re: staff
It has been obvious for years. It took me about 2 years to get cynical and then 10 years to get fully Jack of the place. Reading JH's comments, he sees that ATC is a 5 year gig. Those of us on top increment are just costing them money and holding seats that those they can pay 50% to do similar functions are slated for.
Mt tip is that in 20 years, ATC will be staffed at maybe 30% of what it is now and all routes will be speed and level specific with all the calculations done by a computer for sector movements and separation talking directly via CPDLC to the Avionics. In High level Enroute land, it is pretty much this way already.