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US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

cbsnews.com

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Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#111
post #3

No mention of what games they're playing? Also no mention of when the NYC ones were told to move to Pennsylvania or be fired? Interestingly also cbs's article https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/new-york-philadelphia-a...

It seems like they probably just ran recruitment ads targeted to people with an interest in gaming, right? The article actually doesn't say anything about how they went about recruiting gamers.

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#112
post #42

I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it. He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone. I t…

The US Army did a bunch of recruiting to teenagers like this, successfully. Work for us, it's just like Call of Duty! They had their own branded FPS even.

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Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#113
post #95
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure - but I know there's a really serious community of folks who do ATC virtually on VATSIM: https://vatsim.net I feel like those folks would already have been candidates for air traffic controller jobs though.

I suspect popularity of sims like this is because of people who cannot be candidates for ATC roles - either have family or lifestyle restrictions that prevent them relocating or doing shift work, drug dependencies or medical issues, or criminal backgrounds.

Of the controllers I have chatted with while they stream on twitch this is the answer. Many people don't realize the controllers have medical tests as well.

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather conditions, ground/runway conditions, obstructions, mechanical issues. There are tons of edge cases with huge consequences for error. Same reason self driving is not a solved problem, but with dramatically less tolerance for error.

But it feels like planes have a huge advantage in that they all have trackers constantly broadcasting their location to one another. Almost like they are working as a team compared to FSD systems which are limited to a small range of self collected info from vision/lidar. Not that it can ever be fully automated but it seems like much easier problem to solve.

The thing is... not everything you need to track, not even all airplanes, will have transponders.

Sometimes the transponders will be faulty, sometimes you have to direct a broken aircraft safely to the ground with no transponder available.

And sometimes you are doing ATC for a zone that does not, in fact, require transponders (those are required only for the strictest controlled zones, not in general)

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#115

ATCs are chronically understaffed in a way that endangers all of us, and the FAA has been under scrutiny for their hiring practices for over a decade https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39184451 It's equally plausible to me that this is an example of "we need to try something and this is something" or just deflection from the prior criticism.

Put the AI to it. Clod can do a better job anyway /s

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#116

I had a coworker from the democratic republic of Congo who insisted that if he was back home he would do ok fighting because he played lots of first-person shooters. I mean he was 100% serious about this. We argued about it. He got a commitment from our employer to pay his undergrad tuition. But he disappeared one day, probably went home to fight and die. I search for him every now and then but I think he's gone. I t…

The planes will just respawn after disappearing from the radar, right?

Do you get stars like in GTA if you crash the planes together?

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#117
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is a glass house joke well done.

Reddit is way worse. At least we pretend to be here for tech discussions, even if we can’t help but get baited by politics most of the time.

dangs moderation here is pretty good and I think that helps.

Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

#118
Wait after reading the article it simply says that many of these hired people also play video games.

Their definition of “video gamer” is literally just somebody who says they play games.

I don’t see what the big deal is. Lots of young people play games every now and then.

Many medical students play video games. You don’t see articles saying “America’s new surgeons…are video gamers!”

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