Man, so much talk about weak FO's in the system these days at the Regional level. When I was a check airman at the regional level in the mid 2000's, almost all of our new hires were 250-500 hour pilots with brand new Multi Commercial tickets in hand with the absolute minimum multi time/Instrument time possible. They were universally in over their heads and absolutely worthless as FO's during initial IOE (understandably), but eventually got the hang of it over time - most new hires needing somewhere in the vicinity of 50 to 70 hours to complete IOE, with some needing over 100 hours. With that said, almost all of them eventually became very good to excellent pilots/crew members, and moved on to became good to excellent captains. But boy, oh boy, our line captains were quasi-IOE pilots with most of those FO's during their first year on the job.

By the time these FO's (industry wide) - who often have such a steep learning curve early on - become captains, almost all have become quite good at what they do, and are MORE than capable of being excellent new hire FO's at any major airline, and will likely eventually go on to become excellent captains at that level too.

I hate to judge a new or inexperienced pilot's future potential early on when he or she is still relatively wet behind the ears.

The truly poor ones have many many opportunities to wash out in their career at the regional level. They will likely never see a major airline flight deck no matter which airline it is.