Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

651–660 of 660 posts

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#651

Post by jessriedel »

ch4s3 wrote: post #580
jessriedel wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The test wasn't explicitly discriminatory, just the way that it was used. And the way that it was used is disputed. The facts are still being litigated. All the coverage is from opinion pieces or right-of-center newspapers. https://archive.is/lDyOB

I don't think the WSJ was the only place reporting on it, and I don't think the fact that you consider them to be "right of center" means their coverage might be anything but factual here.

I’m not saying the WSJ was the only place reporting on it, and indeed my link isn’t even an example. That’s an opinion piece.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#652

Post by wqaatwt »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #609
wqaatwt wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you rather spend 10% of 50k on healthcare or 15% of 100k? Also taxes are generally much higher in these countries as well.

Taxes are usually higher, but not incredibly so. Healthcare spending is generally less for better results. Switzerland spends the most, although nowhere near what America spends, and is where Romney/heritage foundation got the mandatory health insurance idea from.

Well yes, Switzerland is pretty much the only place in Europe where income/wages are overall on par with those in the US (of course not in all sectors). Other countries are generally very poor in comparison.

> Taxes are usually higher, but not incredibly so

So again.. would you rather make 60k and pay 45% in taxes or make 100k and pay 35%?

> nowhere near what America spends

Sure, if you are above median higher will likely more than compensate the higher healthcare costs (unless you’re very unlucky of course).

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#653

Post by wqaatwt »

otikik wrote: post #623
wqaatwt wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Housing in Paris, London, Munich, Toronto, Vancouver etc. is extremely expensive relative to income of course other stuff varies.

Apples to apples. If you take the extremes in Europe, you have to take the extremes in the US as well. London and Paris most be compared to New York or San Francisco, not with Cheyenne (Wyoming).

Yes, exactly. Why do you think I meant something else?

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#654

Post by robertlagrant »

marcusverus wrote: post #646
robertlagrant wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you've completely misunderstood. This is where they addressed it: > at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools Nothing to do with raising pay causing/not causing more supply.

Total non-issue. They hired ~1800 air traffic controllers in '24, which would be 0.06% of college grads in a given year and a much smaller number of the total workforce.

I appreciate your "attack at all costs" comment style, but I was just pointing out how irrelevant your condescending "econ 101" comment was. There's no point debating me now about someone else's point; I was just saying they addressed it already.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#655

Post by mp05 »

mcmcmc wrote: post #302
mp05 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools The mass of unemployed CS grads?

What makes you think CS grads would be good candidates for a high stress job that requires excellent communication skills?

They won't be, which is why it's funny to me.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#656

Post by cranky908canuck »

tw04 wrote: post #201
legitster wrote: post #77

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 - The trainin…

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 s…

> Everything you have listed above could be solved with money.

Except that when money was on the table, Reagan fired them. ATC is remote from most people's day-to-day awareness unless planes hit each other, but medical help that's held back is really in-your-face.

Granted, that's decades in the past. No way anyone would jump in and try to gut the public service like that today [1].

[1] sarky.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#657

Post by throw10920 »

DannyBee wrote: post #541
tw04 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. The notion that if you just pay enough, people who are otherwise qualified will do anything, is amazingly reductive. It's a super US-centric view, and not surprisingly, it does not have an amazing history of working out (especially compared to other mechanisms). Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this,…

> not surprisingly, it does not have an amazing history of working out (especially compared to other mechanisms).

So, you're claiming that there's empirical evidence that supports your claim. Please link it.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#658

Post by throw10920 »

DannyBee wrote: post #599
TeMPOraL wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. If you think that, you aren't considering paying them enough money. > Given the people in question have good other options, why would they do this, even if you paid more? You ain't thinking about offering them enough money. Enough money means as much as it takes to make your offer better than any other option they have. > In fact - plent…

This is again, so reductive i don't know where to begin. You really just assume everyone, at their core, is money driven enough. So to you, everything is about whether they are beign offered enough money. You even use the amazingly circular reasoning that if you discover them saying no, it just means you weren't trying to pay them enough. There is apparently no limit to this, and anything gets solved by more money. T…

You know what's extremely reductive and dishonest? Shifting the goalposts from "if you offer enough pay, you can get enough applicants" to "if you offer enough pay, you can get a specific person to take the job".

The original claim was this:

> Only 10% of applicants are physically and mentally qualified? Sounds like you need more applicants? Want to attract more applicants? Offer more compensation.

You then dishonestly moved the goalposts:

> There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do.

> The notion that if you just pay enough, people who are otherwise qualified will do anything, is amazingly reductive.

Maybe before accusing people of being reductive, you should respond to the actual point being made instead of moving the goalposts.

> As I've said, plenty of studies have explored the effect and limits of giving more money on happiness, on recruitment, etc, on tons and tons and tons of fields.

None of which you have linked. Go ahead, link a study that says that even offering an unbounded amount of money isn't enough to get enough applicants within the amount of time it takes to go through the training pipeline.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#659

Post by throw10920 »

DannyBee wrote: post #595
user_7832 wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are plenty of jobs that you can't pay people enough money to want to do. This is true for individuals. With a sample size large enough, the probability that no one will be up for it given the increased pay, is extremely low, tending to zero.

Sure, but increasing that sample size would require doing more than just paying them more. IE it's not particularly useful to say "we will pay 1 million billion dollars to anyone in the united states who wishes to be an air traffic controller" if you want good air traffic controllers. It is more useful, for example, to take the people who wanted to do this, and you stopped from doing this before for dumb reasons, and…

> Sure, but increasing that sample size would require doing more than just paying them more.

Citation needed, because...

> IE it's not particularly useful to say "we will pay 1 million billion dollars to anyone in the united states who wishes to be an air traffic controller" if you want good air traffic controllers.

...if you're asserting that offering one quadrillion dollars as the salary for ATCs would not decisively solve the problem, that's insane and there can't be further discussion.

However, if your point is that this might be true, but the statement isn't useful, that's false too - it is useful to say this, because if true, then it means that there some function that describes the relationship between compensation and qualified applicants. And now that we've agreed that there is a function, we can then have a reasonable discussion about the inputs, and specifically the tradeoff between making the compensation higher vs. changing the way the training is structured and the artificial constraints on supply.

If you can say "to increase trained ATCs by 50% you can either make the salary $450k higher for 1k employees, or you can do a tech modernization that will cost $10M and keep your tech recent for the next decade" and provide a specific tradeoff between financial compensation vs non-salary factors, then you'll be able to have a logical argument about the two. And if the numbers are as skewed as in my example, you'll be able to convince the majority of logical people that increasing the salary is the suboptimal strategy.

Re: America desperately needs more air traffic controllers

#660

Post by otikik »

wqaatwt wrote: post #653
otikik wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples to apples. If you take the extremes in Europe, you have to take the extremes in the US as well. London and Paris most be compared to New York or San Francisco, not with Cheyenne (Wyoming).

Yes, exactly. Why do you think I meant something else?

Because New York and San Francisco are more expensive than Paris and London.
Post reply on HN