The areas where the private sector and military differ are numerous. But one of the biggest, and most subtle areas, is what you can expect from either system. In the military, as long as you don’t find yourself in a disciplinary process, odds are you can predict what tomorrow will look like. You may not get the training you want, or the orders you asked for, but tomorrow will come. There is a significant amount of stability in that. And that stability is in stark contrast to what the private sector has to offer.
The beautiful thing about the private sector and free markets is that it owes people nothing. Now, depending on your current situation, you may not see it a beautiful, and that’s understandable. But the reason why the system works is because nothing is owed. And that is important to understand as you step out of the military – a company owes you nothing. And what is often forgotten with that, is that you owe a company nothing.
This lack of long term responsibility is not practiced the same throughout private industry. If you work from JP Morgan Chase – a company with approximately 300,000 employees, you will get a much different experience than working for your local small business. A small business is more likely to offer more of those intangible qualities, but they don’t technically owe you anything either.
To frame this another way, your relationship with your employer is very transactional. The company pays you, and you produce some type of output or value. When one part of that equation stops, the other usually stops as well.
Given the transactional nature of the relationship, you have the ability to leave the company shortly after joining if you don’t think it’s a good fit. And a company can lay you off or pull your job after you accept it.
Now, despite all this commentary about how transactional your relationship is with a company, that does not mean you should act daily as if it was transactional. The game of your career is a long one, and if you treat each relationship, particularly with your employer, as a transactional one, I at least think that it will catch up with you at some point. So care about your work, and do it well. That is a way that veterans can provide value to an organization. Just be aware of the new dynamic that you find yourself in.
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