Re: 'Outside the bubble' issues maybe?
"You just can't get a reliable network engineer to work in austere, violent, life-threatening conditions that *hasn't* already experienced combat..."
So, you only get hired if you've already been shot at? I'm trying to escape the Catch-22 aspects of this, where you won't hire me for a shot-at position unless I've already been shot at - unless you're hiring network engineers who weren't network engineers while they were in "austere, violent, life-threatening conditions" (austere?).