Divert? Heck I just divert as soon as I hear "... Stand by for holding instructions." never have to worry about bingo fuel.

I'm on the corporate side now but, from what I gather, some of the pilots who fail get sort of 'deer in the headlights' during initial upgrade.

Its not that they can't perform, they just don't perform when they are being intimidated. I heard of a few outfits that only have one week of ground and four sims and they call this upgrade training. Upgrade failures between 50 - 75 % at these places so its plausible that these failures are intentional or minimal effort is put forth to ensure these pilots are stuck. This would also be very difficult to prove as there are a myriad of ways in which one can fail.

Its easy to see how a pilot that is accustomed to taking their time and doing things right would not respond well to being rushed through the upgrade cycle. Its not for lack of skills and not always for lack of knowledge in my opinion.

One week and 4 sims should be enough for upgrade, if you're already flying the airplane. Since everybody pretty much gets a PIC type as a new-hire these days, all you need to do is learn to land from the left seat and bone up on some GOM/FOM stuff. Frankly you can easily totally prepare yourself while flying the line (CA's are usually happy to discuss it), so all you need to learn is landing from the left seat. Should be very similar to recurrent AQP...

What is it at the major then?

As I understand it, its night and day difference which makes no sense at all unless some of the lower tier regionals deliberately do the minimum.

at my previous outfit, the training department in a certain fleet was very much "out to get" people. The oral exams were extremely difficult and the checkride in the sims were all over the place. Some bitter pilots they let do checkrides were loving their newfound power

I think there’s more to it than that. I have about 400hrs SIC and I think I would need to increase my decision making skills and “thinking ahead of the airplane” before I’d consider upgrading. Plus all the added responsibility.

I was assuming a reasonable amount of. 121 sic, the legal min is 1000. But 2500 is more realistic.

I have a really good decision making model I used during upgrade training and apply it to the line.

Is it safe?
Is it legal?
Is it efficient?
Can I backup my decision?
Did I use all available resources? ATC, DX, my FO etc.

First trip off OE I had to divert. Figures.

Come to endeavor. Realistic is 1000

Good grief, what are you guys flying that you need to listen to marker beacons? That's way too much work for me.