E6 in 3 years? Is there such thing as making rank too soon?

I made E-5 in less than 3 years. I give

I made E6 in under 4 years and E7 in just over 7 years. It’s all about your work ethic and assignment/MOS. I was acting Motor Sergeant as an E4 Sergeant but couldn’t get promoted for over a year when I had more points than needed to make E6 do to no E5 allocations in my MOS. I finally received promotion with The soldier of the year in Germany in 1970. That was when promotion allocations were limited to the local Command.

We call them shake in bakes! You can recognize the difference! That is exactly why we have a huge problem in lack of mentoring and development.

Oh I guarantee that the reason I made E-6 three times is that I made it the first time in the absolute minimum in 79-82. But it was fun

I reached E6 in 4 years in the Navy. Some folks were 'Push Button' E4s right out of Bootcamp. I started as an E1 and had to earn every single promotion.
I made E6 in 4 years, and I retired as an E6 after 40 combined years of Navy, Air Force, and Army. Including almost 2 years in a non-pay status.
Not much to brag about.

It really depends on your job and your branch.
I have seen many NCO's in the Army that somehow managed to skip the Time-In-Grade requirement. Some were ok, most weren't. Conversely, I saw many capable soldiers and leaders, stuck at E-4 for no apparent reason.

Navy? That's a little different story.
Promotion requirements are different.

As an Army Instructor, and as a Civilian Contractor, I have seen many Navy NCO's holding positions, normally staffed by lower enlisted in the Army.
Not knowing what rank you came in as, I also do not know how much of a head start you had, over your pears.
Obviously, you impressed your leadership enough to advance so quickly. Just don't let it go to your head. One oops, can ruin all those ataboys you got along the way.

At the end of Vietnam we had an E-6 report aboard the USS Ranger. Associates degree in electronic engineering and made rate right out of C-school, no idea what C-school he got. Nice guy, totally lost. The chiefs wanted him to supervise the repair of systems he had never seen. Old electronics has quirks, we had a TV system for PLAT vacuum tubes and 2 inch reel to reel video tape. 6 foot tall and 10 foot wide cabinets with 64 "bugs" we could fix by the proper application of a rubber mallet on marked numbers. the list was on a clipboard. All the equipment was old; communications, teletypes, radars, and the men maintaining or operating it were used to the quirks and the poor man just walked from room to room looking over people's shoulders. You could really tell he wanted to get his fingers on the problems. I felt so sorry for him.

I made Staff Sergeant in 3 1/2 years in the Air Force during Vietnam. SSGT in the AF was an E-5. Which in my AFSC was still pretty good for the time. it did get all my stuff shipped home for free!

In today’s Navy I would say it’s not.
Sadly to say after my 20 years active duty and 10 years working elsewhere, I went back to working with the navy.
In that short 10 years I didn’t recognize the Navy I once served when I return, rank is now more important then leadership, today leadership is more about how woke a individual is, the Military for some reason is following the old Soviet Union Top Down leadership and Central Command and Control just like the way we lost Vietnam.
The only thing I can say is thank God our weapons system are smarter then most of our top leadership who can’t and won’t get out of wars now after 20 years and if you lose a body part remember that this government supports the Non Citizen over the Veterans who need better medical and support for them and their families, and now the top brass says the enemy is within your ranks.

CWO2 C.m. Reaves, I was part of a COHORT tank company 82-86, and we had a bunch of Elvis 6es,in our unit, guys who made E6 in 2 to 2 1/2 years,when we formed our company only had a handful of ncos, so the hard chargers who want responsibility and leadership were promoted at blinding speed, some folded, to much to fast, but a few blazed,so you have to take it on a case by case basis, we called these guys Elvis 6es because they made E6,like the king E1 to E6 in 2 years.