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...
US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
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Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#112I 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.
Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#113Earlier 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.
Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#114Earlier 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.
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
#115ATCs 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.
Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#116I 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?
Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#117Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#118Their 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!”
Re: US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers
#119It's Armageddon! :-)