Yes, we have competent and incomptent pilots in both seats. The left seat guys get a little more pressure to measure up but the right hand seat can skate along being sub par until they upgrade. I flew with a lot of pilots in both seats that were worthless but a lot that also showed me better ways of getting the job done from both seats. We hired very qualified pilots at our airline so we learned from each other. I felt very fortunate to get hired from a 4 engine jet to my first airline job with 5500 hrs, mostly PIC. AF doesn't require much experience to get hired so their FO's obviously are in the learning stage of their career. Most of their flying is on autopilot so I can see the difficulty AF had flying their aircraft at night with no autopilot and faulty AS.
Things aren't going to change so the next generation will be interesting.