<story><title>Google Engineer: What I learned in the war </title><url>http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/11/google-engineer-war/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>plinkplonk</author><text>(I hope I get the tone right on this. I don&apos;t mean to insult any person or institution)&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing here is how military service is respected to such a high degree, bordering on worship, in the United States.&lt;p&gt;Other  countries have voluntary armies too,and yes soldiers get &lt;i&gt;some&lt;/i&gt; respect as people who do a necessary and  dangerous job, but you don&apos;t see the &quot;start your conversation with &quot;Thank You for your service&quot;  &quot; style everyday deference outside the United States. This is a little baffling to a non American,especially since America&apos;s wars post WW2 are mostly invasions of random third world countries against underequipped,and mostly untrained enemies, and even then the victory/defeat ratio is very mixed.&lt;p&gt;Genuine question, why does a soldier deserve so much more respect than a  doctor or teacher or fireman or policeman or engineer?&lt;p&gt;Specifically wrt the article under discussion,(to a non American) this article is a generic feel good article which doesn&apos;t say very much at all. (I am sure Dan is a great person. Just saying there wasn&apos;t (imo) much meat to the article).</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Engineer: What I learned in the war </title><url>http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/11/google-engineer-war/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rdl</author><text>From what I&apos;ve heard, Google does a particularly good job of taking care of reservists (there are federal laws about not firing, but good companies go beyond this).  Outside of government contracting (where it makes a lot of business sense to hire reservists or former military), there don&apos;t seem to be a large number of reservists/national guard in the tech community; almost more foreign-country-compulsory-service veterans (from Israel, etc.) than US veterans.&lt;p&gt;Kind of a loss for the military, because tech startups are a great preparation for actual deployed military operations (which are basically the opposite of the peacetime bureaucracy).  As well, the military is a more diverse organization in the US than almost any tech company -- it&apos;s a great way to get underrepresented minorities involved.</text></comment>