What has happened to this profession?
Simple: Pay peanuts, get monkeys. But these
current new hires come with earrings, hair-gel, a wonderful "I want it now" attitude, but sadly no Leatherman, limited technical knowledge, ability to do tech quiz's without help and bugger all hours or relevant flying experience.
One option: Bring back DEFO hiring of pilots that can fly, or CX will likely end up as JAFAA leaving smoking holes around the region.
By the time our newer hires worm their way into the Left Seat, they will still sadly have acquired little real experience, such that when faced with an out of the box problem, they have no experience to fall back on. Currently, some of the cadets benefit from being paired with experienced/direct entry FO's, but this safety net won't last long at the current rate of hiring people with little to zero experience.
So what do you get then, two ex cadets, a big bang, a random problem, two blank looks and a mutual "WTF do we do now?" when the problem doesn't have an EICAS/ECAM or paper solution.
Years of making bunks, eating sandwiches and falling asleep on the Jump seat taxi-ing out for take-off aren't much help at that stage.
Cranky old guy rant over.