To be fair, when I was a relatively senior (30%ish) FO, I could bid for and receive some pretty good schedules. So I'll say that it maybe sometimes works okay, if you know how to use it. I've never seen any other PBS system, though.

I agree wholeheartedly that it is not user friendly, which is compounded by poor documentation. Horror stories abound of people not getting what they bid for, but a bigger problem is that a lot of people don't even understand what they bid for!