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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#221

Post by account42 »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
scott_w wrote: post #6

This is a truly excellent article and shines a light on a real problem and how it affects people in a real way. 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 (though the ire was mostly directed at marketing efforts by corporations). A story of a smaller, not that harmful, example of this laziness and stupidity:…

> that DEI was being implemented in the laziest and stupidest possible ways This is .. certainly something that might be happening, but it's also something that a lot of people are lying about. It's become increasingly difficult to find out what actually happened once it's been filtered through media, social media, activists, and algorithmic propaganda. What happens if every single instance of "DEI overreach" is over…

> What happens if every single instance of "DEI overreach" is overreported, but incidents of actual racism aren't?

DEI is actual racism.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#222

Post by techapple »

PaulHoule wrote: post #161
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…

If I had to blame anything on the Democrats it is this: Valuing competence is one thing. Valuing diversity is another thing. You can have neither, either one, or both. The democrats make a conspicuous show of not valuing competence in addition to making some noises about diversity. Nobody said Barack Obama was an affirmative action case, no, he was one of the greatest politicians of the first quarter-century. On the…

I would more likely say that the qualities that make one popular or wanting to deal with the bullshit of managing Americans disputes are in opposition to the qualities that make one qualified. See: almost every politician that’s not a Democrat. Incompetence is staggeringly bipartisan.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#223

Post by jquery »

gr3ml1n wrote: post #192
ryandrake wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I even know what "DEI" is anymore. Political pundits have turned it into a generic slur, a boogeyman that vaguely means "I have to work with minorities now??" I've always thought it simply meant "drawing from the widest possible candidate funnel, including instead of excluding people who have traditionally been shut out." At least that's how all of my training sessions at work frame it. But, like everyt…

I'll try to assume good faith, but this is the sort of framing often used in the waning days of unpopular ideas. That's not what DEI ever was. It fundamentally came down to evaluating disparate impact and then setting targets based on it. The underlying idea is that if a given pool (in the US, generally national- or state-level statistics) has a racial breakdown like so: 10% X 30% Y 60% Z But your company or organiza…

I think it’s helpful to distinguish between botched DEI efforts and the broader intent behind DEI. Just because certain organizations implement it clumsily or rely on simplistic quota-filling doesn’t mean the entire idea is inherently flawed—any more than a poorly executed “merit-based” system would mean all attempts at measuring merit are invalid. If anything’s really losing credibility right now, it’s the myth of a pure American meritocracy.

At its best, DEI is about recognizing that systemic barriers exist and trying to widen the funnel so more people get a fair shot. That doesn’t have to conflict with a desire for genuinely skilled employees. Of course, there are ham-fisted applications out there (as with any policy), but that doesn’t negate the underlying principles, which aren’t just about numbers—they’re about improving access and opportunity for everyone.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#224

Post by timewizard »

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…

> be extra wary of stories like this being massaged.

I'm wary of all stories. This is Hacker News. Why wouldn't "critical analysis" be the default?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#225

Post by legitster »

bz_bz_bz wrote: post #144
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…

The Brigida lawsuit, from which we get a lot of the documents in the article, was filed in 2016 and has framed this as a DEI discrimination issue from the get-go.

With a grain of salt - any hiring lawsuit by its nature is going to be a discrimination case.

The fact that everyone is really quick to just throw around DEI = discrimination is kind of my point. Even the text of the Brigida lawsuit clearly points out that nobody would have a problem with the FAA increasing minority representation in other ways.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#226

Post by timewizard »

K0balt wrote: post #68

Working effectively in ATC without burnout hanging over your head constantly favours a certain amount of neurodivergence. A certain kind of delight in detail, delight in predictable progression of system. The overload needs to invigorate , not fatigue. This doesn’t make ATC professionals better people. It doesn’t make them smarter. It doesn’t make them superhuman. It makes them better at a certain specific kind of wo…

Not all people are the same.

Their differences make them better suited to some jobs than others.

Neurodiversity is a useless reframing of something exceptionally simple.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#227

Post by stackskipton »

legitster wrote: post #213
hitekker wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a misreading of the article. This scandal was not just "cheating and recruitment" but forcing "Diversity" with a side of "Equity". To quote the facts: > The NBCFAE continued to pressure the FAA to diversify, with its members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push for increased diversity among ATCs. After years of fiddling with the research and years of pressure from the NBCFA…

> How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals? The key part though is that the FAA was worried about the job performance of diverse candidates they brought in. They did not see a trade off between their staffing levels . There are two separate arguments happening: Did changing their application process create less qualified ATC controllers? Maybe! But no one seems to be argui…

The thing I keep looking for is dropout/failure rate. If their change in hiring procedure resulted in higher dropout/failure rate, then yes, this impacting ATC staffing but it would have been slow burn.

ATC staffing is bottlenecked by the training dropout/failure rate. 1000 people a year go in, pretty sizable dropout or fail so you are left with 500. If 700 are retiring, that's -200 overall. At some point, that -200 year over year becomes impactful.

So, if you need more people, you have two options. Increase the class size but obviously that's expensive and makes the problem slightly worse up front as you are pulling qualified people into instructor roles.

Or try to filter out those who will drop/fail in hiring process so they don't occupy class slots. One of the ways FAA had done that is CTI college courses because those graduates had lower drop/fail rate.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#229

Post by clutchdude »

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…

From the article:

> Has this had a long-term impact on aviation safety and air traffic controller shortages? Likely yes.

This was a terrible conclusion. Ask any ATC person what's up with staffing and "COVID training and hiring disruptions" will be in the first few sentences they say.

The fact this article goes on and on without a single mention of the impact COVID has had gives me all the stock I need to place in it.

Some folks may find it hard to believe, but the 1-2 year interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that take years-to-decades to resolve.

Slapping a DEI strawman up and trying to tie it to a tragedy reflects on the changes some seek.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#230

Post by taeric »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #206
taeric wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse, it doesn't prove what it asserts. The assertion is that the quality of hires obviously got impacted. But, not once does it look at performance of hires. This narrative also doesn't expand the look at hiring numbers over the years, where it would be seen that the last 4 years are the only growth years in the organization going back even before this scandal. Nor does it look at any other problems. Sequestration…

Hiring people who are responsible for the safety of people lives on anything but merit is a problem no matter how you frame it. Not only is it racism, it is dangerous.

You are begging the question that they were hired on anything other than merit. Do you have hard evidence that the people that were hired did not pass qualifications?

The main evidence of the scandal is that the recruitment funnel prioritized on things that were bad. And, make no mistake, that was a scandal. It does not, however, even attempt to show that recruitment forced hiring to accept people that lacked merit.

That is, it does show there is a good chance RECRUITING rejected qualified people. But that is not enough to show that HIRING was necessarily lowering the bar.

There is a begging of the question where we assume that they must have. But show the performance numbers! Without those, you don't know.

And again, in context of the current debate, realize that the last 4 years are the only growth years in that agency. Such that the last 4 years are the only ones that made ANY progress on helping understaffed towers.

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