Pilots not flying major routes for major airlines make less, in some cases a lot less ($30-40k a year).
How is this information relevant on a discussion about a pilot shortage affecting a major carrier?
In the same way that you don't get to be a principal engineer at Google on your first day out of college, you don't get to be a captain on your first day out of flight school.
But the pay and working conditions for new pilots is rather worse than it is for new programmers.
Yeah, people should think of this like "what if Google engineers started at $45k salaries instead of $120k+?" They could work for years to get up to that same $300k+ level but they're starting much lower and expected to just take it (and the ultra high mountain view/SF cost of living).
That’s half of it. To get the full pilot experience add “and what if when senior Google engineers left for Apple or Microsoft or Facebook they had to start as junior engineers again at junior pay and could only be promoted back up after the junior engineers already there were promoted?”
Lots of people leave the profession before becoming pilots at a major carrier.
Note most of those pilots will be on Horizon, not Alaska.
Right seat is the first officer / copilot. Not the pilot. You must spend a long time as a copilot before advancing to the pilot role.