a Branch Chief I found out that there were some on the work floor that knowledge wise knew more than I did. People I had to depend on.

Yes it does there are soldier that are good soldier great at there job just because they can't/don't want to move up does not mean that they are not doing good things for the military. It can cause us to lose some great joes. It only make sense to me at the highest ranks to keep them from getting clogged and letting soldiers move up. Look at the reserves and guard are able to keep soldiers without the force out for not moving up it can be of benefit.

The military promotion/career model seems to draw its' greatest influence and inspiration from the Peter Principle...

I'm more in the necessary evil camp from a systems viewpoint. If you were allowed to have folk camp out at say E-4, over time that group gets constipated and shuts off promotion for E-3s. Same happens at all transition points, officer and enlisted. There's always a "fresh meat" requirement to keep the age demographics on par. Some pockets are exceptions. Officer recruiters who are capped at O-4 and do 20 then out. Petroleum engineers, given so few billets,used to be that way, but since the other pedigree stuff is so prominent, they blend back into the general engineer population. Bottom line, there will always be something wrong about up or out and likewise the hang in there program. The trick with up or out is to make sure real leader potential is promoted over mandated demographics. Saw that big time on the nurse side with all the male only FMF billets. Sent a bunch of great women home while carrying along the mediocres. In a camp out program, you'll have to run "dismissal boards" to clean out enough basement to have sufficient flow. The premise would be different than retention boards. Pretty brutal stuff.

On a lighter note, I think all of the guys on this board share the same barber.

I don't think it hurts the military. The military can't allow people to loiter for too long in a certain pay grade or it would clog up the promotions process all the way down the line. As long as a slot is filled at a specific rank, a promotion to that rank can't occur. Plus, you have a trickle-down effect at all of the lower ranks. I like the idea of forcing people to leave the service after serving in a rank for too long. It normally means they have peaked, at least from a competitive perspective. Plus, you can't really disentangle promotions and retention. Congress appropriates the personnel budgets, and those personnel budgets are based on overall end-strength and the force structure of that end-strength. If you keep (for instance) non-competitive E-5s on the team, they take up the budgeted E-5 slots, which means E-4s can't be promoted into those slots (because if they were promoted anyways, it would blow up the budget due to having too many E-5s on the team, and that would be a violation of fiscal law).

Sp4 Byron Skinner Short answer, YES. Many good and talented military personal are stuck in jobs with rank caps. Hit that rank cap and its time to think of leaving the military. In the Army the old Specialist ranks solved this problem.

I believe it does hurt the military, when good troops are separated, as they take all their experience with them. On the other hand, there are some who can't get promoted for a variety of reasons, and their attitude can have a negative impact on others in the unit. Most of those will not reenlist, but some recognize that the military offers them the best option. The up or out policy needs to be refined. Rather than simply separating those who don't get promoted, take the time to find out why. Also, bring back the specialist pay grades for the more technical MOS. In some cases, such as combat arms, the up or out policy might have some merit. My opinion.

Loved being a Spec/5 Medic, and at the end was in a slot that in the old system would have been Spec/6 Truck Driver and was just fine with at the end, but then I'm a participatory leader, and the whole command wanted me to be an asshole authoritarian, but the whole company came to me for technical questions and I was widely acknowledged as the best instructor in the company even though I refused to use powerpoint, E-7 would have been fantastic, but I'm happy with my career

I've seen too many piss poor performers get promoted thru the ranks. I'm all for bringing back the ranks of SP-4 thru SP-7