It also depends on jobs too. The more technical the job, the more options there are for "limited duty officers" and "chief warrant officers" and the like. Those are the jobs where there's usually enough retention demand to open up limited officer slots to retain E-6s/E-7s who don't want to go the E-8+ route and would rather stay in their line of professional expertise and not deal with the E-8+ bullshit.
Sounds like we had a lot in common. I was an enlisted minesweeper who became an oceanography/meteorology officer. Promotion rates to O-4 (LCDR) were 80% and roughly a 70% selection rate for O-5 (CMDR) when I was still there as well. The oceanography side stuff is waaayyyyy cooler than the meteorology stuff tbh. Modern mine warfare oceanography units employ UUVs (underwater drones) to go look and it's mostly automated data collection and then processing the sonar imagery.
It also depends on jobs too. The more technical the job, the more options there are for "limited duty officers" and "chief warrant officers" and the like. Those are the jobs where there's usually enough retention demand to open up limited officer slots to retain E-6s/E-7s who don't want to go the E-8+ route and would rather stay in their line of professional expertise and not deal with the E-8+ bullshit.
Sounds like we had a lot in common. I was an enlisted minesweeper who became an oceanography/meteorology officer. Promotion rates to O-4 (LCDR) were 80% and roughly a 70% selection rate for O-5 (CMDR) when I was still there as well. The oceanography side stuff is waaayyyyy cooler than the meteorology stuff tbh. Modern mine warfare oceanography units employ UUVs (underwater drones) to go look and it's mostly automated data collection and then processing the sonar imagery.