NCEPT debate thread

32andBelow said:
Put more people where they want to go from the academy and there will be less transfers and less people in training.
Click to expand...
This makes too much sense..... I had picked ZMP on my list after the academy 3yrs ago, a guy in the class behind me graduated 2 days after me, he hadp picked ZOB... he lived near Minneapolis and I wanted to be as close to Detroit as possible... we both passed and asked the head honcho if we could swap, he go to ZMP & I go to ZOB... they told us absolutely no....both of us transferred shortly after CPC.
 
HenryTheAce said:
This makes too much sense..... I had picked ZMP on my list after the academy 3yrs ago, a guy in the class behind me graduated 2 days after me, he hadp picked ZOB... he lived near Minneapolis and I wanted to be as close to Detroit as possible... we both passed and asked the head honcho if we could swap, he go to ZMP & I go to ZOB... they told us absolutely no....both of us transferred shortly after CPC.
Click to expand...
It seems like 75% of the transfer are just this. At least in the en route world.
 
It’s incredible how inflexible they are at the academy. We had 8 pass, 1 OCONUS, 1 Spouse Accommodation and they wouldn’t give us all 8 slots off our list despite the #1 guy strongly preferring what would’ve been 8 and myself preferring what would’ve been 7. This forced #1 to PIA and me to MRY (which has been amazing), but I could’ve lived with my grandparents for free near ONT and the guy behind me was dying for MRY. It’s not even asking for much to positively change 3 people’s lives and they just don’t budge
 
Im
JNev said:
It’s incredible how inflexible they are at the academy. We had 8 pass, 1 OCONUS, 1 Spouse Accommodation and they wouldn’t give us all 8 slots off our list despite the #1 guy strongly preferring what would’ve been 8 and myself preferring what would’ve been 7. This forced #1 to PIA and me to MRY (which has been amazing), but I could’ve lived with my grandparents for free near ONT and the guy behind me was dying for MRY. It’s not even asking for much to positively change 3 people’s lives and they just don’t budge
Click to expand...

I’m sure similar situations like this play out with literally every class as well. A guy in my class had his hometown tower on the list, but it fell off as soon as one person didn’t pass. He even asked on selection day if he could choose and they were adamant that he had to pick from the remaining slots, which all required him to move. Two other guys were literally being forced into cross country moves, one from New York to California and the other from out west to STT. Can’t tell me that all three of those folks aren’t putting in ERRs the second they check out.
 
EP32 said:
Im


I’m sure similar situations like this play out with literally every class as well. A guy in my class had his hometown tower on the list, but it fell off as soon as one person didn’t pass. He even asked on selection day if he could choose and they were adamant that he had to pick from the remaining slots, which all required him to move. Two other guys were literally being forced into cross country moves, one from New York to California and the other from out west to STT. Can’t tell me that all three of those folks aren’t putting in ERRs the second they check out.
Click to expand...
And they’ll wind up swapping with people that had the exact opposite happen to them. And all this clogs it up for someone who has a different but legit amber reason for wanting to transfer. Like career development.
 
The system isn't even close to perfect but you can't just ignore staffing when it comes to hiring. Super frustrating if your home facility is the next one to drop off, but there's got to be a line somewhere. What if someone else's is 3 spots down? 5? 7? Not to mention, a lot of people that get their low level home facility end up wanting more.

Centers are a little different, but honestly it's so much easier to transfer between centers it's a totally different world (barring a few exceptions like ZNY. Not to mention that center to center transfers (with some exceptions) certify at lightning speed.

What if they keep a spot on the list for someone, but someone above them in class rank wants it? That's kind of sticky.

Then you have the other facility on the list that should have been picked but since they kept your home one on, it's left over. There's like five people in Aspen on this site that are gonna lose their minds watching their annual new hire slot get skipped.

There's such a myriad of problems that it's literally impossible to make some perfect hiring program. The other problem is that literally everyone knows what they're signing up for when they apply, so it's really hard to generate any kind of sympathy or motivation to create a solution especially when there isn't an easy fix
 
Maintainvfr said:
The system isn't even close to perfect but you can't just ignore staffing when it comes to hiring. Super frustrating if your home facility is the next one to drop off, but there's got to be a line somewhere. What if someone else's is 3 spots down? 5? 7? Not to mention, a lot of people that get their low level home facility end up wanting more.

Centers are a little different, but honestly it's so much easier to transfer between centers it's a totally different world (barring a few exceptions like ZNY. Not to mention that center to center transfers (with some exceptions) certify at lightning speed.

What if they keep a spot on the list for someone, but someone above them in class rank wants it? That's kind of sticky.

Then you have the other facility on the list that should have been picked but since they kept your home one on, it's left over. There's like five people in Aspen on this site that are gonna lose their minds watching their annual new hire slot get skipped.

There's such a myriad of problems that it's literally impossible to make some perfect hiring program. The other problem is that literally everyone knows what they're signing up for when they apply, so it's really hard to generate any kind of sympathy or motivation to create a solution especially when there isn't an easy fix
Click to expand...

I mean.... Go back to picking states.

Problem solved.
 
Maintainvfr said:
The system isn't even close to perfect but you can't just ignore staffing when it comes to hiring. Super frustrating if your home facility is the next one to drop off, but there's got to be a line somewhere. What if someone else's is 3 spots down? 5? 7? Not to mention, a lot of people that get their low level home facility end up wanting more.

Centers are a little different, but honestly it's so much easier to transfer between centers it's a totally different world (barring a few exceptions like ZNY. Not to mention that center to center transfers (with some exceptions) certify at lightning speed.

What if they keep a spot on the list for someone, but someone above them in class rank wants it? That's kind of sticky.

Then you have the other facility on the list that should have been picked but since they kept your home one on, it's left over. There's like five people in Aspen on this site that are gonna lose their minds watching their annual new hire slot get skipped.

There's such a myriad of problems that it's literally impossible to make some perfect hiring program. The other problem is that literally everyone knows what they're signing up for when they apply, so it's really hard to generate any kind of sympathy or motivation to create a solution especially when there isn't an easy fix
Click to expand...
It perpetuates the problems all the way down the line. Maybe you can’t give someone LAX but to say you can’t get them somewhere in California is just not even trying. Also take ref preference into account enforce assigning a track. If someone wants Montana don’t send them en route.
 
I mean seems to me if you (in this order) 1) held an ncept bimonthly made all the CPC transfers you could 2) distributed a needs list to the academy based on all the leftover staffing holes not filled with cpcs 3) give x amount of slots to a given class, top 3,4 half whatever choice of anything on the available list and 4) gave the rest a most needed list based on what's most urgent to the agency using the current x grads, y choices per class modelyou'd be able to make more people happy, and meet urgent staffing needs, and as a byproduct reduce the amount of people checking out and immediately putting in paperwork to go elsewhere.

But hey I'm just spit balling in 3 minutes of thought here. Surely combining and streamlining this whole thing is a terrible idea.
 
Choosing states and regions both have been done and both had their problems. Or does nobody remember that? You have a huge disparity between facility numbers in each state. A lot of applicants ended up bidding similar states because they were willing to go anywhere in order to get in. Also while it's better in some ways, unless they get their actual first choice facility, they are still going to want to transfer. Not to mention the drive to work more traffic that I mentioned before.

Much like NCEPT itself, this is another grass is greener/Rose colored glasses scenario. People seem to be more vocal about it now that it feels like some weird competition, but there isn't some huge increase in people wanting to transfer. It's not like people were happy before. The difference is that now people are moving much more often, and with much better release dates. The real solution to this problem is hiring more people. When we can start out hiring retirements and other attrition, we can facilitate more movement.

People will transfer en masse no matter how the agency hires. Which gives the agency no incentive to help us unfortunately, it only gives a reason to staff the lowest facilities regardless of our wants. I don't fully understand how they determine who needs people the most and why Aspen or whoever gets boned, but that's a different discussion.

Every single one of these ideas has its own problems too. What might seem like a better solution to you guys where you would rather deal with the other problems, might not be to the next jamocha Joe that gets hired. If I can't get LAX maybe I don't really want to go to some five tower in Cali. Maybe I'd rather do my time in some lower cost area.

We were just doing bimonthly NCEPT rounds, and we can't support it right now. We were crippling the CPC numbers. Those of you that are at the facilities releasing, or know somebody that does, has seen how when you release people every round for a year because your ATM is giving a twelve month release date you end up stupid short staffed after. We're already using a needs list, and your third point I think you're saying give grads the choice of any facility under 100% staffing? Now you're giving priority to people in the academy over the people stuck at their facility. Maybe start this once every single BUE is at their end facility, but otherwise its a spicy plan

I'm a little hungover so sorry if this is kinda verbal diarrhea. I'll check over it a little later
 
Maintainvfr said:
Much like NCEPT itself, this is another grass is greener/Rose colored glasses scenario. People seem to be more vocal about it now that it feels like some weird competition, but there isn't some huge increase in people wanting to transfer. It's not like people were happy before. The difference is that now people are moving much more often, and with much better release dates.
Click to expand...

That must be why my last facility had constant ERRs to places they wanted to go, and was seen as a training facility. Ran with 13-14 CPCs with no OT. Bring about NCEPT, a 22 staffing number, and no releases for 18 months, aside from 6 hardships and 2 resignations. That really sounds like moving much more often.

I guess unless you want to count the 4 additional people that bid and got deviated in FLM positions just to leave.
 
Maintainvfr said:
Choosing states and regions both have been done and both had their problems. Or does nobody remember that? You have a huge disparity between facility numbers in each state. A lot of applicants ended up bidding similar states because they were willing to go anywhere in order to get in. Also while it's better in some ways, unless they get their actual first choice facility, they are still going to want to transfer. Not to mention the drive to work more traffic that I mentioned before.

Much like NCEPT itself, this is another grass is greener/Rose colored glasses scenario. People seem to be more vocal about it now that it feels like some weird competition, but there isn't some huge increase in people wanting to transfer. It's not like people were happy before. The difference is that now people are moving much more often, and with much better release dates. The real solution to this problem is hiring more people. When we can start out hiring retirements and other attrition, we can facilitate more movement.

People will transfer en masse no matter how the agency hires. Which gives the agency no incentive to help us unfortunately, it only gives a reason to staff the lowest facilities regardless of our wants. I don't fully understand how they determine who needs people the most and why Aspen or whoever gets boned, but that's a different discussion.

Every single one of these ideas has its own problems too. What might seem like a better solution to you guys where you would rather deal with the other problems, might not be to the next jamocha Joe that gets hired. If I can't get LAX maybe I don't really want to go to some five tower in Cali. Maybe I'd rather do my time in some lower cost area.

We were just doing bimonthly NCEPT rounds, and we can't support it right now. We were crippling the CPC numbers. Those of you that are at the facilities releasing, or know somebody that does, has seen how when you release people every round for a year because your ATM is giving a twelve month release date you end up stupid short staffed after. We're already using a needs list, and your third point I think you're saying give grads the choice of any facility under 100% staffing? Now you're giving priority to people in the academy over the people stuck at their facility. Maybe start this once every single BUE is at their end facility, but otherwise its a spicy plan

I'm a little hungover so sorry if this is kinda verbal diarrhea. I'll check over it a little later
Click to expand...

Let me add more explosive essay diarrhea to yours.

You missed a couple key points I made. Combining the the two processes as far as the agency determining agency needs and distribution of that list in a specific order, so BUEs get first stab at what's available, any new hires then pick from the same list and get what's left and offering a limited number of new hires choice of any facility with less than 100 percent staffing, the rest use the same system currently in place for them. Want better choice of facility out of the academy? Cool. Suck less, and the needs of CPCs still come first in that situation. No you can't do it on a continuous rolling basis, and I accept your point of bimonthly meetings overloading the system. Quartley, whatever they are doing now,doesnt matter ( I'm where I want to be after fighting the fucky system haven't been paying much attention to ncept for the last 18 months since I got my ERR accepted).

No, you are not going to be able to make everyone happy all the time, and it's still imperfect, but that sounds better than what they are doing now, which seems scattershot at times and sometimes causes cpcs to miss opportunities,or delay them significantly.

I forgot to add I am also in favor of limiting new hires to 7/8s and below on the terminal (mostly for opportunities for BUEs, but also historically the success rate is better for them), and instituting some sort of limit on who can jump how many levels based on experience, time in the agency, current specialty etc. Having everyone and their uncle trying to go immediately to those 11/12 level facilites from the lower level places seems to be putting a damper on the mid level facilites being able to get people out. This way you are creating a pipeline for talent and a path for career planning, and fixing the staffing at the mid level facilites. Want to jump from Beaumont to dolla dolla bill TRACON? Get some radar somewhere first.

That said, I don't know about you guys but I got told early on in my career by more than one old timer to plan for 2 or 3 moves in my career to get where I want to be. Seems to be holding true for me so far. Again you aren't going to make everyone happy all the time and the needs of the NAS come before the instant gratification of everyone's desires to get that paper or be near grandma or thier bestie unfortunately. Sucks but that's life, they could do better at making it suck less though.
 
CaptainObvious said:
That must be why my last facility had constant ERRs to places they wanted to go, and was seen as a training facility. Ran with 13-14 CPCs with no OT. Bring about NCEPT, a 22 staffing number, and no releases for 18 months, aside from 6 hardships and 2 resignations. That really sounds like moving much more often.

I guess unless you want to count the 4 additional people that bid and got deviated in FLM positions just to leave.
Click to expand...

Yeah that sucks and some facilities have gotten a worse deal but the numbers are the numbers, there's been a massive increase in movement. Also, it sounds like 10 people left. Them circumnavigating is also not some contrary statement
 
Nhstadt said:
Let me add more explosive essay diarrhea to yours.

You missed a couple key points I made. Combining the the two processes as far as the agency determining agency needs and distribution of that list in a specific order, so BUEs get first stab at what's available, any new hires then pick from the same list and get what's left and offering a limited number of new hires choice of any facility with less than 100 percent staffing, the rest use the same system currently in place for them. Want better choice of facility out of the academy? Cool. Suck less, and the needs of CPCs still come first in that situation. No you can't do it on a continuous rolling basis, and I accept your point of bimonthly meetings overloading the system. Quartley, whatever they are doing now,doesnt matter ( I'm where I want to be after fighting the fucky system haven't been paying much attention to ncept for the last 18 months since I got my ERR accepted).

No, you are not going to be able to make everyone happy all the time, and it's still imperfect, but that sounds better than what they are doing now, which seems scattershot at times and sometimes causes cpcs to miss opportunities,or delay them significantly.

I forgot to add I am also in favor of limiting new hires to 7/8s and below on the terminal (mostly for opportunities for BUEs, but also historically the success rate is better for them), and instituting some sort of limit on who can jump how many levels based on experience, time in the agency, current specialty etc. Having everyone and their uncle trying to go immediately to those 11/12 level facilites from the lower level places seems to be putting a damper on the mid level facilites being able to get people out. This way you are creating a pipeline for talent and a path for career planning, and fixing the staffing at the mid level facilites. Want to jump from Beaumont to dolla dolla bill TRACON? Get some radar somewhere first.

That said, I don't know about you guys but I got told early on in my career by more than one old timer to plan for 2 or 3 moves in my career to get where I want to be. Seems to be holding true for me so far. Again you aren't going to make everyone happy all the time and the needs of the NAS come before the instant gratification of everyone's desires to get that paper or be near grandma or thier bestie unfortunately. Sucks but that's life, they could do better at making it suck less though.
Click to expand...

Not for nothing but other than limiting NCEPT level jumps, which is something you would get massive pushback on, it sounds pretty close to the current system to me except you're offering new hires every facility under 100% is that correct?
 
Maintainvfr said:
Not for nothing but other than limiting NCEPT level jumps, which is something you would get massive pushback on, it sounds pretty close to the current system to me except you're offering new hires every facility under 100% is that correct?
Click to expand...


So long as the finish in the top portion of their class and it's below an 8 ya. Finish bottom half of class tough tits you get what the FAA needs most. You'd eliminate a lot of check out and go situations with that I think, along with a level cap of some sort forcing people to look at the mid level places instead of jumping riggt to the top, making some upward mobility for those at hard to staff mid level places.

Also it seems from what I'm seeing there's some disconnect between the ncept priority placement spreadsheet and the lists the acad puts out to new hires, it seems pretty common sense if that was all compiled together, and quarterly cpcs get a chance to ERR, then the scraps go to the academy to fill you'd have better results and make more opportunities for cpcs to get first crack ar say a mid level place near home or whatever vs taking whatever you can get to get out of whatever hell hole you are stuck in.

That's all aside from the myriad of rules there should be like penalties for declining ERRs you submitted, time at facility before ERRing etc. I think may be helpful but aren't really pertinent to my original comment.

The whole system is jacked on a details level, although I don't think the whole thing should be tossed out just tweeked to make it work better. So ya, similar to what they are doing now.
 

Similar threads

GulfCharlie
In the interest of National Security
7 8 9
Replies
165
Views
11K
accskp
A
C
Fixing NCEPT/academy placement
2 3 4
Replies
78
Views
11K
SquawkHijack
SquawkHijack
A
ATSA 2024 Accurate Prep - JobTestPrep Expert Q&A
Replies
0
Views
735
Arbel_JTP
A
O
Error in placement
Replies
6
Views
929
Luckyrun
L
L
FAA Reauth is Passed
3 4 5
Replies
98
Views
14K
Logical_Mongoose
Logical_Mongoose
Back
Top Bottom