Originally Posted by
Lewbronski
My son made more than me (per month) during his software engineering internship at a startup last year than I make as a SWA FO. His 19-year old girlfriend, interning for the company behind a well-known app, made significantly more than him. His buddies who interned with finance companies made about as much per month as junior line-flying captains at SWA (esp when considering perks).
Remember, interns are usually kids who haven’t even graduated from college yet. In years gone by, and still in some industries, interns worked for free. Now, interns in certain careers earn more than experienced pilots. Something to think about.
The world is changing for a lot of reasons: globalization, technology, corporatization, the decline of organized labor, etc.
Whatever the reason, the glory days of this profession are gone. Concessions during the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s all helped to bid adieux to the days of Catch Me If You Can. We have never come close to recovering. Accepting concessions now will only resume the decline in this profession and perhaps put a nail in the coffin that automation and artificial intelligence will one day probably drive home.
This is all correct. I have a friend and his college aged son has an acquaintance who did some kind of internship with Facebook and when I heard what this person was paid I almost fell over. Now admittedly, the person was highly qualified, great education from a school like MIT or Cal Tech or something like that, but still, I couldn't believe what this 19 or 20 year old was earning. We're talking like over six figures for a few months at Facebook, and I think it included housing and other perks.
Yes, technology will come for us all one day. But not until most of us have finished our careers. But it is inevitable. Like many jobs in the past, flying will eventually be more automated, initially single pilot with a ground-based monitor and then possibly fully automated. We'll see it first in package deliveries with drones and then short-haul freight with larger drones.
When Amazon announced a few years back that they planned to use drones to deliver packages I chuckled. I'm no longer laughing and wonder when this will be happening regularly. I digress.