And that Suprises you.....????...

So getting back to the subject....a buddy of mine wants to leave his job at one of our competing fracs and he has the ATP and a couple type ratings. Would he upgrade sooner?

Upgrade awards are based on:

1) Meeting the minimum FAR qualifications
2) Seniority

There's essentially no subjectivity, discretion, or pre-evaluation involved, if you have the aeronautical experience and the awards reach your seniority, you get it.

Airlines have historically required FO's to get LOR's or evals from CA's who recommend them for upgrades but I doubt many regionals bother enforcing that these days.

That really surprises me, as SkyWest honestly does a great job at teaching VNAV and the automation on the 175. I went to the 175 as a 6 year CRJ CA, and really enjoyed the training experience.

I told to expect about a year to year and a half.

I told to expect about a year to year and a half based on current movement

Your assuming timetoclimb is accurate and not throwing anecdotal info around. See it all the time. Call your training department, and they likely may not officially comment on any failure info. most corporate lawyers don't like this data released. Perhaps the poster is an instructor and has data? Perhaps a inflated reaction to the comments regarding "its no big deal to upgrade"
Being a Captain is more than flying the airframe. The Captain is the chief admin (FAA regs, FOM, OPSPECS, system expert, Weather expert, thunderstorm expert flyer, etc. If one believes no big deal, then they misunderstand how the FAA looks at the title with the easy upgrade.

I would not expect CRJ people to have trouble. Anyone who has managed the VNAV by hand on the CRJ would be highly motivated to learn how to automate it. The CRJ was a lot more fun to fly before RNAV arrivals became a thing.

Career Bro people transitioning to jets, some did fine but others didn't even graduate. What we do is not always easy, and it's harder at age 50+ after having not done anything new for 25 years.

No kidding! I had trouble learning how to be a retiree, and needed extra training from a Line Check Sloth.

1. I am not in the training department.
2. This is what I heard word of mouth but I've heard it more than once & from guys that seem to be well informed.
3. Anecdotally, the only guy to pink slip in my class was a long time bro then crj captain. It was a little mess up managing the automation that caused an altitude bust, not an egregious error.