The life of crewmen?

[GrahamKennedy]

Voyager's rank situation never made sense. They kept Kim an Ensign for seven whole years, but they never really gave any reason for it other than a half hearted thing about not having slots to promote people into. But they must have had the slots available, because Kim was actually doing the job. If the usual slots for Lieutenant JG, Lieutenant, and Lieutenant Commander are already filled, then why aren't isn't one of those officers doing the Chief of Operations job instead of Kim?

The only argument I can think of is that those people were killed in the transfer and Janeway was thus forced to give Kim the job but held off on giving him the rank until she thought he was ready for it. But keeping that up for seven years? It pretty much comes across that Janeway liked to keep Harry down for no particular reason. Just gave her some sadistic pleasure to ruin his career, I guess.

[McAvoy]

It made no sense to me either. Not only that but at least in real world terms, O-1 to O-3 (Ensign to Lieutenant) is nearly automatic. Perhaps Starfleet doesn't do that.

[sunnyside]

I just think of it as a Janeway thing. Keeping the pecking order intact. I mean she couldn't promote herself to admiral or anything.

And it made for a bit of drama.

I suppose I figured they'd get caught up once/if they got back.

[McAvoy]

I just think of it as a Janeway thing. Keeping the pecking order intact. I mean she couldn't promote herself to admiral or anything.

And it made for a bit of drama.

I suppose I figured they'd get caught up once/if they got back.

Well, IF Starfleet had some sort of regulation that requires HQ to promote people (which is probably not the case since Janeway did demote Paris, but maybe that was a temp thing) then I can see that. However, with contact with Earth in the later seasons we should have seen many people promoted if there was such a regulation. However there are things such as field promotions.

The funny thing is Kim is a 'senior officer' perhaps taking over a unmentioned previous senior officer who was killed by the Caretaker array. I say this because it makes no sense to have an ensign right out of the Academy being put in a position of authority over even higher ranking officers regardless of how gifted he is. In other words, Kim should have been at least a Lt. Junior Grade which is still too low ranking IMO.

Then again in the US Navy, there are a bunch of Captains. CO, XO, Engineering Officer, CAG, DCAG and so forth in aircraft carriers. A ship like a Galaxy class or even Kirk's Enterprise I can see such a thing, but I guess you can make a case for having less senior officers in smaller ships like a Intrepid class. But having an Ensign in charge of a department? Fuck no. Again, in the US Navy the best an Ensign can hope to be in charge of is the 1st Lieutentant (Janitors) where the broke and useless go.