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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

tracingwoodgrains.com

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#361

Post by Khaine »

ryandrake wrote: post #240
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?

I think the vast number of small and medium sized companies who quietly opened their hiring funnel up to a wider audience, would be considered good implementations. Not all companies reached for quotas and other hamfisted efforts that detractors constantly point to.

DEI was the reason GitHub was forced to remove its meritocracy rug. Do you remember that? People questions whether it was a meritocracy based on disparate impact[1].

It has almost never been about widening the size of the funnel, and almost always about putting the thumb on the scales for chosen people.

[1] https://www.creators.com/read/susan-estrich/03/14/whats-wron...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#362

Post by clutchdude »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #337
clutchdude wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> Likely yes. Love the in-depth analysis they use to answer that question...

That is the frustrating part - the article had it's lane and just had to stick in it.

Instead, we get someone extrapolating and guessing when we have actual data from COVID on class delays/size reduction(as well as more controllers retiring earlier) coupled with lower training intensity while air traffic was depressed.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#363

Post by Khaine »

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.

Yes, famously the Australian Government tried that and undid it as pesky white men were being hired at a greater rate because of them[1].

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-tri...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#364

Post by Khaine »

jefftk wrote: post #60
anal_reactor wrote: post #54

[flagged]

> if you pointed that out before Trump's election This article is an expanded version of the author's reporting a year ago: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... While it didn't make the same splash then, I saw it and didn't see people responding by trying to cancel the author.

Famously this guy James Damore tried to explain why the approach to diversity at google was not going to work. How did that work out for him?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#365

Post by default-kramer »

ein0p wrote: post #314

> In a moment of dark irony, the sort of diversity-focused work she’s passionate about—not lowering the bar, but inspiring more people and providing them with mentorship and opportunity to reach it Discrimination by race, gender and sexual orientation (aka DEI, jokingly disabbreviated as "didn't earn it") always results in lowering the bar. No exceptions. Either the candidate earns a position fair and square, in whic…

> Either the candidate earns a position fair and square, in which case you don't need "DEI", or you are discriminating against someone else more deserving, and therefore lowering the bar overall.

False dichotomy. It's possible that in some situations DEI could replace cronyism and produce better hires. I have no idea how often that actually happens, but I know that cronyism happens a lot.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#366

Post by briandear »

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…

That isn’t what happened though. What happened was they intentionally turned down highly qualified white applicants. It wasn’t like they found new “diverse” applicants — they actively didn’t hire people that were qualified and happened to be white. They weren’t being “available” to more applicants, they became outwardly hostile to white applicants. They didn’t grow the pie, they moved the pie.

Huge difference.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#368

Post by tdb7893 »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #354
gadders wrote: post #179

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.

"This is the sort of DEI effort that gives the rest a bad name." I'd be interested to read about a DEI effort that gives the rest a good name.

The "Women in Engineering" group where I worked was instrumental in retaining multiple good engineers who would've definitely left otherwise after some gendered issues (asked out by coworkers, asked whether they were an engineer in meetings, etc). I was a mentor for early career engineers and I had a woman talking about leaving but the woman in engineering group at work helped her immensely and she's a top performer.

Systems affect different people differently (which is blindingly obvious but bears repeating) so if you want a meritocracy based on actual ability you need to do your best to nurture all people with ability, which isn't a one size fits all approach. I knew multiple people who absolutely kicked ass that benefitted from targeted programs (and from their success we've all benefited from these programs), there's just also a lot of dumb shit out there for DEI, too.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#369

Post by briandear »

clutchdude wrote: post #261
stackskipton wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATC training and dropout rate is so long and high, that mistakes made 8-9 years ago could still be impactful.

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…

It wasn’t “Covid” — it was the vaccine mandate.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#370

Post by jefftk »

Khaine wrote: post #364
jefftk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you pointed that out before Trump's election This article is an expanded version of the author's reporting a year ago: https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-scandal-... While it didn't make the same splash then, I saw it and didn't see people responding by trying to cancel the author.

Famously this guy James Damore tried to explain why the approach to diversity at google was not going to work. How did that work out for him?

I'm not arguing the obviously false "no one has been cancelled for arguing an approach to increasing diversity is counterproductive". I'm arguing "Trace wouldn't have been (and in fact wasn't) cancelled for writing about this pre-Trump"
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