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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#281

Post by dingnuts »

armitron wrote: post #263
dingnuts wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if this question is in good faith, you can read about this ideology by looking up Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X Kendi, who are experts on the pro-DEI academic theory that answers your question. It seems that the American voter disagrees with Kendi et al > The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present disc…

This is not a serious answer. IMO the fairest but not necessarily most accurate characterization for Ibram X. Kendi would be charlatan (others could say he's deliberately inducing racial hatred and stoking division). Additionally, according to recent news Boston University fired him and closed down his "antiracist research" center.

He's an academic with multiple publications in the field. How am I, a lay person, supposed to tell if he's a charlatan? He certainly takes himself seriously and has a successful academic career.

Any example could be a false Scotsman. If my example is bad, please provide some that are better. I tried to educate myself on this five years ago and I looked up the people who were recommended to me by DEI practitioners. At the time, Kendi and DiAngelo were held up as icons of the movement.

In American public school twenty years ago we also read Why Do All The Black Kids Sit Together In The Cafeteria. That would also be a good place to start learning about this ideology. Or is that book written by a charlatan, too?

This kind of goalpost moving is as predictable as it is disappointing. You cannot argue with an ideology if it can't be defined, so the practitioners of this one -- descended from Deconstructionism so no wonder they are happy to play word games -- won't allow opponents to define the ideology in the first place!

Well good job, folks, because the reaction to this movement is MAGA.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#282

Post by programjames »

adamrezich wrote: post #234
gr3ml1n wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The part that always made this obviously insane for any systems-thinking person is as follows: For the sake of the argument, assume that X, Y, and Z all have ~100% equal preference for positions A, B, and C at a given company or organization, and assume that it is merely “historical/institutional discrimination” that has led to X, Y, and Z percentages of A, B, and C failing to match X, Y, and Z population percentages…

This is where the "critical mass" argument comes in: you (allegedly) need people who superficially look like you in the roles to inspire you to learn the skills needed for that position. Thus, working to correct poor education due to systemic racism isn't enough, you need to also temporarily fill role-model positions with less-qualified candidates.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#283

Post by UberFly »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #271
hitekker wrote: post #196

For those curious, you can try the FAA's air traffic controller test for yourself here: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/ After trying it, I recommend reading the article for yourself.

Wow, how can anyone take that test and defend FAA hiring practices. This is dystopia level nonsense

Unfortunately this dystopia level nonsense has infected a lot lately and I'm glad it's finally getting some sunshine applied to it.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#284

Post by fallingknife »

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…

Yeah nobody is arguing it because even the FAA admits it's true. When you talk about a "tradeoff" between quality and diversity that is an admission that DEI lowers quality.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#285

Post by CSMastermind »

sschueller wrote: post #62

I don't have a problem with hiring qualified people instead of meeting quotas but the fact that the ones pushing this are them selves the most unqualified people is just beyond me.

I'm not sure about most unqualified but I will say that it's people the bubble who are most impacted by these policies.

The elite are getting hired no matter what. It's the average person who was just barely above the bar that gets bumped to make room for a quota based hire that really feels the impact.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#286

Post by mhalle »

Some important points that this article glosses over.

The FAA Academy where all flight controllers are trained is way over-subscribed. Recruiting policies aside, I can find no evidence that the FAA wasn't training as many controllers as it could through its academy. This fact remained true through the Trump 1 administration into the Biden admin, except for COVID. The pandemic was understandably a huge disruption, as were government shutdowns.

We can know this from the FAA Controller Staffing reports from 2019 (Trump 1 before the pandemic but after Obama) and 2024 (Biden). The 2024 report has been scrubbed from the FAA website when I last checked, but is available through the wayback machine:

2019: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_staf...

2024: https://web.archive.org/web/20241225184848/https://www.faa.g...

There appears to be no urgency in Trump 1 about this issue in the report. Things changed in 2023 when an external safety report revealed the staffing problem and suggested improvements.

https://www.faa.gov/NAS_safety_review_team_report.pdf

As a result, hiring almost doubled between 2010 and 2024, with 1800 controllers hired in the last year. More importantly, the FAA followed the report recommendation to use CTI schools as additional academies:

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/10/amid-hiring-surge-...

It seems like the Biden administration took real action to address a problem that had been unfortunately present and unacknowledged for many years.

See a chatgpt analysis comparing the two reports here: https://chatgpt.com/share/679eb87f-c4fc-800a-a883-3b7f79e06d...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#287

Post by fallingknife »

jquery wrote: post #237
coderc wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide an example of what you would consider a good implementation of DEI efforts, as opposed to a "botched" one?

For me, the best DEI successes are the ones that reduce bias without relying on clumsy quotas. Blind auditions in orchestras led to a big jump in women getting hired. Intel’s push to fund scholarships and partner with HBCUs broadened their pipeline in a real way. And groups like Code2040 connect Black and Latino engineers with mentors and jobs, targeting root causes instead of surface-level fixes.

Hilarious that you mentioned the blind auditions in orchestras because now the DEI goons want to get rid of them! They say it hasn't got enough minorities in. Absolute proof that these people care only about race and don't give a damn about fairness. Source https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#288

Post by throwaway-blaze »

legitster wrote: post #277
oremolten wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please elaborate how DEI is not discrimination? Is hiring based on someone's RACE ever not discrimination?

DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce. There's nothing that implies exclusion unless you are intentionally bad faithing the meaning. Imagine the FAA was only attending job fairs in white parts of the country. Then they decide to attend job fairs in more diverse parts of the country. No one would suddenly decide they were prejudiced against white people! There's a difference between…

The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination in the workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to use it for more forceful discrimination.

It would serve those who truly just want to make sure our society all starts from the same starting line to come up with a new term, one that encompasses meritocracy as the goal along with generous helping hands along the way (training programs, tutoring programs, outside-the-class mentorship opportunities). And to focus on helping lower _class and income_ folks get a leg up, not on including or excluding people by characteristics that are a circumstance of birth (skin color).

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#289

Post by dgfitz »

stackskipton wrote: post #274
clutchdude wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID would likely have a bigger hand in the current issues than mistakes from 10-15 years ago though. I found it somewhat puzzling we discuss ATC staffing and don't mention it: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-transport/2024-0... > When training at the academy resumed in July 2020, after the four-month shutdown, class sizes were cut in half to meet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social d…

Yep, COVID didn't help either. However, I'll note that hiring != actual ATC controllers because drop/fail rate which for some insane reason is so hard to find.

I'll never find it, but a few days ago someone here posted an anecdotal story that class sizes were between 10-20 and failure/drop rate was ~50%.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#290

Post by fallingknife »

BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #86
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 an external (not US) PoV, it might also be that DEI was too much of a sacred cow before to call a spade a spade.

From an internal US pov, yes you are correct that's exactly what the culture is here. Call out the obviously lowered standards for women and minority candidates and expect severe consequences to your career.
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