Up or out, also known as a tenure or partnership system,[citation needed] is the requirement for members of a hierarchical organization to achieve a certain rank within a certain period of time.
[9] U.S. entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa has argued that engineering in Silicon Valley is also "an 'up or out' profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment".
Officers in the former category, normally pay grade O-3 and below, are typically removed from active duty service at the end of the calendar year following their second non-selection for promotion.
[11][12] DOPMA has been frequently criticized as "arbitrary and bad management" that forces out "many fit, experienced officers... because there were only so many slots into which they could be promoted."
Paul V. Kane, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War and a former fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, argued in 2009 that the "archaic 'up or out' military promotion system should be scrapped.