And probably 10 times as much on dental care and orthodontics. ;)

As a married Senior Airman (E-4), I was probably making a bit over $40k per year after base pay and allowances. Taking into account a lack of healthcare premiums, free tuition for my college courses, and the fact that my wife worked nearly full-time as a waitress, and we were definitely in the middle class. Neither of us had second jobs, and we always had money to blow foolishly on entertainment.

My salary as a civilian in the private sector is amazingly better when you just look at the raw numbers, but it's not that much better once you account for all of the things I pay for now that I didn't have to pay for in the military. There are a lot of overlooked benefits in the military that allow you to stretch out a dollar much further than you can as a civilian.

I did an enlistment in the USAF between 2008 and 2012, and while I don't believe the $99,000 value is correct, it was certainly a middle class level of compensation that I received. Just looking at base pay, most enlisted members poor, but then you have to account for monthly non-taxed BAH (monthly money for rent), BAS (monthly money for food/hygienics), no healthcare premiums or deductibles for yourself, and very small premiums and deductibles for your family, cheap food at the commissary on base, non-taxed general goods at the PX/BX/NEX, free education (plus a significant amount of college credits for your training - I think I got 20-something), no life insurance costs, and yearly uniform allowances. I'm sure I'm missing some benefits, too. Overall, aside from deployments, it's a pretty comfortable lifestyle. And the idea that military is almost exclusively drawn from the ranks of the poor is misleading. That's more true for services like the Army and the Marines. The Air Force provides extremely lucrative job training and experience, and tends to attract a lot of middle-class kids who don't want to go the college route (many of which have some college experience prior to enlisting).

That means nothing. You could have been a janitor or cafeteria worker at both companies.

I wish I had mod points; that was the perfect response.

I didn't RTFA, but I don't think the story is about programmers. I believe this guy is saying that any college grad regardless of major should know how to program.

There were already a lot of people that were kicked out or forced into retirement after that. There were also some pretty significant structure reorganizations that followed.

That is a very specialized segment of military you're referring to. I've been involved in enterprise software development in the military, and their standards weren't anything like that.

I cringe every time someone ahead of me whips out their checkbook (typically it's after they've been given their total, it would be too convenient to have everything but the amount written out ahead of time...). All other things being the same, when deciding between two stores, I will choose the one that doesn't accept personal checks.

Unlike capitalists, which throughout history have certainly abstained from war profiteering.

Most of the QA engineers I know (even the good ones) got into QA through tech support. It's simply a natural step up if you succeed in tech support and are looking for a better job. It's not a job that anyone really aspires to, it's just a decent job that you might enjoy doing if it's already in your career path.

From TFS:

Sorry, but that's the case with any inexperienced new graduate, regardless of the major. You simply can't tell from a diploma alone whether or not someone is going to succeed.

TV shows and movies I would suspect.

To be fair there are alternatives to a lot of GNU products these days. On the other hand, GNU still hasn't produced a viable kernel.

Oh really?