[duxup]

I think “sense of urgency”, “trouble shooting”, “understanding what is influencing other people’s actions” and even the ability to run a sort of “run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skills.

I worked with a good technical support team that worked on some high end equipment, and regardless of education the ability to troubleshoot could be found regardless and … in spite of education.

In my current coding role I find myself saying “I don’t care if he used an html tag wrong, he anticipated a problem with several tickets and avoided them.” Just the will / ability to do that is so valuable.

[brookst]

Some of the best troubleshooters I’ve ever met were comparatively uneducated factory workers in Mexico who just assumed they were diagnosing for diagnosing and fixing everything from forklifts to PBX systems.

The culture of that factory was amazing.

[duxup]

A former truck driver was one of the best troubleshooters I ever met. We also had a guy who worked on as a carpenter, a lady who was a former bank teller.

Also very loyal / hard workers.

In every job I’ve had since then their resumes would have been tossed in the bin by HR, but they were hired in the late 90s when companies were desperate for warm bodies.

[xeromal]

Redneck problem solving. I saw it growing up in Georgia too. People with 6th grade educations just knowing intuitively how to accomplish things without actually knowing the science behind it.

[giantg2]

'“run a mental simulation and anticipate second order effects” are uncommon skill.'

There are literally people who are innately unable to do this (run mental simulations). I wonder what the percentage is though.

[viraptor]

Did you use the right word there? Nobody's born with that ability.

[giantg2]

You don't have to possess it as an infant for it to be innate. You don't have color vision when hour born either.

[viraptor]

I do mean long term - unless you've got experience with dealing with complex tasks as you grow up, is there any chance at all that you'll be good at that? (Research link welcome)

[giantg2]

I was referring to mental imagery. Please see Aphantasia.

[viraptor]

Aphantasia is different than mental simulation. It's specifically to do with visualisation and doesn't seem to affect things like reasoning/planning.

[RandomBacon]

ATC here (opinions are my own, not of the FAA, etc)

I agree those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller.

Unfortunately I don't think the FAA is testing for that, of course the hiring process tests have changed since I was hired on.

(I hope someone from the FAA is reading this and tells CAMI. I was disappointed when there was no free text response on the survey they gave out a few weeks ago.)

[robocat]

> those uncommon skills help make someone be a good controller

Societies hiring norms are broken.

Everyone spends years at school before (a) being filtered by experts for aptitude, or (b) filtering themselves for fit. It is so sad to see teachers, lawyers, engineers, everyone waste years to discover they don't like a job or the job doesn't like them. The cost to society is percentage points of GDP.

Even worse is that nobody encourages us to quickly test different disciplines and discover unobvious fits. Internship or volunteer is the closest and requires me to do a lot of high-risk heavy lifting. Maybe I'd love being a teacher and maybe I'd be great at it. Who knows?

[duxup]

When I think of the “uncommon” hires (former truck driver, bank teller) who I encountered who had those skills I mentioned and thrived… they would never be hired today.

It’s sad.

[leoqa]

It seems like the biggest blocker for hiring is location selection.

[RandomBacon]

That is way up there too, good catch.

After going through the hiring process (application, test, drug screen, medical screening), they give you an academy start date and whether you'll be Terminal or En Route.

People who pass the Terminal training at the FAA Academy are given a list of low-level (lower pay) towers to choose from that are seemingly-random. It could be that there's a spot at a tower in your home town, but that spot is reserved for the class that graduates one week after your class, which means you can't go there, you have to take from the list you're given or quit (and some people do quit at this point).

[bambax]

Not sure what those qualities have in common?

I like to think of myself as a good troubleshooter and would probably have made a good police inspector or FAA analyst. I usually have good intuitions and find root causes pretty fast.

But -- I don't think I would survive two minutes as an air controller even if my life depended on it. This is the job I probably feel the least able to do and the one that impresses me the most. Not just the pressure, but the ability to hold so much information in one's head at the same time, and hold a conversation with many different people talking to you from moving objects which you need to understand the exact location of, switching context constantly -- that's crazy.

Kind of like being an instant translator in multiple languages at the same time and if you make but one mistake, hundreds of people die.

[heraldgeezer]

So if I struggled through education, got my degree, I have a few jobs, but I don't have IT, I'm screwed?

No, I don't want to be management. No, I don't want to have a hard job. I want to be a NEET basically. If I work I just work and go home anyway and watch YouTube.

[Levitz]

You are replying to a comment talking about how "having IT" is the exception rather than the rule. You'll be fine.