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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#21

Post by [deleted] »

scott_w wrote: post #11
thaumasiotes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s an example of something that I’d seen rumblings of in left leaning media: that DEI was being implemented in the laziest and stupidest possible ways That's not news; it's been true for several decades. There isn't another legal way to do it. The least harmful thing you can do, assuming you need to meet hiring quotas, is to specify that you have X slots for whites and Y slots for nonwhites, and then hire by meri…

You fell into the instant trap I was talking about by equating DEI to “hiring quotas.” That’s a lazy and stupid approach to the problem of increasing opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The solution is, unfortunately, much more difficult and requires work across society to achieve it.

[deleted]

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#22

Post by mik3y »

spectraldrift wrote: post #5

The article presents a dramatic narrative that implies the FAA deliberately lowered its hiring standards by replacing the traditional system with a biographical questionnaire. It’s clear from the account that many qualified CTI graduates (note: CTI schools are third parties) were unfairly filtered out from the applicant pool, and there’s documented evidence of a cheating scandal that casts further doubt on the proces…

A very well-written and persuasive critique, thank you for it.

(And god I hope you’re not a state-of-the-art summarization LLM.)

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#23

Post by scott_w »

ars wrote: post #15
scott_w wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think DEI itself provides the grounds. It’s simply a case of DEI either being implemented in a lazy or stupid way to tick boxes OR it being used as cover by a small number of activists to engage in discrimination of their own. If DEI didn’t exist, the above things would still happen, just for a different reason and possibly different group of activists.

How is this not DEI? This was a deliberate and conscious attempt to create a test that would pass DEI candidates at higher rates, with question that had nothing to do with the actual needed skills. And they did it because they were pressured to "increase diversity".

As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time. It’s things like outreach, financial support, changing societal attitudes. Instead of that, they took the lazy option and just threw out white candidates from the pipeline. I also include “setting hiring targets” as a lazy and stupid way of “achieving DEI,” just for clarity.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#24

Post by Manuel_D »

motorest wrote: post #19
navtoj wrote: post #4

wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues

> wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues I don't agree. You're reacting to a one-sided, very partial critique of a policy change that no longer benefitted a specific group and the only tradeoff was a hypothetical and subjective drop of the hiring bar. This complain can also be equally dismissed as members of the privileged group complaining over the loss of privilege. The artic…

The undisputed facts at hand are:

* The FAA introduced a bigraphical questionnaire which screened out 90% of applicants.

* The answers to this questionnaire were distributed to members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.

* Members were explicitly told not to distribute the answers to other people, to reduce competition for admission.

This is as bad a scandal as though the answers to the SAT were leaked.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#25

Post by scott_w »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #17
scott_w wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fell into the instant trap I was talking about by equating DEI to “hiring quotas.” That’s a lazy and stupid approach to the problem of increasing opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The solution is, unfortunately, much more difficult and requires work across society to achieve it.

You're imagining that there's ever been a meaning of DEI other than quotas, but there hasn't. That's the way it began and the only thing it's ever done or wanted.

Then maybe you should see how it’s done in other countries and companies. I’ve worked on hiring and we’ve never once lowered our standards just to get in a black candidate. What I’ve seen done is conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants, changing language to increase applications from women, blind reviews where you can’t see the name or details of the applicant (to minimise subconscious bias).

All of these actually happen and, to a greater or lesser extent, do help without discriminating against white applicants. How do I know? I ended up only hiring two white men in that particular round!

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#26

Post by motorest »

Manuel_D wrote: post #24
motorest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues I don't agree. You're reacting to a one-sided, very partial critique of a policy change that no longer benefitted a specific group and the only tradeoff was a hypothetical and subjective drop of the hiring bar. This complain can also be equally dismissed as members of the privileged group complaining over the loss of privilege. The artic…

The undisputed facts at hand are: * The FAA introduced a bigraphical questionnaire which screened out 90% of applicants. * The answers to this questionnaire were distributed to members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees. * Members were explicitly told not to distribute the answers to other people, to reduce competition for admission. This is as bad a scandal as though the answers to the SAT…

> I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are:

This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e., anyone outside of the privileged group. At best you're trying to dismiss the sheer existence of such an evaluation process by putting up strawmen over the implementation of this evaluation.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#27

Post by scott_w »

ars wrote: post #16
scott_w wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fell into the instant trap I was talking about by equating DEI to “hiring quotas.” That’s a lazy and stupid approach to the problem of increasing opportunities for people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The solution is, unfortunately, much more difficult and requires work across society to achieve it.

In theory sure, in practice DEI = hiring quotas. The definition you want DEI to have: Extra training for DEI students, does not exist in the real world. And if it did no one is complaining about it. > That’s a lazy and stupid approach Exactly. Which is why DEI has becomes such a negative term. You want a different definition, but that's simply not how it's used.

To avoid repeating myself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302

> Exactly. Which is why DEI has becomes such a negative term. You want a different definition, but that's simply not how it's used.

No, the reason has been the refusal of people in positions of power to engage thoughtfully with the genuine criticism.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#28

Post by gundmc »

spectraldrift wrote: post #5

The article presents a dramatic narrative that implies the FAA deliberately lowered its hiring standards by replacing the traditional system with a biographical questionnaire. It’s clear from the account that many qualified CTI graduates (note: CTI schools are third parties) were unfairly filtered out from the applicant pool, and there’s documented evidence of a cheating scandal that casts further doubt on the proces…

It's less about lowering standards and more about artificially disqualifying thousands of qualified candidates based on their race.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#29

Post by cakealert »

motorest wrote: post #26
Manuel_D wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The undisputed facts at hand are: * The FAA introduced a bigraphical questionnaire which screened out 90% of applicants. * The answers to this questionnaire were distributed to members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees. * Members were explicitly told not to distribute the answers to other people, to reduce competition for admission. This is as bad a scandal as though the answers to the SAT…

> I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are: This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e., anyone outside of th…

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#30

Post by motorest »

cakealert wrote: post #29
motorest wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are: This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e., anyone outside of th…

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