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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#111

Post by MisterTea »

itronitron wrote: post #82
wand3r wrote: post #3

> I know, I know. The evidence is unambiguous that the bar was lowered, deliberately, over many years and with direct knowledge. The evidence is unambiguous that a cheating scandal occurred. The whole thing is as explosive as any I’ve seen, and it touches on a lot of long-running frustrations. This is likely the most common complaint about DEI, it provides grounds for race based discrimination and lowers the bar. I a…

It's a myth that the bar is lowered for DEI hires.

And you are backing this claim up with what exactly?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#112

Post by s3r3nity »

perching_aix wrote: post #109
s3r3nity wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cheating element is only _part_ of it, and the dominant regime at the time downplayed / ignored the DEI elements because that was supported by their ideology...like a sacred cow. Litigating "disparate impact" cases across any category became a successful attack vector against capitalist structures, and supported by Democratic leadership. This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but rather exposin…

> This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but rather exposing the rest of the iceberg that was otherwise concealed. Our Blessed Homeland vs. Their Barbarous Wastes

Their Blessed Homeland vs. Our Barbarous Wastes

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#113

Post by Manuel_D »

albedoa wrote: post #78
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…

> You purposely decided to omit the fact that the "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way applicants were evaluated Man, you are now losing audiences that are sympathetic to your position. Are you accusing Manuel_D of edit-sniping you? Or are you claiming that the comment as it is currently written omits the above fact?

For transparency, yes, I did remove that first sentence a few minutes after posting (but before the reply was posted). I felt it was too harsh in tone. I don't remember changing "biological" to "bigraphical"

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#114

Post by subpixel »

scott_w wrote: post #23
ars wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opt…

> That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time

On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably.

Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective organizations will change.

Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the result of a process and not the start of one.

I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context, but I disagree that societal attitudes must change more than they already are changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject discrimination on the basis of race and background. That is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in place that discriminate against qualified applicants.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#115

Post by legitster »

andsoitis wrote: post #101
legitster wrote: post #83

This is a fascinating read, but the thing that bugs me about this whole affair is that when this came to light many years ago it was treated as a cheating and recruitment scandal. But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue. Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be…

> then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, I don't know that it is limited to, or even most prevalent, in state-sponsored propaganda. Private individuals, media, etc. do this too without any state sponsorship.

Sure, I wasn't even insinuating that this was state-sponsored, just highlighting that it's known to be a super effective way to manipulate stories.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#116

Post by throwaway173738 »

thot_experiment wrote: post #106
iamleppert wrote: post #97

Instead of bickering over who gets a job that fundamentally should be automated by now, they should focus on developing technology that doesn't rely on people. Or at least uses automation for 95% of the job and delegates to a person only when rare exceptions arise. ATC is ripe for disruption from AI, and now that we have LLMs and speech models on par with human ability, its a short walk in the park to imagine a fully…

You think that ATC could be automated with the tools we have today?! I knew I'd get some wild takes in the comments but this one is absolutely next level. And I'm an AI maximalist!!

Yeah my biggest concern with any kind of automation is handling and recognizing edge cases. There are already manual systems like flight levels and patterns for traffic management. But what happens if one plane starts deviating because of something unexpected? Then you have to respond to a specific situation and the reason for deviating matters quite a lot. Think about all the ways your car can break down.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#117

Post by perching_aix »

s3r3nity wrote: post #112
perching_aix wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but rather exposing the rest of the iceberg that was otherwise concealed. Our Blessed Homeland vs. Their Barbarous Wastes

Their Blessed Homeland vs. Our Barbarous Wastes

[flagged]

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#118

Post by boohoo123 »

There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring practices that no one seems to notice. Remove all demographic questions from the application. Hide the name and gender and attach a applicant ID. It's as easy as that. Every job should be looking for the most qualified individual regardless of race, nationality, religion, and sex. Demographics in the application are a recipe for disaster on both sides of the isle.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#119

Post by 0xB31B1B »

empath75 wrote: post #107
iamleppert wrote: post #97

Instead of bickering over who gets a job that fundamentally should be automated by now, they should focus on developing technology that doesn't rely on people. Or at least uses automation for 95% of the job and delegates to a person only when rare exceptions arise. ATC is ripe for disruption from AI, and now that we have LLMs and speech models on par with human ability, its a short walk in the park to imagine a fully…

Everything is heavily automated right now up to and including autopilot landings. The people are in the loop to cover the gaps where automation doesn't exist or when it fails. Everything is so tightly scheduled at airports now that any kind of failure in automation would pretty rapidly lead to catastrophic outcomes if humans weren't constantly involved in decision making. Even if you just had humans on "stand by" it…

Sort of. There’s like 5 conditions of automation commercial planes can be in. The automation mostly functions to make the pilots workload manageable, not to make their workload non existent. Commercial flights used to have a crew of 3, captain, first officer and flight engineer. The automation has reduced the workload to eliminate the flight engineer role and make flights operable by 2 people.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#120

Post by Manuel_D »

theossuary wrote: post #74
LightHugger wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "eliminated the privilege of" some kind of dogwhistle for being racist against white people? You're intentionally using circuitous language but that appears to be the message. People are individual human beings, discrimination on the basis of skin color is evil. Not sure why this is so hard to understand for some people.

[flagged]

But "having their privilege taken away" is a vastly different thing than "answers to a multiple choice test are leaked to an ethnic affinity group".

Furthermore, this also negatives impacted Latin and Asian people. And also Black people that weren't part of the aforementioned affinity group.

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