interfered with by the ATC mafia
Never a truer word spoken. The reason the assistants always got a raw deal was simply because those deciding how there trade was structured, gave a very good impression of being interested in one side of the trade only. The failed JATCC people bumped up the promotion list proved that - And yes I know that stopped a long time ago.
The fast tracking debacle would border on the criminal if had not been so funny. Any fool could see there were never going to be enough fast tracker assistants to man towers so guess who got lumbered again. Once installed in a tower, a constant complaint was "Hang on I want to go down the Ops path"
Ops then suffered because feasibly and I will lay money on it happening your new SNCO i/c Ops could have spent his life in a tower, and not learning his craft in an ops room. Plain daft IMHO.