rob1972 said:
So how does it work for officers? My understanding was that we get to state a preference for either east or west coast. Is that different than choosing home port? I really don't know anything about home port or how things work for officers. Any information would be much appreciated. Thanks.
The idea of a home port selection is that an NCM will get assigned to either the east or the west coast, and the majority of his or her future postings will be to other units on that coast.
For officers, this is generally not the case. During your training, once sent to your first ship, typically the members of the class you're graduating from (Your MARS IV course or your engineering Apps courses) will be given am opportunity to try to sort out who is going where. On my course, we were told which ships had how many slots available, and used the mid-term grades to let people start picking which ships they were sent to. Turns out that way, everyone still got the coasts they wanted, although some of those who weren't doing as well didn't get their pick of ship (Or even class of ship). Too bad, etc.
Once we are trade qualified (At least for us Engineers) what happens is that we'll have a yearly meeting with our career manager where we can discuss what opportunities for postings are available, and which we would prefer. The CM will certainly try to match the wants of the individual to the needs of the service, but you can probably guess which win out.
For the MARS people, another hiccup is the fact that they do their initial trades training in Victoria, then go out to one of the fleets to get trade qualified, and then go back to do their D level training, which can be done either in Halifax or Esquimalt, depending upon which D Level they want to do (Navigator and Clearance Diver are the only ones that do their training on the West Coast).
Again, they do try to avoid moving people
too often, both because moves are not cheap, and because excessive moves would adversely affect retention. But at the same time, breadth of experience, both geographically and in different types of jobs is considered important for a well rounded Naval Officer. If you don't wish to move, and the CM is able to accommodate you, it will still impact your career progression.
And there are other factors that tend to cause officers to move more often, such going off to study for a post-graduate degree somewhere (Kingston, MIT, the UK, various other places), followed by the pay-back time they have to serve with the organization that sponsored their post-grad.
But yeah. As an officer, you might be able to stay on one coast until promotion to LCdr. I know of at least one person who did so. But you can bet your bottom dollar that you'll be headed inland shortly thereafter.
Please note that the purpleness of Logistics also messes things up, and this post isn't really talking about them.
