> The approximate median annual wage for air traffic control specialists is $127,805. The salaries for entry-level air traffic control specialists increase as they complete each new training phase.
I'm an Air Traffic Controller and I'm required by the FAA to say these opinions are my own and not necessarily of the FAA.
Some fully-certified air traffic controllers cannot afford to live where they work, not to mention the trainees that have the added stress of training and making less money. At my first facility, to live within 45 minutes of work, my whole paycheck went to rent, thank goodness I had savings from my previous job.
With regards to stress, other controllers have told me about how they arrive at home after work not remembering their drive home, or driving slowly in silence. I remember trying to open my apartment door with my car fob/remote one time wondering why it wasn't working.
And that pay is on par with M-F 9-5 desk jobs that don't kill you mentally and physically. ATC is 24/7 and is notorious for leading to drinking problems, suicide, etc. Entry-level pilots for major airlines make more per hour than us, and we're pay-capped by law and will never make as much as their captains.
How much advance notice do you get of overtime requirement? Can you plan a week or month ahead? Do you have to cancel days off or vacations? (How much of those stats are available by FOIA, for each ATC location? Also, how can we see how many hires wash out/quit by year of experience, or pay grade?)
> At my first facility, to live within 45 minutes of work, my whole paycheck went to rent...
That's because your federal base payscale starts very low, $47K base for an ATC-4 in 'No locality' [1], right?
I'm on the "No" list for overtime, so I don't normally get scheduled it, but when I do, it's about two or three weeks in advance. People on the "Yes" list get the scheduled overtime when the schedule comes out about 5 or 6 weeks in advance.
By law we cannot work more than 10 hour days, 6 days in a row. There are some facilities where controllers are all being scheduled to that limit.
I do often get calls on my days off asking if I want to come in for overtime that day.
Our schedules are generally pretty consistent, so I can kind of plan my time off in advance, but on a particular day I won't know if my shift starts at noon or 3pm until the schedule is posted. We can trade shifts, ask to be bumped up or back an hour or two, or even use leave for maybe the first few or last few hours of a shift, but coworkers get squirrelly about it if you do it too often.
If you bid leave, those days are guaranteed. If something comes up that you want to do (party, convention, child's recital) and put in a leave request and it doesn't get approved, then most people will call in sick. As long as there's not a pattern to calling in sick (like you only call in sick on Saturdays), then most people don't care, because this is a job where your head needs to be focused and not distracted or in a funk.
You could probably FOIA the wash-out/quit stats, but I have no idea.
Yes, pay after graduating from the FAA Academy is about 50k until you start getting certified on sectors (D1, D2, D3, then CPC).
Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.
> on a particular day I won't know if my shift starts at noon or 3pm until the schedule is posted.
Why? What's the rationale to that? Presumably that doesn't work if you have small kids or dependents, or a commute with a bad rush-hour.
What I'm trying to get at is now that the situation at ATC has the full attention of the public, in a bipartisan way, time to tell us if you could wave a magic wand at the whole setup, what things would you improve?
Some days people don't have any leave bid, some days maybe one person who works on the morning shift and one person who works on the evening shift both have the day bid off, some days everyone who works the evening shift has the day bid off.
Whomever is making the schedule has to balance the controller availability with the minimum-required staffing numbers for that time of day.
Some facilities will let you flex in early, so you could just plan to arrive half an hour early (and leave half an hour early). If once in a blue moon you are a few minutes late due to unusually bad traffic, most managers are okay with that as long as it isn't a common occurance, in which case you need to leave home earlier.
Answers to second question:
(I have smaller suggestions that are needed, but I figure I'll try to be efficient with people's time and give probably the biggest two issues that I think everyone can get behind.)
1) Fix initial facility assignment. It's currently random and wastes a ton of time and money. If you're from a small town that has an opening in the control tower or you're from a large city that has an approach control or "center", you should be able to choose to go there (or close to there) once you graduate from the FAA academy. As it is now, the spot could go to a random person in a class behind you at the Academy who doesn't want that spot, and you go to some random place where you're miserable, waste everyone's time and FAA money while training there, then apply to transfer (and it's basically impossible to transfer when everywhere is below staffing and they won't release you), and then spend more time and FAA money training again at a new facility (and that other person who got the spot you wanted will also be wasting time and money training at a facility they don't want to be at either). There should be a way to submit a list of preferences and have an algorithm place you close to one of your top 10 choices/areas. If someone in authority asked me to develop a system/algorithm and a fair set of rules that's hard to game, I could probably do it, but it would take some work to come up with and then a lot more work to develop and test, but it would be worth it to the NAS (National Airspace System). Unfortunately such an assignment would probably go to the union for them to hand out to their buddies (Article 114 of the collective bargaining agreement).
Suggestion 1 (above) will save money and be more efficient in the long-run. Suggestion 2 (below) will cost more money initially, but should balance out in the long-run by attracting more qualified people who will be less likely to wash-out (whereas money is wasted on training people who will eventually wash-out, or quit when they realize it's not worth it.
2) Pay us more. Attract more qualified people who will be better controllers, by offering a better salary. The salary used to be better, but it has been eroded away through inflation. Pilots are getting 40% raises (over a couple of years) and we get 2% raises (well, 3.6% or so with the union contract). There are a lot less Air Traffic Controllers than pilots, and we are vital to the nation's security and economy. Qualified people who might be interested in ATC realize they can make just as much money in other industries that don't kill them mentally and physically like ATC does for the same if not more amount of money.
(Opinions are my own and not necessarily that of the FAA.)
Most people work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Some work 10 hours a day, 4 days a week. A few work 10 hours one day, 6 hours a second day, and 8 hours the third/fourth/fifth days.
Many facilities are 24/7 so we have rotating schedules where people have to work the midnight shifts. Shift work is brutal.
Most controllers also work Saturdays and Sundays. Controllers often miss their kid's activities and other family or social functions.
Standard Federal leave accrual:
- 4 hours of sick leave every pay period (two weeks).
- Employees with 0-3 years accrue 4 hours of annual leave per pay period.
- Employees with 3-15 years accrue 6 hours...
- Employees with 15+ years accrue 8 hours...
We bid once a year for our RDOs (Regular Days Off aka "weekend") and annual leave for the following year.
Some controllers advocate that we should accrue more sick leave (and they make good points), and while the 4 hours may be a federal law, they could implement work-arounds such as allowing us to accrue an additional different type of leave.
Opinions are my own and not necessarily of the FAA.
I think they deserve much more, if for nothing else than because their career is age limited. And it's not like they can go work somewhere else with their career skills at that point. Pensions exist, but it's really a career you have to plan for and dedicate your life to.
That's a significant low ball estimate relative to BLS statistics[1], which pins national median annual wage (circa May 2023 dataset) at $137,380.
For the DC locality specifically, median annual wage is $170,350 with a location quotient of 3.5 (!!)[2].
To be sure, this is just base wage, which explicitly excludes things like holiday premiums, weekend premiums, overtime, shift differentials, bonuses, etc.
This also doesn't include that oh-so-sweet defined benefit pension. The most ambitious civil service employees absolutely love gaming the shit out of this by lateral transfer to a high cost of living locality (e.g. DC metro area) for the last 3 years before retiring (at age 56) and moving to relatively low cost of living areas (e.g. Florida).
Here's a study[0] looking at data from 2022 that says flying keeps getting safer. The press release[1] has some nice quotes:
> “You might think there is some irreducible risk level we can’t get below,” adds Barnett, a leading expert in air travel safety and operations. “And yet, the chance of dying during an air journey keeps dropping by about 7 percent annually, and continues to go down by a factor of two every decade.”
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If you are passionate about technology and want to join a company moving the industry forward, FusionAuth might be a great fit for you. As mentioned, our core software is commercial with a "free as in beer" version. We also open source much of our supporting infrastructure.
From the announcement[0]: "The extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, constitutes a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)."
Here's an NYT article on the IEEPA[1], which was passed in the 1970s and allows the president to declare an emergency and then take actions based on that without Congressional action. I think that tariffs under the IEEPA have never been done before, but sanctions have.
I'd add: make it super clear that you are not going to asking them for a job or a referral or selling them anything during the conversation. That will increase the likelihood they'll take the call.
If you can get a warm intro to them, all the better.
Full disclosure, I work for the company that owns Cleanspeak[0].
We have many happy clients that moderate UGC with Cleanspeak, including gaming and customer service applications. You can read more about the approach in the docs[1] or the blog[2]. Here's a blog post[3] that talks about root word list extrapolation, which is one of the approaches.
Cleanspeak is not the cheapest option and there's some integration work via API required, but if you are looking for performant, scalable, flexible moderation, it's worth an eval.
> Always keep interviewing. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is stopping interviews after starting a new job, trusting in the company. Instead, continuously explore opportunities so that if a layoff happens, you already have other options lined up.
I personally find interviewing exhausting. I also feel slightly guilty interviewing when I'm happy where I'm at because I have been a hiring manager and know how much goes into a good interview process from the company side. (Not saying don't do that, but it's hard for me to do so.)
If interviewing is tiring, another alternative that requires less work is to be active in a larger tech community. Whether that is here, local meetups, or on social media, being active can raise your profile and keep connections warm. This will help if/when you are laid off.
> For those like me who’ve experienced layoffs, work has become just that—work. You do what’s assigned, and if your company squanders your potential or forces you to waste time on unnecessary projects, you simply stop caring. You collect your paycheck at the end of the month, and that’s it. This is the new modern work: no more striving to be 40% better every year.
This is why I've always enjoyed working at startups or being a consultant on my own. You have more risk, but you also reap the rewards of getting better.
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