As someone who has left twice, I'll have a go. However, the reasons are going to vary and will be highly subjective. There are some things that are universal, though. Such as:
- The nature of the job. Like ANY job, eventually it is pretty boring. It's a great job, and sometimes you need reminding of that, but it's a job. AsA doesn't really excel at keeping people interested. In fact, for a long time, it has pursued the idea that a controller just sits in one chair, doing the same task/s, for ever. It was identified by one of my managers 10 years ago that he thought the biggest challenge AsA faced was staff retention because "we hire a bunch of smart people, teach them a complex task, then expect them to do that same thing for 35 years. Not going to happen." This is a biggy- people just get bored. Instead of moving them around, AsA are hell-bent on doing the opposite. Why? Because it costs more to re-train people over and over. Which leads me to....
-Obsession with costs/pretending AsA is a business.
Whilst this was necessary in order to remove public-service type waste and inefficiency when oz was emerging from those old 70s public-service practices, and was easy to do when there was lots of fat, but after years of 'trimming' the managers (who's remuneration relies on continual reductions) just start getting silly. Which leads to......
-Working OT. Management realised (like in many industries) that it's actually cheaper to run at 80% (give or take) of staff compliment, then work your 80% harder. Whilst this results in much larger pay packets, it starts to wear you down. There's nothing like securing a rare weekend off to be rung
9 times by work asking you to come in and plug the holes. There are many facets to this (such as- we do it to ourselves) but you get the drift.
-There is an enormous "us and them" culture in AsA. The controllers, and everyone else. It would seem that anyone who is not a controller views controllers as over-paid prima donas, and relish the opportunity to take them down a peg a two. This culture is tangible from the moment you start there, and is most evident in the gulf between management and controllers.
-The lying. Eventually, it WILL happen to you. "we'd just like you to do this job for 6 months, then you can do that"... "I dont remember saying that/that guy was not authorised to promise you that, so we can't/the needs of the business have changed....etc.etc". The worst is the blatant disregard of industrial agreements. I could go on for hours, but the gist is that AsA only considers an agreement binding if it favours them. This may seem an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not. Examples can be found publicly, such as at the IRC. Such as when AsA hires a controller on a contract in order to get around the award, despite there being an agreement (a binding agreement- the award) saying that "NO controllers shall be hired on contracts outside the award". The professional liars who work for AsA stand in front of the commissioner and say "we interpret that as meaning we can hire controllers on contract". I kid you not. This is just an example of that sort of practice, but it's part of the very management culture. The worst of it is when airspace closures happen due to staff shortages, and AsA will PUBLICLY denounce the controllers as causing the shortages/industrial action/lazy renegades etc etc. It's pretty hard to swallow. The controllers do huge amounts of OT to keep the place open, and that's how they spin it.
-The managers. Did I mention that already? The man-management at AsA is appalling. That is often due to some managers having never managed anything/worked at AsA their whole lives (and thus, believe the AsA culture is how things are done everywhere)/total sociopaths/worked at AsA long enough to have forgotten any other way of doing things/coming from a pool of people who almost ALL could do the job have to prove themselves something a little
morethan the next guy. The satisfying thing is seeing the same practices applied to
them that they use on others, at some point in their careers. It happens over and over. If you want an example of how out of touch the upper management is with the coal-face controller....Some years back, the CEO, in his column in the January edition of the monthly magazine opens with "I'd like to welcome you all back from your holidays, and trust that you are refreshed and ready for the challenges of the year ahead.......". WTF? The controllers, the core of the 'business', work 24/7 and were so short staffed that very,very little leave was available over the christmas/new year period, yet the **** has the temerity to spout that sort of stuff! Then wonders why people are grumpy! Just an example, but a very telling one.
Eventually, there is a straw....
Then, you have the lure of being able to take your skills OS. More money if that appeals to you, or just seeing the world, or broadening your work horizon. There are lots of international options, and as many reasons why people go. I'm just surprised that there aren't more who leave- although, the numbers do seem to be on the rise (and some bods who I never thought would leave, have!). It's just a shame that it is the way it is- it doesn't have to be like that.
ps. it's taken time to write this, but I think it's important that prospectives have some idea about things. You won't truly understand til you are inside yourself. Would I join AsA again, if I had my time over, knowing what I know now? Yes (if only to get the license
).