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Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they ar

Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications - The training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high - The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years - Most people are just not capable of the amount of stress and risk associated with the job - Seriously, it's a really freaking stressful job I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools. The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system.

Justsignedup 2y ago
My uncle did ATC in the soviet military. They were allowed to do 2 hour shifts max. The mental work is so intense that the human brain can only sustain it for a short time.
RandomBacon 2y ago
> I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. There would be more people interested in aviation choosing to be ATC than a pilot if our pay matched that of major airline pilots. There are people going through the training and then quiting when they realize that can't get an opening in their hometown because that spot is reserved for a random person one week behind them in the FAA academy, and the pay won't make it worth moving away from their family. There are more examples, and appropriate pay would fix most of them. (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)
- legitster 2y ago
  > at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools I don't think any sane person would be against raising ATC wages. But to refer back to my post, the situation might be different if it there were not also a massive pilot shortage as well! If these two pools of talent mostly overlap raising wages on one will probably just pull from the other. It's probably a combination of raising wages and putting more money into recruiting teenagers considering vocational programs.
  - b112 2y ago
    Because we are an aged society, with such an incredibly low birth rate, this will only get worse. There are only so many competent people in our society, and that talent pool is being spread thin across all sectors of society which require such candidates. There are looming doctor shortages, too. Professionals of all stripes.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      The birth rate thing is a bit of a canard in this context. There are something like 100 million Americans under the age of 30.. we’ll have some demographic problems in a generation or two but there are plenty of people to staff the physician and ATC roles. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...
      - hattmall 2y ago
        Yeah, I really don't think it's a lack of people, it's just that increased regulations make things continuously more cumbersome. Intelligent people are going to develop the skills that come with the least amount of operation overhead.
      - b112 2y ago
        Is it? https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/age-sex-pyramid-for-the-united-states.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/ag... Look at 1980's population pyramid. Look at 2020's. 1980 is how societies with mild population growth look. 2020 is how populations with below replacements look (see the graph end?) It doesn't matter how many Americans are under 30. It matters how many are between 20 and 60. And my comment was about "coming up". Over the next 10 years. There is a very significant shift in our populations, all across the entire planet. The US isn't as bad as some regions, but it's still bad. Moving from "lots of young people" to "the same amount of young people as old", means more taxes, fewer people working in society, and so on. Older people require more doctors, too. So you have fewer people in the working pool (as a percentage of the overall population), but with doctors you need more, the more aged your population is. And it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse and worse, with such low birth rates. A downward spiral.
grotted 2y ago
I work closely with transportation dispatchers, and this applies almost word for word
ryandrake 2y ago
> I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools. It wouldn't happen overnight, but surely if ATC had a similar compensation reputation as, say, investment banking, we wouldn't have the pipeline problem that we do now. Surely banks don't have a problem finding young, quick thinking minds to put through their pressure factories. I don't think the ATC candidate pool is currently even close to the limit of people who could take the stress and do the work. Offer controllers starting salaries of $1M/yr and see how things start to change. Your point in the other thread about marketing the job to teenagers is also good. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people interested in ATC aren't already "aviation adjacent" to some degree (ex-military, family are pilots, and so on)
- b112 2y ago
  It's a different kind of pressure. Lives aren't on the line making trades, not like air travel. This lends to a different type of stress. Losing millions for your boss, losing your job != killing hundreds with a single mistake made in seconds.
  - D-Coder 2y ago
    Yeah, the closest I ever came to life-critical software was payroll projects. I discovered by accident that people will notice a one-cent change in their paycheck.
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  part of the problem is the structural problems caused by high turnover are themselves causing high turnover. people can't take vacation, people need to work 6 days 12 hours a week. there is also the issue of location. where applicants are and where controllers are needed is often two distinct circles and once you throw relocation into remote areas into the mix it becomes really unattractive.
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
It seems like a good career path for people retiring from commercial aviation. They have been on the other end of ATC and know the gravity of the situation.
- el_benhameen 2y ago
  There is a maximum age for atc applicants (31) that unfortunately makes this infeasible.
- sombrero_john 2y ago
  You must be younger than 31 to qualify for training as an ATC: https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individuals-without-previous-air-traffic-control-atc-experience https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individual...
  - Melatonic 2y ago
    Does seem odd to me - why restrict it this low? People are living longer and healthier than ever into older years (and better vision)
    - brewdad 2y ago
      The job requires 20/20 uncorrected vision near and far. After 50, that starts to become pretty darn rare. The mental load required to keep all of these moving parts in your head and recall both what you have instructed them to do and what needs to still be instructed in the very near future requires a mental acuity that is not a young person's game. It can also take years for an ATC to have the experience required to meet the most pressing needs. I can see why they don't want to waste their efforts on people likely to be unqualified soon after reaching a useful level of experience.
      - josephcsible 2y ago
        > The job requires 20/20 uncorrected vision near and far. Isn't it 20/20 corrected vision?
AutistiCoder 2y ago
I've dreamed of having an AI model run ATC. Just train an AI on ATC recordings and other data, maybe throw in some reinforcement learning,and then test it in low-stakes commercial airspace (like a regional airport)
- deleted 2y ago
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- paulproteus 2y ago
  Sounds good! Maybe you can start a business and have a low-stakes regional airport work with you. I think the main way to do it is as an add-on/assistant for the existing toolset.
- jaredwiener 2y ago
  What is "low stakes"? This is quite literally life-or-death. Also, just FYI -- airports don't hire their own ATC; it's all FAA (or the equivalent wherever you are located.)
calmbonsai 2y ago
It's fiction, but for some sense of ATC stress, watch "Pushing Tin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  ATC here, I love that documentary :-) (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.) I have some wild stories, but unfortunately sharing them would dox me. The most inaccurate thing though is a transfer CPC (fully-certified controller at their previous facility) plugging in and being able to work without months of training in that area.
  - vdqtp3 2y ago
    Obviously you're aware of this, but even swapping areas within a center isn't a plug and play process. Most people have no idea the level of effort required to control, between flight following, separation, LOAs, diversions, weather, and answering "how are the rides today?" or "is higher any smoother?" every 4.7 seconds.
13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago
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fiftyfifty 2y ago
I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.
- Melatonic 2y ago
  If anything tech upgrades could potentially just make the job less stressful for current traffic controllers - which might end up (long term) with big benefits for everyone.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The general problem here is that we need to do something about the government contracting process. It has been thoroughly captured by large government contractors who do mediocre work for enormous sums of money while excluding anyone who could do better from the process through corruption and red tape. Which in turn means that important systems become frozen in time because upgrade attempts become boondoggles that can't meet requirements until they're so far over budget they get canceled, or never attempted. One of the major problems that should be fixed immediately is that the government pays for code to be written but then doesn't own it, which makes them dependent on the contractor for maintenance. Instead they should be using open source software and, when custom code is necessary, requiring it to be released into the public domain, both for the benefit of the public (who might then be able to submit improvements to the code they're required to use!) and so that maintenance can be done by someone other than the original contractor.
  - CrimsonCape 2y ago
    You touch on an interesting idea. Imagine if there is a "USA ATC Github" open-source repo. As a consultant, you bid on maintenance of the repo and get repo ownership privilege in exchange for your contract. Now you are paid to contribute to the repo for the duration of the contract. The public gets to see if you are worth your fee. If your contract ends, ownership revoked and handed to the next consultant. The obvious downside to this is that hardening code becomes a potential large amount of effort/overhead that could normally be concealed behind binaries and proprietary code.
jasondigitized 2y ago
I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the challenges presented.
- stevage 2y ago
  Fortnite is a closed system, everything controlled by one company. ATC is not. But yes, presumably there is scope for improved tools.
- giantrobot 2y ago
  > I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in flight. A situation on the ground can make landings unsafe or impossible and an aircraft needs to diverted disrupting traffic at another airport. Automating ATC works until one or more exceptional conditions arises. Then it's completely unsuitable and everyone from pilots to ATC need to work against the happy path automation to keep people alive.
  - landryraccoon 2y ago
    This is a general objection to AI responding to real world events in general : "What if something unexpected happens?" It comes up in self driving as well. Things like "What if something suddenly appears in the middle of the road" or "Can it drive in snow conditions with zero visibility? My question is, how do you know that in general human beings respond better to unexpected or very complex / difficult situations than an automated system would? Yes, human beings can improvise, but automated systems can have reaction times more than an order of magnitude faster than that of even the quickest humans. I'd like to see some statistics on the opposing hypothesis : How good are humans, really, when encountering unexpected situations? Do they compare better with automated systems in general? Here's a competing hypothesis: An automated system can incorporate training data based on every recorded incident that has ever happened. Unless a situation is so unexpected that it has literally never happened in the history of aviation, an AI system can have an example of how to handle that scenario. Is it really true that the average human operator would beat this system in safety and reliability? How many humans know how to respond to every rare situation that has ever happened? It's at least possible that the AI does better on average.
deleted 2y ago
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tw04 2y ago
Everything you have listed above could be solved with money. Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. The training and onboarding is incredibly long? Sounds like a doctor? Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side. Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money. There isn't an issue with new technology, there's an issue with the government refusing to invest in upgrading the technology. Canada doesn't have this issue and they're far smaller than the US. Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it. I do absolutely, 100% think that this is a problem that can easily be solved with money. I also think our politicians will flounder around making excuses about how the problem is unsolvable because it doesn't directly help their chances of re-election. The first time a plane goes down carrying a dozen congress critters and their families, you can bet there will magically be money in the banana stand.
- crmd 2y ago
  I respectfully disagree - there's always money in the banana stand.
- d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
  > Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side. I think the guaranteed respect and admiration that comes from the title is actually a more powerful draw. Don't get me wrong, the money is good, but on par with senior manager in any large tech firm. Doctor is a primal respect that technical roles do not carry. You're not getting instant respect from mother in laws and pastors as an ATC.
  - Tatar_grade 2y ago
    there's something about the guaranteed aspect, whereas a senior manager is at the behest of office politics and the business cycle
adolph 2y ago
> some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: > - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. So what happened? Why did the FAA upend a stable hiring process, undercut the CTI schools it had established to train its workforce, and throw the plans of thousands of eager would-be air traffic controllers into disarray? https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...
- specialist 2y ago
  That was quite the rabbit hole. Thanks for sharing.
  - adolph 2y ago
    One of the interesting aspects is that organizations with strict hiring requirements have to have deep supply chains in order to meet those requirements. Its always interesting to read an account that describes these otherwise unknown-to-me subcultures.
rdtsc 2y ago
There has been a buzz of having "computerized, automated ATC" since, well, forever. It's like the flying car of the aviation world. I don't know if the government still hopes that is "right around the corner" so they don't really want to ramp up hiring. I mean, look ChatGPT can solve math problems already, surely it can funnel planes into an airport... /s There certainly some automation involved, but not at the level where we can just let the all the people go home and have it take over.
lazystar 2y ago
Thanks for the link, I was curious if I'd be a candidate and it turns out I was eliminated by the very first qualification: "must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts" This will be more and more of a bottleneck as time goes on; growing up in-doors and looking at computer screens all day will increase nearsightedness.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts The page doesn't say that. It says: > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. Some light Googling will tell you that glasses or contact lenses to fix distant or near vision are fine.
  - lazystar 2y ago
    thank you for proving cunninghams law still applies! much appreciated.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      Cunningham's Law (the guy from the original Wiki): I had to look it up on Google: > The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.
Reason077 2y ago
> "The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years" Isn't this, ultimately, the real problem? Improved technology with radically more automation would both improve safety and reduce workload on controllers. What's really needed is some sort of "next-generation ATC" moonshot project. But of course, in such a safety-critical and risk-averse domain, generational improvement is really hard to do. You certainly can't "move fast and break things", so how do you prevent such a project getting bogged down in development hell?
- amluto 2y ago
  SpaceX moved fast, broke things, and still did pretty well on their safety-critical Dragon program, all things considered. But SpaceX is solving a simpler problem because it’s a greenfield program (aside from docking with ISS, but there’s a spec and they implemented it). ATC involves interactions with the entire existing enormous worldwide fleet of aircraft and pilots. All that being said, a system that allocates certain volumes of airspace to aircraft and alerts aircraft if they are on a trajectory likely to encroach on someone else’s allocated airspace seems doable and maybe even doable in a backwards compatible way. But this, by itself, would not meaningfully increase capacity. And I agree this is silly and unfortunate. SFO, for example, has two parallel runways, and airplanes can only land simultaneously on them if visibility is very good. Surely modern GNSS plus radio (which can do time-of-flight and direction measurements with modern technology!) plus inertial measurement could let a cooperating pair of planes maintain appropriate separation and land simultaneously, safely, with zero visibility, even under conditions of active attack by a hostile system. But that would require a kind of competence and cooperation between the government and vendors that does not currently exist.
- DrFalkyn 2y ago
  There are some small airports that don’t have an ATC. You could start with those
Tatar_grade 2y ago
*turnover = money
deleted 2y ago
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janalsncm 2y ago
Assuming all you’ve said is true, why doesn’t every country have an ATC shortage? > cannibalizing other talent pools If we accidentally paid ATCs so much that it ate into the investment banking or high frequency trading talent pools I think we’d still be ok
- chii 2y ago
  but what if it ate into a doctor or surgeon's talent pool instead?
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Investment banking and HFT certainly eat into the surgeon talent pool but I’ve never heard anyone say we should pay investment bankers less as a result.
capitainenemo 2y ago
Problem is US is stalled on modernising and far behind the rest of the world and has been for decades. https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917
steele 2y ago
The education and training could be subsidized-- this was done for nursing.
l2edline 2y ago
I'm an air traffic controller at a core 30 airport and I firmly believe that many but not all of the issues we face can be fixed by increasing compensation. Namely mandatory 6 day work weeks, high attrition, and burnout.
- VincentEvans 2y ago
  Maybe occasional free pizza, casual Friday's, and an employee of the month plaque would help?
  - RandomBacon 2y ago
    I know your comment is a joke, but we already have that more-or-less. I'm getting close to doxxing myself, so without getting into specifics... controllers often bring in food to share, and we dress pretty casually every day. There used to be a professional dress code years ago, but that was negotiated out by the union.
    - ggm 2y ago
      So bring back a uniform so your Union can negotiate jeans-friday?
throwaway2037 2y ago
> about money Some light Googling tells me that median pay is about 100K to 120K USD per year. Most people here would say that is not outstanding for such highly skilled work. Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees? You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US? > The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system. This sounds like a Catch-22. The current system is "fragile", but so fragile that we cannot improve it with new technology? This argument reads like a tautology. Repeating my previous point, why don't we hear the same about ATC systems in other highly developed nations/regions (Japan, Korea, EU, Canada, AU/NZ, etc.)? The link that shared is excellent. When I looked under the medical requirements area, and section "Eye", I see: > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. Is it possible to get a job without 20/20 near vision?
- rlpb 2y ago
  > You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US? The UK has a controller hiring/retention problem at the moment, too. The less lucrative airports keep losing controllers to the bigger players and can’t replace them. Periods of service reduction are common.
  - swores 2y ago
    To add to this - it's just generally not a very interesting story internationally, so naturally we would, even if it were an exactly equal problem in every country, hear about it from the US most and UK secondarily due to our reading English-language sites like HN. If the polish media were constantly talking about about lack of ATCs in Poland, would we ever notice?
- 0xB31B1B 2y ago
  "Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees?" Baumol effects. Our economy is incredible, extremely high productivity along with full employment. Its why we have ordering kiosks at fast food restaurants, pay 225k for bucee's managers and 20 dollars/hour to flip burgers at fast food restaurants. ATC is a low productivity growth job, technology hasn't increased the number of planes or amount of airspace one ATC can manage. As other jobs and sectors of the economy improve in productivity, people migrate to those sectors from low productivity sectors like ATC because on average high productivity sectors can pay more. The salaries of ATCs rise because there is more competition for the limited pool so you end up paying more but getting the same or worse outcomes over time.
WalterBright 2y ago
I still don't know why radar does not detect aircraft on a collision course. Why technology still does not track every airplane at the airport and flag runway incursions. Why there still are not cameras constantly recording flight ops at the airport. Why are we relying on accidental dash cam recordings? Why the cockpit voice recorder still does not record video.
- deleted 2y ago
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- hattmall 2y ago
  Radar sweeps, it takes time to get back, it takes time to relay information and it takes time to respond. When you have aircraft moving at hundreds of miles an hour crossing in close proximity the trajectory can change and result in impact before radar can gather data, assess it, make a prediction and relay that information.
  - mhh__ 2y ago
    You must be able to do something, though. And if not, get more data.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    The radar can make a prediction, and automatically send the warning to the airplanes on a collision course. All well within what we can do with radar and computers and radio today.
    - coldburst 2y ago
      Would that be much different/better than TCAS?
- mhh__ 2y ago
  > Cameras You might be interested to know that the video feed (the marketing one at least, not the one for engineers) for the recent boom supersonic flight was just a phone and a starlink in one of the planes following. Things can be done.
pimlottc 2y ago
> - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications This stands out to me: > Be under the age of 31 > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. This almost seems like a catch-22 give than approx most adults (80%+) will experience presbyopia by their mid-40s. So even if you're a qualified candidate, you've likely only got 10-15 years max before you are disqualified. More broadly, I suspect some of these vision requirements could be reconsidered in the face of improved display technology and UX improvements (e.g. accommodations for certain forms of partial colorblindness).
- chrismarlow9 2y ago
  Yeah the under 31 surprised me. That alone would bring a shortage.
- histriosum 2y ago
  The use of "bifocal contact lenses" is not allowed. Bifocal glasses are fine.
hattmall 2y ago
There's a class action of about 900 people who were rejected based on the FAA prioritizing diversity in ATC hiring. That would be a good place to start hiring new people.
- swores 2y ago
  Do you have a source? Because that doesn't pass the smell test to me. If they're hiring 10 people and have 20 good, qualified applicants then sure, maybe diversity efforts would mean that a straight white man gets overlooked. But we're talking about the context of them complaining that they can't hire enough people, and absolutely no diversity program anywhere is saying "well we need to hire people, and there aren't any good applicants left except those who don't tick diversity boxes, but still let's not bother hiring them". It really doesn't make sense at all unless those 900 people actually weren't good enough applicants and are wrongly believing that diversity is the reason.
  - mercyandgrace 2y ago
    This provides a good overview. There are some good sources within if you want to dig deeper. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...
csomar 2y ago
If you look at the graph, you'll realize it's a compensation (and housing crisis) issue. Detroit has 100% fill rate. My money is on the real-estate being cheap there. If you are renting a single bedroom for $2500 in Queens, then you need a $100k+ starting salary just to have an average lifestyle.
smcin 2y ago
> - The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years Ok what's the top-5 list of technology things that need to be changed? finally rolling out the decades-delayed ATCC upgrade (currently delayed to 2032)? real-time transponders? satellite location? using digital radio instead of VHF, for better audio quality? Is https://www.city-journal.org/article/reagan-national-airport-crash-faa-air-traffic-control https://www.city-journal.org/article/reagan-national-airport... accurate? (Total ATC salaries are 14,000 ATCs * median salary of $140K = only $1.9bn, so they could certainly hire more and pay higher.)
jajko 2y ago
If job is too stressful since people get overloaded, simply add more people and adjust structure so that it actually delivers more throughput. It doesn't scale linearly, but it doesn't need to, this is not some rock bottom budget service but simply a security monopoly. The goal here shouldn't be to have a small set of brilliant people-machines that perform always 100% under various stress and understaffing, the goal is to have a larger set of good workers that are easily replaceable (ie if they call in sick, have accident or other sudden events). Money and probably just a mild change of approach how such team is created and maintained. If you pay those folks more than lawyers and doctors, then many of those and other high performers will apply for such job. Also it would be one of the more moral high paying jobs out there. Given how much is constantly at stake money and people wise its still peanuts, feel free to take away 10% budget from completely useless airport security ala TSA - here literally everybody would win (apart from security folks, but those jobs are crap and they hate it AFAIK)
trod1234 2y ago
Government is not immune to the economics of things. There is an opportunity cost for everything. Government has historically been far behind the pay scale curve for things like this, but that isn't the main driver of people not going into these fields. There is a huge talent pool that simply will not apply for Government jobs. That is because the work environment is toxic. A special kind of parasite that walks upright on two legs rears its head where everything is about standing, and seniority, rather than production and results, and DEI is a big part of that. The restrictions are also very high, for any G-man job. Government jobs have gotten the worst reputation, because quite literally any good person doing those jobs eventually trades their sanity for them. Its filled with personal cost. It also doesn't help matters that the government actually created these problems to begin with. If you don't know what I'm talking about google the 1981 Reagan ATC strike, and how Reagan broke the backs of the ATC union labor movement overnight. The system is fragile because its centralized. Single points of failure, and front of line blocking are some of the worst types of problems to deal with in highly complex systems because they often are not obvious except to the people whose job it is to design resiliency into the system.
watwut 2y ago
> The training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high The turnover part is usually solved by salaries and working conditions. High turnover is consonance of bad working conditions and low salaries. So, this point can be solved by money. The other points are just repetition of the same thing - people doing this job must be capable.
insane_dreamer 2y ago
More money would definitely help. Becoming a doctor is a long, expensive and arduous process in the US, with a very narrow funnel (much too narrow but that's another topic). But if you make it through residency, you're mostly guaranteed to make good money for the rest of your life (if you don't screw up, etc.) Start by tripling the ATC salary and see what happens. Then, reduce ATC hours to reduce stress and errors. That means hiring more people (==higher incentives).
bambax 2y ago
Yeah, I think this is one of the most difficult and demanding job in the world. But my instinct tells me some filters happen too early. Don't know about the US but in France for example you need to be an engineer to become an air controller; and to be an engineer you need to go to prep school; and to go to prep school you need to have majored in physics in high school (not just math). Which means that, if you choose not to take physics in 11th grade when you're 16, that's it: you will never be an air controller in France, whatever your other motivations or qualities. But it would seem some personal qualities, like the ability to switch context easily, be resistant to stress (or even enjoying it), etc. should be more relevant to this job than just having studied physics in high school.
foxyv 2y ago
> but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work There is an iron law of nature that, hiring is never a problem of shortages, just insufficient pay. If you don't pay them enough they will get a job doing something that pays more and/or has better working conditions. Labor isn't any more immune to market forces than any other good. The only people who are qualified for the job and willing to do it for cheap are the ones on the right side of the bell curve. Pay moves that bell curve and exposes more of it.

Justsignedup 2y ago

My uncle did ATC in the soviet military. They were allowed to do 2 hour shifts max. The mental work is so intense that the human brain can only sustain it for a short time.

RandomBacon 2y ago

> I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. There would be more people interested in aviation choosing to be ATC than a pilot if our pay matched that of major airline pilots. There are people going through the training and then quiting when they realize that can't get an opening in their hometown because that spot is reserved for a random person one week behind them in the FAA academy, and the pay won't make it worth moving away from their family. There are more examples, and appropriate pay would fix most of them. (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)

legitster 2y ago
> at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools I don't think any sane person would be against raising ATC wages. But to refer back to my post, the situation might be different if it there were not also a massive pilot shortage as well! If these two pools of talent mostly overlap raising wages on one will probably just pull from the other. It's probably a combination of raising wages and putting more money into recruiting teenagers considering vocational programs.
- b112 2y ago
  Because we are an aged society, with such an incredibly low birth rate, this will only get worse. There are only so many competent people in our society, and that talent pool is being spread thin across all sectors of society which require such candidates. There are looming doctor shortages, too. Professionals of all stripes.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    The birth rate thing is a bit of a canard in this context. There are something like 100 million Americans under the age of 30.. we’ll have some demographic problems in a generation or two but there are plenty of people to staff the physician and ATC roles. https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...
    - hattmall 2y ago
      Yeah, I really don't think it's a lack of people, it's just that increased regulations make things continuously more cumbersome. Intelligent people are going to develop the skills that come with the least amount of operation overhead.
    - b112 2y ago
      Is it? https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/age-sex-pyramid-for-the-united-states.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/ag... Look at 1980's population pyramid. Look at 2020's. 1980 is how societies with mild population growth look. 2020 is how populations with below replacements look (see the graph end?) It doesn't matter how many Americans are under 30. It matters how many are between 20 and 60. And my comment was about "coming up". Over the next 10 years. There is a very significant shift in our populations, all across the entire planet. The US isn't as bad as some regions, but it's still bad. Moving from "lots of young people" to "the same amount of young people as old", means more taxes, fewer people working in society, and so on. Older people require more doctors, too. So you have fewer people in the working pool (as a percentage of the overall population), but with doctors you need more, the more aged your population is. And it's not going to get better, it's going to get worse and worse, with such low birth rates. A downward spiral.

grotted 2y ago

I work closely with transportation dispatchers, and this applies almost word for word

ryandrake 2y ago

> I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools. It wouldn't happen overnight, but surely if ATC had a similar compensation reputation as, say, investment banking, we wouldn't have the pipeline problem that we do now. Surely banks don't have a problem finding young, quick thinking minds to put through their pressure factories. I don't think the ATC candidate pool is currently even close to the limit of people who could take the stress and do the work. Offer controllers starting salaries of $1M/yr and see how things start to change. Your point in the other thread about marketing the job to teenagers is also good. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people interested in ATC aren't already "aviation adjacent" to some degree (ex-military, family are pilots, and so on)

b112 2y ago
It's a different kind of pressure. Lives aren't on the line making trades, not like air travel. This lends to a different type of stress. Losing millions for your boss, losing your job != killing hundreds with a single mistake made in seconds.
- D-Coder 2y ago
  Yeah, the closest I ever came to life-critical software was payroll projects. I discovered by accident that people will notice a one-cent change in their paycheck.
bobthepanda 2y ago
part of the problem is the structural problems caused by high turnover are themselves causing high turnover. people can't take vacation, people need to work 6 days 12 hours a week. there is also the issue of location. where applicants are and where controllers are needed is often two distinct circles and once you throw relocation into remote areas into the mix it becomes really unattractive.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

It seems like a good career path for people retiring from commercial aviation. They have been on the other end of ATC and know the gravity of the situation.

el_benhameen 2y ago
There is a maximum age for atc applicants (31) that unfortunately makes this infeasible.
sombrero_john 2y ago
You must be younger than 31 to qualify for training as an ATC: https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individuals-without-previous-air-traffic-control-atc-experience https://www.faa.gov/faq/what-are-age-requirements-individual...
- Melatonic 2y ago
  Does seem odd to me - why restrict it this low? People are living longer and healthier than ever into older years (and better vision)
  - brewdad 2y ago
    The job requires 20/20 uncorrected vision near and far. After 50, that starts to become pretty darn rare. The mental load required to keep all of these moving parts in your head and recall both what you have instructed them to do and what needs to still be instructed in the very near future requires a mental acuity that is not a young person's game. It can also take years for an ATC to have the experience required to meet the most pressing needs. I can see why they don't want to waste their efforts on people likely to be unqualified soon after reaching a useful level of experience.
    - josephcsible 2y ago
      > The job requires 20/20 uncorrected vision near and far. Isn't it 20/20 corrected vision?

AutistiCoder 2y ago

I've dreamed of having an AI model run ATC. Just train an AI on ATC recordings and other data, maybe throw in some reinforcement learning,and then test it in low-stakes commercial airspace (like a regional airport)

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paulproteus 2y ago
Sounds good! Maybe you can start a business and have a low-stakes regional airport work with you. I think the main way to do it is as an add-on/assistant for the existing toolset.
jaredwiener 2y ago
What is "low stakes"? This is quite literally life-or-death. Also, just FYI -- airports don't hire their own ATC; it's all FAA (or the equivalent wherever you are located.)

calmbonsai 2y ago

It's fiction, but for some sense of ATC stress, watch "Pushing Tin": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushing_Tin

RandomBacon 2y ago
ATC here, I love that documentary :-) (Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.) I have some wild stories, but unfortunately sharing them would dox me. The most inaccurate thing though is a transfer CPC (fully-certified controller at their previous facility) plugging in and being able to work without months of training in that area.
- vdqtp3 2y ago
  Obviously you're aware of this, but even swapping areas within a center isn't a plug and play process. Most people have no idea the level of effort required to control, between flight following, separation, LOAs, diversions, weather, and answering "how are the rides today?" or "is higher any smoother?" every 4.7 seconds.

13_9_7_7_5_18 2y ago

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fiftyfifty 2y ago

I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.

Melatonic 2y ago
If anything tech upgrades could potentially just make the job less stressful for current traffic controllers - which might end up (long term) with big benefits for everyone.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The general problem here is that we need to do something about the government contracting process. It has been thoroughly captured by large government contractors who do mediocre work for enormous sums of money while excluding anyone who could do better from the process through corruption and red tape. Which in turn means that important systems become frozen in time because upgrade attempts become boondoggles that can't meet requirements until they're so far over budget they get canceled, or never attempted. One of the major problems that should be fixed immediately is that the government pays for code to be written but then doesn't own it, which makes them dependent on the contractor for maintenance. Instead they should be using open source software and, when custom code is necessary, requiring it to be released into the public domain, both for the benefit of the public (who might then be able to submit improvements to the code they're required to use!) and so that maintenance can be done by someone other than the original contractor.
- CrimsonCape 2y ago
  You touch on an interesting idea. Imagine if there is a "USA ATC Github" open-source repo. As a consultant, you bid on maintenance of the repo and get repo ownership privilege in exchange for your contract. Now you are paid to contribute to the repo for the duration of the contract. The public gets to see if you are worth your fee. If your contract ends, ownership revoked and handed to the next consultant. The obvious downside to this is that hardening code becomes a potential large amount of effort/overhead that could normally be concealed behind binaries and proprietary code.

jasondigitized 2y ago

I might get absolutely destroyed for this but here goes. We have video games like Fortnite that can handle collision detection across a hundred players with bullets flying everywhere. Is it that much of a stretch to use similar technology and things like text to speech to help air traffic controllers do a better job? Genuinely curious about the technology advances in this space and if I am completely naive about the challenges presented.

stevage 2y ago
Fortnite is a closed system, everything controlled by one company. ATC is not. But yes, presumably there is scope for improved tools.
giantrobot 2y ago
> I am completely naive about the challenges presented. The problem isn't collision detection or predicting movement. They're not a bunch of particles on simple ballistic trajectories. They're powered objects traveling in a turbulent and difficult to predict medium. In emergency conditions they can turn from a powered vehicle to an unpowered one. They can need to land immediately when flight worthiness changes in flight. A situation on the ground can make landings unsafe or impossible and an aircraft needs to diverted disrupting traffic at another airport. Automating ATC works until one or more exceptional conditions arises. Then it's completely unsuitable and everyone from pilots to ATC need to work against the happy path automation to keep people alive.
- landryraccoon 2y ago
  This is a general objection to AI responding to real world events in general : "What if something unexpected happens?" It comes up in self driving as well. Things like "What if something suddenly appears in the middle of the road" or "Can it drive in snow conditions with zero visibility? My question is, how do you know that in general human beings respond better to unexpected or very complex / difficult situations than an automated system would? Yes, human beings can improvise, but automated systems can have reaction times more than an order of magnitude faster than that of even the quickest humans. I'd like to see some statistics on the opposing hypothesis : How good are humans, really, when encountering unexpected situations? Do they compare better with automated systems in general? Here's a competing hypothesis: An automated system can incorporate training data based on every recorded incident that has ever happened. Unless a situation is so unexpected that it has literally never happened in the history of aviation, an AI system can have an example of how to handle that scenario. Is it really true that the average human operator would beat this system in safety and reliability? How many humans know how to respond to every rare situation that has ever happened? It's at least possible that the AI does better on average.

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tw04 2y ago

Everything you have listed above could be solved with money. Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation. The training and onboarding is incredibly long? Sounds like a doctor? Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side. Technology hasn't changed is a political problem due to lack of... money. There isn't an issue with new technology, there's an issue with the government refusing to invest in upgrading the technology. Canada doesn't have this issue and they're far smaller than the US. Too much stress? I bet if you paid people so much money that they could work for 10 years and then either retire to a lower paying job, or retire entirely, people would deal with it. I do absolutely, 100% think that this is a problem that can easily be solved with money. I also think our politicians will flounder around making excuses about how the problem is unsolvable because it doesn't directly help their chances of re-election. The first time a plane goes down carrying a dozen congress critters and their families, you can bet there will magically be money in the banana stand.

crmd 2y ago
I respectfully disagree - there's always money in the banana stand.
d0gsg0w00f 2y ago
> Do you know why people go through the pain of becoming a doctor? Because they make a lot of money when they get through the other side. I think the guaranteed respect and admiration that comes from the title is actually a more powerful draw. Don't get me wrong, the money is good, but on par with senior manager in any large tech firm. Doctor is a primal respect that technical roles do not carry. You're not getting instant respect from mother in laws and pastors as an ATC.
- Tatar_grade 2y ago
  there's something about the guaranteed aspect, whereas a senior manager is at the behest of office politics and the business cycle

adolph 2y ago

> some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed: > - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. So what happened? Why did the FAA upend a stable hiring process, undercut the CTI schools it had established to train its workforce, and throw the plans of thousands of eager would-be air traffic controllers into disarray? https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa...

specialist 2y ago
That was quite the rabbit hole. Thanks for sharing.
- adolph 2y ago
  One of the interesting aspects is that organizations with strict hiring requirements have to have deep supply chains in order to meet those requirements. Its always interesting to read an account that describes these otherwise unknown-to-me subcultures.

rdtsc 2y ago

There has been a buzz of having "computerized, automated ATC" since, well, forever. It's like the flying car of the aviation world. I don't know if the government still hopes that is "right around the corner" so they don't really want to ramp up hiring. I mean, look ChatGPT can solve math problems already, surely it can funnel planes into an airport... /s There certainly some automation involved, but not at the level where we can just let the all the people go home and have it take over.

lazystar 2y ago

Thanks for the link, I was curious if I'd be a candidate and it turns out I was eliminated by the very first qualification: "must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts" This will be more and more of a bottleneck as time goes on; growing up in-doors and looking at computer screens all day will increase nearsightedness.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> must have 20/20 vision in each eye, no contacts The page doesn't say that. It says: > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. Some light Googling will tell you that glasses or contact lenses to fix distant or near vision are fine.
- lazystar 2y ago
  thank you for proving cunninghams law still applies! much appreciated.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    Cunningham's Law (the guy from the original Wiki): I had to look it up on Google: > The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.

Reason077 2y ago

> "The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years" Isn't this, ultimately, the real problem? Improved technology with radically more automation would both improve safety and reduce workload on controllers. What's really needed is some sort of "next-generation ATC" moonshot project. But of course, in such a safety-critical and risk-averse domain, generational improvement is really hard to do. You certainly can't "move fast and break things", so how do you prevent such a project getting bogged down in development hell?

amluto 2y ago
SpaceX moved fast, broke things, and still did pretty well on their safety-critical Dragon program, all things considered. But SpaceX is solving a simpler problem because it’s a greenfield program (aside from docking with ISS, but there’s a spec and they implemented it). ATC involves interactions with the entire existing enormous worldwide fleet of aircraft and pilots. All that being said, a system that allocates certain volumes of airspace to aircraft and alerts aircraft if they are on a trajectory likely to encroach on someone else’s allocated airspace seems doable and maybe even doable in a backwards compatible way. But this, by itself, would not meaningfully increase capacity. And I agree this is silly and unfortunate. SFO, for example, has two parallel runways, and airplanes can only land simultaneously on them if visibility is very good. Surely modern GNSS plus radio (which can do time-of-flight and direction measurements with modern technology!) plus inertial measurement could let a cooperating pair of planes maintain appropriate separation and land simultaneously, safely, with zero visibility, even under conditions of active attack by a hostile system. But that would require a kind of competence and cooperation between the government and vendors that does not currently exist.
DrFalkyn 2y ago
There are some small airports that don’t have an ATC. You could start with those

Tatar_grade 2y ago

*turnover = money

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janalsncm 2y ago

Assuming all you’ve said is true, why doesn’t every country have an ATC shortage? > cannibalizing other talent pools If we accidentally paid ATCs so much that it ate into the investment banking or high frequency trading talent pools I think we’d still be ok

chii 2y ago
but what if it ate into a doctor or surgeon's talent pool instead?
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Investment banking and HFT certainly eat into the surgeon talent pool but I’ve never heard anyone say we should pay investment bankers less as a result.

capitainenemo 2y ago

Problem is US is stalled on modernising and far behind the rest of the world and has been for decades. https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html https://www.montrealgazette.com/business/article267028.html https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917 https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107917

steele 2y ago

The education and training could be subsidized-- this was done for nursing.

l2edline 2y ago

I'm an air traffic controller at a core 30 airport and I firmly believe that many but not all of the issues we face can be fixed by increasing compensation. Namely mandatory 6 day work weeks, high attrition, and burnout.

VincentEvans 2y ago
Maybe occasional free pizza, casual Friday's, and an employee of the month plaque would help?
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  I know your comment is a joke, but we already have that more-or-less. I'm getting close to doxxing myself, so without getting into specifics... controllers often bring in food to share, and we dress pretty casually every day. There used to be a professional dress code years ago, but that was negotiated out by the union.
  - ggm 2y ago
    So bring back a uniform so your Union can negotiate jeans-friday?

throwaway2037 2y ago

> about money Some light Googling tells me that median pay is about 100K to 120K USD per year. Most people here would say that is not outstanding for such highly skilled work. Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees? You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US? > The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system. This sounds like a Catch-22. The current system is "fragile", but so fragile that we cannot improve it with new technology? This argument reads like a tautology. Repeating my previous point, why don't we hear the same about ATC systems in other highly developed nations/regions (Japan, Korea, EU, Canada, AU/NZ, etc.)? The link that shared is excellent. When I looked under the medical requirements area, and section "Eye", I see: > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. Is it possible to get a job without 20/20 near vision?

rlpb 2y ago
> You never read about "ATC hiring crisis" in other countries. Why only the US? The UK has a controller hiring/retention problem at the moment, too. The less lucrative airports keep losing controllers to the bigger players and can’t replace them. Periods of service reduction are common.
- swores 2y ago
  To add to this - it's just generally not a very interesting story internationally, so naturally we would, even if it were an exactly equal problem in every country, hear about it from the US most and UK secondarily due to our reading English-language sites like HN. If the polish media were constantly talking about about lack of ATCs in Poland, would we ever notice?
0xB31B1B 2y ago
"Why don't other highly developed countries have the same issues finding employees?" Baumol effects. Our economy is incredible, extremely high productivity along with full employment. Its why we have ordering kiosks at fast food restaurants, pay 225k for bucee's managers and 20 dollars/hour to flip burgers at fast food restaurants. ATC is a low productivity growth job, technology hasn't increased the number of planes or amount of airspace one ATC can manage. As other jobs and sectors of the economy improve in productivity, people migrate to those sectors from low productivity sectors like ATC because on average high productivity sectors can pay more. The salaries of ATCs rise because there is more competition for the limited pool so you end up paying more but getting the same or worse outcomes over time.

WalterBright 2y ago

I still don't know why radar does not detect aircraft on a collision course. Why technology still does not track every airplane at the airport and flag runway incursions. Why there still are not cameras constantly recording flight ops at the airport. Why are we relying on accidental dash cam recordings? Why the cockpit voice recorder still does not record video.

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hattmall 2y ago
Radar sweeps, it takes time to get back, it takes time to relay information and it takes time to respond. When you have aircraft moving at hundreds of miles an hour crossing in close proximity the trajectory can change and result in impact before radar can gather data, assess it, make a prediction and relay that information.
- mhh__ 2y ago
  You must be able to do something, though. And if not, get more data.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  The radar can make a prediction, and automatically send the warning to the airplanes on a collision course. All well within what we can do with radar and computers and radio today.
  - coldburst 2y ago
    Would that be much different/better than TCAS?
mhh__ 2y ago
> Cameras You might be interested to know that the video feed (the marketing one at least, not the one for engineers) for the recent boom supersonic flight was just a phone and a starlink in one of the planes following. Things can be done.

pimlottc 2y ago

> - The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications This stands out to me: > Be under the age of 31 > Applicants must demonstrate distant and near vision of 20/20 or better in each eye separately. The use of bifocal contact lenses for the correction of near vision is unacceptable. This almost seems like a catch-22 give than approx most adults (80%+) will experience presbyopia by their mid-40s. So even if you're a qualified candidate, you've likely only got 10-15 years max before you are disqualified. More broadly, I suspect some of these vision requirements could be reconsidered in the face of improved display technology and UX improvements (e.g. accommodations for certain forms of partial colorblindness).

chrismarlow9 2y ago
Yeah the under 31 surprised me. That alone would bring a shortage.
histriosum 2y ago
The use of "bifocal contact lenses" is not allowed. Bifocal glasses are fine.

hattmall 2y ago

There's a class action of about 900 people who were rejected based on the FAA prioritizing diversity in ATC hiring. That would be a good place to start hiring new people.

swores 2y ago
Do you have a source? Because that doesn't pass the smell test to me. If they're hiring 10 people and have 20 good, qualified applicants then sure, maybe diversity efforts would mean that a straight white man gets overlooked. But we're talking about the context of them complaining that they can't hire enough people, and absolutely no diversity program anywhere is saying "well we need to hire people, and there aren't any good applicants left except those who don't tick diversity boxes, but still let's not bother hiring them". It really doesn't make sense at all unless those 900 people actually weren't good enough applicants and are wrongly believing that diversity is the reason.
- mercyandgrace 2y ago
  This provides a good overview. There are some good sources within if you want to dig deeper. https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-a-quick-overview https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-...

csomar 2y ago

If you look at the graph, you'll realize it's a compensation (and housing crisis) issue. Detroit has 100% fill rate. My money is on the real-estate being cheap there. If you are renting a single bedroom for $2500 in Queens, then you need a $100k+ starting salary just to have an average lifestyle.

smcin 2y ago

> - The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years Ok what's the top-5 list of technology things that need to be changed? finally rolling out the decades-delayed ATCC upgrade (currently delayed to 2032)? real-time transponders? satellite location? using digital radio instead of VHF, for better audio quality? Is https://www.city-journal.org/article/reagan-national-airport-crash-faa-air-traffic-control https://www.city-journal.org/article/reagan-national-airport... accurate? (Total ATC salaries are 14,000 ATCs * median salary of $140K = only $1.9bn, so they could certainly hire more and pay higher.)

jajko 2y ago

If job is too stressful since people get overloaded, simply add more people and adjust structure so that it actually delivers more throughput. It doesn't scale linearly, but it doesn't need to, this is not some rock bottom budget service but simply a security monopoly. The goal here shouldn't be to have a small set of brilliant people-machines that perform always 100% under various stress and understaffing, the goal is to have a larger set of good workers that are easily replaceable (ie if they call in sick, have accident or other sudden events). Money and probably just a mild change of approach how such team is created and maintained. If you pay those folks more than lawyers and doctors, then many of those and other high performers will apply for such job. Also it would be one of the more moral high paying jobs out there. Given how much is constantly at stake money and people wise its still peanuts, feel free to take away 10% budget from completely useless airport security ala TSA - here literally everybody would win (apart from security folks, but those jobs are crap and they hate it AFAIK)

trod1234 2y ago

Government is not immune to the economics of things. There is an opportunity cost for everything. Government has historically been far behind the pay scale curve for things like this, but that isn't the main driver of people not going into these fields. There is a huge talent pool that simply will not apply for Government jobs. That is because the work environment is toxic. A special kind of parasite that walks upright on two legs rears its head where everything is about standing, and seniority, rather than production and results, and DEI is a big part of that. The restrictions are also very high, for any G-man job. Government jobs have gotten the worst reputation, because quite literally any good person doing those jobs eventually trades their sanity for them. Its filled with personal cost. It also doesn't help matters that the government actually created these problems to begin with. If you don't know what I'm talking about google the 1981 Reagan ATC strike, and how Reagan broke the backs of the ATC union labor movement overnight. The system is fragile because its centralized. Single points of failure, and front of line blocking are some of the worst types of problems to deal with in highly complex systems because they often are not obvious except to the people whose job it is to design resiliency into the system.

watwut 2y ago

> The training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high The turnover part is usually solved by salaries and working conditions. High turnover is consonance of bad working conditions and low salaries. So, this point can be solved by money. The other points are just repetition of the same thing - people doing this job must be capable.

insane_dreamer 2y ago

More money would definitely help. Becoming a doctor is a long, expensive and arduous process in the US, with a very narrow funnel (much too narrow but that's another topic). But if you make it through residency, you're mostly guaranteed to make good money for the rest of your life (if you don't screw up, etc.) Start by tripling the ATC salary and see what happens. Then, reduce ATC hours to reduce stress and errors. That means hiring more people (==higher incentives).

bambax 2y ago

Yeah, I think this is one of the most difficult and demanding job in the world. But my instinct tells me some filters happen too early. Don't know about the US but in France for example you need to be an engineer to become an air controller; and to be an engineer you need to go to prep school; and to go to prep school you need to have majored in physics in high school (not just math). Which means that, if you choose not to take physics in 11th grade when you're 16, that's it: you will never be an air controller in France, whatever your other motivations or qualities. But it would seem some personal qualities, like the ability to switch context easily, be resistant to stress (or even enjoying it), etc. should be more relevant to this job than just having studied physics in high school.

foxyv 2y ago

> but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work There is an iron law of nature that, hiring is never a problem of shortages, just insufficient pay. If you don't pay them enough they will get a job doing something that pays more and/or has better working conditions. Labor isn't any more immune to market forces than any other good. The only people who are qualified for the job and willing to do it for cheap are the ones on the right side of the bell curve. Pay moves that bell curve and exposes more of it.