[teractiveodular]

This article is not talking about COVID, it's talking about the absurd changes to the hiring process that disadvantaged qualified candidates in favor of people who said science was their worst subject in high school (15 points). How could this not have an impact on hiring?

[clutchdude]

Because COVID happened much sooner and has likely had a bigger impact than the hiring practices from a decade ago - notice we don't have a concrete number of "disadvantaged qualified candidates" from this article. Whereas, I can point COVID with actual numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42952695

If we're going to say "Did that contribute to a shortage of qualified ATC..?" then you have to considering all inputs into what is a current conversation rather than extrapolate your already asserted points from the article.

[diogocp]

Weren't you the one who said ...

> the 1-2 year interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that take years-to-decades to resolve.

Looking at [1], the difference between planned and actual hires in 2013–2015 was 1362, much higher than during 2020–2022 when it was just 384 (and this is using the pre-COVID target).

I don't know what happened in 2013–2015, but whatever it was, it seems to have had a 3.5 times bigger impact than COVID.

Well, we do know one thing that happened: this scandal.

[1] https://www.natca.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/FY23-Staffi...

[clutchdude]

You know what also happened in 2013?

> The Federal Aviation Administration has imposed a hiring freeze to help blunt the sequester’s impact, but that threatens to disrupt the pipeline of new air traffic controllers needed to replace the thousands of workers eligible for retirement.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/air-controllers-caugh...

We know that happened as well.