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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

tracingwoodgrains.com

301–310 of 724 posts

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#301

I'm fairly certain this was an example of overfitting and Freedman's Paradox, not deliberate cheating. Let's say you have a completely random data set. You generate a bunch of random variables x1 through xn and a random dependent variable y. Then you poke around and see whether any of the x variables look like they might predict y, so you pick those variables and try to build a model on them. What you end up with is…

> I'm fairly certain this was an example of overfitting and Freedman's Paradox, not deliberate cheating.

Buddy if someone tells you the answers to a multiple choice exam and you use them, then you've deliberately cheated. That's all there is to it.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#302

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…

Looks like you've been getting downvoted, but I think you raise perfectly valid points -- and I say this as a proponent of DEI, but not of quotas (or this type of population matching).

I believe that the best solutions occur when we try to address root causes -- sincerely attempt to address them. The problem is that even in doing that, you often have to introduce inequality into the system. For example, mortality rates for black females giving birth are multiples higher than white females. To address this will likely mean spending more money on black female health research. The question is where is the line. Is prenatal spending inequality OK? Is early childhood development inequality of spending OK? What about magnet HS? What about elite colleges? What about entry level jobs? Executive positions? Jail sentencing? Cancer research? Etc...

The other thing we can do is simply say, "This is too much. Lets just assume race doesn't exist." This is almost tempting, except outside of government policy race is such a big factor in how people are treated in life -- it seems like we're just punting on a problem because its hard.

I think when we as humans can say, "Hmm... there is someting impacting this subset of humans that seems like it shouldn't. I'm OK overindexing on it." then we will make progress. But I think while we view things as "this is less good for me personally" it will always be contentious.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#303
post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

I probably read the same thing, the most galling to me wasn't the failure rate it was that once you've failed you can never reapply.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#304
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:…

> left software engineering to become a paramedic around 2012 after experiencing misogyny Said who? Maybe she wasn't a good developer or a teammate, how do you know? Did you talk to her ex-coworkers?

You’re exhibiting all the behaviours that push women out of Software Engineering right in this post.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#305
post #89
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind reviews (and even interviews) are great ways of making hiring more fair. They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. That's the E and I part. The entire premise is that certain groups require special support (fair - e.g.: blind people, wheel chair users), and have been historically excluded because…

> They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI. > DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people…

Your entire argument is the No True Scotsman fallacy, so it's rather ironic for you to accuse others of it.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#307
post #298

> The FAA investigated, clearing the NBCFAE and Snow of doing anything wrong in an internal investigation Ah yes, we carefully investigated ourselves and we have not found anything wrong. Thank you for your concern. > Our organization, he said, “wasn’t for Caucasians, it wasn’t for, you know, the white male, it wasn’t for an alien on Mars,” and he confirmed that he provided information “to minimize the competition.”…

Or all the people that you assumed were racist are really just upset about these racist policies.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#308

This is so depressing. This is the sort of DEI effort that gives the rest a bad name. It should never, ever be about hard quotas. It absolutely should be about using some contextual information (factoring the person's school environment in) and challenging assumptions about stereotypes so that you are not deciding who is best on assumptions but on evidence.

> It should never, ever be about hard quotas. And yet, it is. The success of a DEI program is the number of people who are in X category. A homogeneous company is a DEI failure, no?

I'll counter this with my experience.

I was a technology consultant to the HR department at a large tech company. They were bringing in some new technologies for recruiting and hiring. Their main objective as to make sure they could post their job openings to affinity outlets frequented by candidates across various backgrounds, places of origin, and racial communities.

It's akin to saying "I want to hire new college graduates, so I'll post a job opening to a job board targeting new college graduates".

Beyond that I was not aware of any quotas that were built into their assessment funnels. On that premise alone, I think the DEI initiative was addressing a reasonable objective.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#309
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.

What's a better word?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants Which involved doingwhat exactly?

In our case, the recruitment team started by only headhunting target candidates. Once we exhausted that pool, they would headhunt any candidate. Just for clarity, this was for a publicly posted job position, so non-target candidates were able to, and did, put in applications. They were assessed the same way target candidates were.

So you started out your hiring practices focused solely on one race...and you don't think it's racist?
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