A developer, now a mobilized soldier of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, calls for hiring those who have served in the army. Not everyone agrees with his arguments: a discussion with 140+ comments

«My advice to you is to hire people who served in the army. And if they are also on the front lines, they are valuable personnel. This is a person who values life and the team. Completes tasks on time and by all methods. They will be good leads, managers. The only thing is that those who are used to being at work from start to finish, and not for the sake of the result, will not be able to work with them normally. In the army, deadlines are yesterday! Therefore, soldiers and commanders who know the army plan many things in advance in order to be on time. And if they don’t have time, then be sure that they will spend the night at work, but they will do everything on time. The army is experience that you cannot buy and cannot gain at courses,» the IT worker wrote .

Of the more than 140 comments on his post, most explain why working with veterans is not always beneficial for the company.

Haim Lieberman, a Fullstack developer, listed a whole list of reasons why cooperation with the military is questionable for him.

• Management ≠ Army. In a civilian IT environment, the authoritarian style typical of the military can be destructive. A manager who «orders» rather than leads will not build trust in a team of creative, free-thinking engineers.
• Rejection of work-life balance. Statements like «they will stay up all night at work» contradict the modern principle of sustainable pace with Agile. Constant work until night is the path to burnout, not to long-term results.
• Generalizations like «army = good leads» are dangerous. A person is an individual. Someone with military experience can indeed become a brilliant manager, while someone else cannot. Management skills require understanding people, communication, and soft skills, not just the ability to «follow orders.»
• Risk of conflicts in the team. If a «soldier-manager» encounters a «flexible» engineer who is focused on results, not formalities, conflicts are possible. IT teams are built on respect, not subordination.

«I didn’t serve in the army. But it seems that this mode of work leads to burnout and there is nothing good here,» noted DevOps Engineer Viktor Chmel .

It is necessary to help military personnel return to civilian work, believes Tester Valenyn Tarasovych. » But you should not expect this solution to be a «silver bullet,» he says. Aityvets shared that he worked on a project with two NATO servicemen. «Yes, people with a military build are usually much more disciplined and can stand still in one position for a long time (this is very noticeable in workshops). However… One colleague, when considering the task, read every letter only in order to do less work and spend more time with his family. After all, he served for 15 years in Iraq and Afghanistan precisely for the sake of his family, and not for the sake of the country or our project in an IT company. Another colleague performed six tasks every week, attended courses in parallel, became a full-stack web developer and later moved to the position of Senior Developer in the banking sector. Unfortunately, military discipline does not change a person radically. Therefore, each person should be considered individually,» he said.

Marina Volodkina, Business Intelligence Developer specializing in Data Science and Cloud Platforms, believes that using people, especially military personnel, taking advantage of the fact that they cannot find a job and are willing to work overtime, grabbing even one where the Labor Code is not observed is low. «You are also calling on others to hire military personnel and violate their labor rights. Turning a blind eye to the fact that they are willing to work overtime. Overtime should be paid x2. And when overtime occurs more often than once every six months, it means that you have very bad management. If employees have to stay overnight at work with the same salary, the State Labor Service should be interested in you. The number of likes is also surprising. That so many people are willing to force former military personnel to work overtime without an agreement about it and without payment,» she wrote.

C# developer Denis Ryzhkov agrees with Marina: «So people gave their all to the army/front line, and you suggest they go to work because they will «sleep at work» due to poor management and planning, because they are responsible…. That’s some advice, to be honest.
«You have to work within the contract, not risk your own life for someone else’s company.»

«The post really touched me. The army is an invaluable experience, even for those who served in the rear. Over the three years of service, I learned to understand people well, especially to appreciate life. And yes, with such a „for yesterday“ schedule, sooner or later you burn out, your sense of justice intensifies. When I started to immerse myself in the world of IT, I caught myself thinking „Oh, how could this be possible?“ It turns out that there is a world where you are valued, supported, and there are no incomprehensible and unintended orders. People from the army are very hardened people, but they need time to return to reality,» states former military man and now Junior Data Analyst Anna Badrak.

Senior Research And Development Engineer Alex Vishnevsky said that he has worked a lot with military and former military personnel. «They are so used to plowing that most of them don’t know what to do when there is no work,» he says.

Developer Yuriy Yeroshenko noted that the author of the post described people who served in the army allowed them to become better versions of themselves. «But there are also those who degrade from this same service. Both phenomena occur, and their range is extremely wide. Therefore, each employee should be evaluated individually, and not expect that contact with the community automatically endows him with a package of positive qualities,» he noted.

More comments here.

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