Great at gaming? US air traffic control wants you to apply | Hacker News Reader

Great at gaming? US air traffic control wants you to apply

bbc.com

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Please correct me I'm wrong:

> The ad also highlights the salary on offer to controllers, saying it is $155,000 (£115,000) after three years of work.

Unless the US government shuts down again, at which point you stop being paid, you are required to keep working, you have no right to strike[0], and the competences you've built across this job are largely hard to directly make use of elsewhere so the incentive to job-hop is low.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

This is why shutting down the right to strike is a short term approach: you can't make people choose to start or keep working in your sweatshop, so eventually you run out of staff.

> you can't make people choose to start or keep working in your sweatshop

If you're a government, you can; it's called a draft. The US seems to be preparing for it.

Can't really corveé labour skilled jobs which require passing a lot of exams. Even in the military.

What you can do, at state scale, is pass everybody through a services training filter and sit them under the sorting hat after three months to winnow out skills and potentials of interest.

Some are clear rejects, some are good for getting up early and walking perimeters, others would suit the motor pool. An occasional few will gel for traffic control, signal intell, etc.

The trick then, for a state, is to incentivize with carrots, sticks, patriotic abstractions like duty, etc. the ones they want for the jobs they have.

Now its time for levelling up training.

The characters in the movie and TV series MAS*H included unwilling civilian draftees who were doctors drafted to serve in the Korean War.

Doctors need to pass a lot of exams.

You can draft a doctor, from pool of doctors. You can't draft ATC, because there is no pool of spare ATCs. It would be like drafting air defense operators - there is no pool of them outside military.

I'm pretty sure some of the air traffic controllers for military airfields in WWII were draftees, just like many air defense operators were draftees before the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973.

We know from the PATCO strike there is a pool of spare ATCs, including "military controllers, and retired personnel who temporarily returned to service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_...

Thus, retired civilian personnel is a possible draft pool for a skilled job like ATC which require passing a lot of exams.

That pool is small, certainly, but it was enough to break PATCO.

If the recent news about moving lots of soldiers from EU Nato installations back home is true, they'll have a ton of trained active military ATC's available to use in the US soon.

I think you've forgotten that the original post was about hiring gamers to do this job.

Which they can't do unless they are heavily trained.

I think people here may enjoy John Oliver's report on how bad the situation for air traffic controllers currently is.

Jump to minute 18 for a discussion on floppy disks or, appropriately, to minute 25 for an "honest recruitment ad".

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k&t=1539

Reminds me a lot of his report on nuclear security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g

A lot of times as a citizen I think you feel that something is "off" with different Government jobs but can’t put what exactly.

And then you watch one of those reports and be like "holy duck, how can it be this bad and what are they doing to my people and with my taxes?"

Different country, but a lot of times when dealing with the government I think why are the people working there always grumpy, and then one gave me the "tour" of what they have to deal with that is hidden from the public eye.

Working toilets? Nah, they had to go outside around the building into Porta Potty’s.

He showed me like fifty places in the building with mold. Not the fun white one you get on cheese. I am talking about black fungus out of stranger things eating half the wall. Some offices had signs saying working in a different office today with the date printed to 1998. Inside water was dripping from the ceiling.

He is like that’s why we are grumpy. Ever since I bring a piece of cake and some hot coffee when I have to deal with government employees and thank them for their service. They are allowed to be grumpy working under conditions I would expect from a third world country.

No right to strike? So then we go back to playing high school games. Report in sick. Use one of the many tricks to actually be sick.

You don't stop being paid, you just get your payment delayed.

Is there any kind of interest on this delay? Otherwise it's an involuntary zero-percent loan to the government, so, given inflation and fees for borrowing money, it's a net loss either way.

Absolutely negligible. Please stop with the propaganda. Everyone is fine with a 2-week delay for payroll, but wait a couple more weeks and it's suddenly you "stop being paid" and give a "loan to the government". There are plenty of downsides to being ATC but this one is not a genuine framing.

Many people are living paycheck to paycheck. A month or two of missed payments can have a ton of downstream consequences.

Air traffic controllers making $155,000 are not the same people going homeless from a month or two of missed payments.

a) it’s possible to live at the edge your means regardless of where you are relatively to the poverty line.

b) It’s not a bad salary for an individual, but supporting a family of 3-5 on $155k does not leave a lot of room for error

> Everyone is fine with a 2-week delay for payroll

I don't know where this assumption comes from. I'm not. With the increasing number of people living paycheck to paycheck, your "couple more weeks" means a growing risk of homelessness among other things.

I know this is culture-war stuff, but on the balance I think it's true that the FAA deprioritised applicants from the AT/CTI programmes, that is training courses speficically to become ATCs.

My main source is https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa..., and I'm assuming in particular that the screenshot of the letter in footnote 1 is genuine. In the section ended by footnote 16, there is a claim than in 2014 the FAA sent out just short of 3k job offer letters whereas in 2019 that had dropped to below 1k.

That sounds like cutting off your own recruitment pipeline.

It's also evidence that the FAA did not drop the standards for qualification and certification, which is reassuring.

What video game on Steam allows me to practice air traffic control? How can I determine if I have a skill at the logistics of managing planes on a radar screen? Where can I join a multiplayer lobby where at game start we're assigned to either give radio commands to planes, or interpret radio commands and respond on behalf of planes, with at least two players for each? How does anti-griefing work in that environment?

If that game existed, I would try it.

Does it?

It does, and it's called VATSIM[0]. VATSIM Radar[3] will show you what's going on right now.

As a pilot, you connect using either Microsoft Flight Simulator or X-Plane. Your flight simulator will include graphics (hopefully up-to-date) for your chosen area. Pick a starting airport, spawn at a ramp location (a gate, cargo area, etc.), connect to the network, file a flight plan (or go VFR), call up (or announce intentions), and go.

As a controller, VATSIM organizes ATC by region of the world, then in to 6-8 divisions within the region, then in to individual ARTCCs, ACCs, or FIRs[2]. You'll typically register with a division, then make your home in a particular ARTCC/FIR. For example, I was registered with VATUSA and made my home in the Indianapolis ARTCC.

There is software[1] for both pilots (connecting your flight sim to the network) and controllers (providing a radar display). Each "radio frequency" has an associated text chat and voice chat for communication. ATC are trained to support both text and voice simultaneously, following pilot's preference.

For controllers, your chosen ARTCC/ACC/FIR handles your training. They provide the "sectorfiles" that give you a graphical view of your airspace and your airports. (Think of it like a modern version of an old-style vector display.) They also help you through training, both book learning and sim training. You start controlling things on the ground, and work your way up to controlling things in the air.

[0]: https://vatsim.net/

[1]: https://vatsim.net/docs/policy/approved-software

[2]: Air Route Traffic Information Center / Area Control Center / Flight Information Region. Different countries use different terms, but mean the same thing: It's a large three-dimensional volume of airspace.

[3]: https://vatsim-radar.com/

Another useful tip: don't immediately register with the division local to you in the 'real world', but instead take a look at a variety to see how different divisions conduct themselves. Some divisions have very long waiting lists, and standards of service do differ between ARTCCs/FIRs. It's also worth just checking to see whether the software a given division uses is actually compatible with your computer, because they don't all use the same programs.

I've spent many hours in VATSIM and loved it, so don't be discouraged from diving in, but as a warning: I encountered a pervasive issue with pretentiousness across the VATSIM community, with some divisions setting largely arbitrary rules and procedures which don't exist in real world ATC.

MS Flight Simulator w/ VATSIM [1] l has this, in the sense thar you can participate as a pilot or a controller, although you are not assigned these roles at game start.

Anti-griefing works by keeping the barriers to entry very high, so chances are you won't try VATSIM, even though MSFS is technically available on Steam.

[1] https://vatsim.net/docs/basics/becoming-a-controller

Probably not on Steam, but maybe still somewhere on the net. There used to be an open source game for unix-like systems simply called "atc" that gave you a text-mode view of a radar screen. You gave directions to pilots using the keyboard through some abbreviated text instructions. I know because it was pretty popular among some friends of mine back in the day.

I made a patch that made it a multiplayer networked game where each player controlled the space of one airport. When I was doing that I remember being surprised how the entire game was written as a parser in lex (or maybe yacc? not sure anymore) not straight C.

AFAIK, Only Japanese gaming studio interested in this

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1348390/I_am_an_Air_Traff...

(only on Switch) https://www.sonicpowered.co.jp/bokukan/nsw/rjgg_allstars/

Honestly, it feels like RTS players might qualify considering how much multitasking is required in a game like Starcraft. Maybe they should add a StarCraft 2 competitive rank qualification.

StarCraft, LoL, DOTA are likely more relevant.

“CESSNA RUSH INBOUND”

Have they tried paying them consistently?

I would be very much in favor of an amendment that says that whenever there's a single person in a public role that isn't being paid in a given month, then no other public employee above them in the chain, going up to the governor/president will be paid that month either.

That won't work since they'll still receive their bribes. Except for the ones who don't take bribes - they'll be punished for not taking bribes. Be careful what incentives you set up.

Now, if the rule was for them to have their bank accounts drained to zero (offshore bank accounts though)...

Actually what might work is locking them inside the government building until people are getting paid again. Some countries have rules like that in some scenarios.

Another one that might work is dissolving the government and calling an election. Many countries have that. If the governance structure can't pass a budget, operations continue according to the old budget while the entire governance structure gets fired and replaced.

Ten years ago the FAA was disqualifying candidates because the didn't say their worst subject in high school was science and today they're struggling with recruitment. Seems like a catastrophe of their own making.

https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

Source:

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/trumps-transportation-secretary...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9MczWfLpBcw

If you’re considering it, you should probably watch Last Week Tonight’s investigation first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k

> The Xbox one logo appears at the start of the video before dissolving into a montage that cuts between images of men playing various online computer games and people, including women, in air traffic control towers looking at their own computers.

> "You've been training for this," the ad says.

Wow looks like Microsoft were not kidding with their 'this is also an xbox' ad campaign. Also really console gamers is who you target for this role? USG is becoming a joke

After Theme Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_(video_game) and Theme Hospital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Hospital videogames now it's the turn of:

THEME TRAFFIC CONTROLLER

> The ad also highlights the salary on offer to controllers, saying it is $155,000 (£115,000) after three years of work.

IIRC they are understaffed and must do like 60hs per week, so it's like $103K in a sane work position.

great at a skill but dont need money, ve disrespexted by politicians as pawns

Where is the mighty AI when you need one.

AI should be able to handle the bulk of this work. "14,663 active controllers" is too much when you could have a single gamer + AI combo running it for multiple airports.

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