CDS General Eyre announces retirement

[Brad Sallows]

I really don't give two shits what the gender, colour or creed is of the next CDS, just find the best person for the job.

Exactly so. There is only one CDS, and a vacancy arises approximately once every three years. There are too many possible special characteristics to be acknowledged for any reasonable hope of awarding a useful number of "first this CDS, first that CDS" participation trophies. If the situation is as difficult to manage as some insist it is, all the more reason to select for pure merit (the greatest competence). The junk people hang over a toilet bowl and the accident of their ancestry are irrelevant.

Parenthetically, maybe stand up a cage match commission for all the groups who want "first X CDS" to work it out among themselves to produce a short list of, say, three groups to be recognized in the next three appointments. Equal numbers of representatives at the table for any group that wants in; they keep working until they agree on three by super-majority vote of two-thirds.

 

[Navy_Pete]

If an NCR tasking can truly be done remotely then why post the member to NCR at all? Have them fulfill the role from their current posting position. Saves a cost move, relocation of spouse and children and keeps the member in touch with the operational units they came from.

Case by case it makes sense, but why we currently have someone working from PEI, and why we'd be happy to have someone in Esq and Halifax. It's cheaper to bring them in on TD for training courses, and for an already black trade if we can make someone's life easier that's great. Some things are a bit harder, but still easier than an empty billet.

I do know a few people that got a cost move during COVID, never went in the office, and then moved back to the coasts with all the upheaval that entails. That's just institutional stupidity.

I'm hoping that if some of the funding also means that they really start looking at more remote job functions. A lot of this probably is more applicable to be later in their career, but if someone has demonstrated for a few decades they are a competent worker maybe we can trust them to get some work done without physically watching them do it.

 

[OldSolduer]

So who is in the running? Rabbit hole here....

 

[Good2Golf]

So who is in the running? Rabbit hole here....

Yes.

Seriously though, likely a PMO/PCO decision, and Katie Telford likely doesn’t want thing to transparent, so that she has flexibility to adjust her final direction recommendation to the PM.

 

[dimsum]

If an NCR tasking can truly be done remotely then why post the member to NCR at all? Have them fulfill the role from their current posting position. Saves a cost move, relocation of spouse and children and keeps the member in touch with the operational units they came from.

I know a fair few folks doing that already. Strangely (or not) it seems like they’re all RCAF.

There are entire Reg F RCAF units like Plan Qulliq who are all remote. There are a bunch of RCAF Reservists who are working for the RAWC fully remote. It will be…interesting to see how they get impacted if they’re all ordered to be in the office, especially when Plan Qulliq literally doesn’t have one.

Mods - can we split the WFH thread from the CDS one?

 

[GR66]

I know a fair few folks doing that already. Strangely (or not) it seems like they’re all RCAF.

There are entire Reg F RCAF units like Plan Qulliq who are all remote. There are a bunch of RCAF Reservists who are working for the RAWC fully remote. It will be…interesting to see how they get impacted if they’re all ordered to be in the office, especially when Plan Qulliq literally doesn’t have one.

Mods - can we split the WFH thread from the CDS one?

I think you need to differentiate between working remote and WFH. The former means your team isn't physically co-located. Members might still work in an office setting but still partake in the normal daily routine of being in the lines while WFH is literally that...working from home - separated physically from the larger organization.