13S Career Pyramid

Background

Every career field has what we call a career pyramid, and it is generally something you can find on the Air Force Portal page for your career field’s assignment team.  A career pyramid is not a hard requirement for your career path, it is more of a guideline for what the general career path is.  Ask me questions about the nuances of the officer system because I am so immersed I am losing sight of the differences between officer and enlisted sides.

Rigid Adherence vs. Intent

In general on the officer side I think many people get caught up with the structure but lose sight of the purpose.  If you are an aspiring officer you are looking for the keys to success.  Sometimes that search will guide you to something such as a career pyramid which says in general your first tour will be at a tactical unit, second tour you will be a Flt/CC or OGV, etc.   Sometimes this rigid thinking will lead you to believe that you must do those exact things in order to be successful.

In contrast, the point of this structure is to help you become a well-rounded officer.  You must consider the reasons or intent behind the guidance.  In this example it makes sense that you should become a space operator at a tactical unit before you become the Senior Instructor or Flight Commander at another unit.  The point of this mindset is to give you a foundation that you as a leader can draw upon in the future.  What happens when the General wants to completely explode the career field stan/eval program and replace it with a new way of thinking which incorporates a combat-driven mindset into space operations?  Who better to do that job than the O-6 who as a Lieutenant created the space operations stan/eval program in the desert from scratch?

Space Operations (13S) Career Pyramid

All of that said, this pyramid is a great starting point for understanding the general path through our career field.  As an officer the assignments we choose have a hint of the ‘choose your own adventure’ mindset.  Our first units don’t really matter but as we begin to formulate our path through our second assignments, we begin to build the foundation which can be used to vector us as Field Grade Officers later in our career.  Pick my brain on this through comments or email and I will take you all a level deeper into my thinking.

Here is my blog post about the 13S Assignment Team page.