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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#391

Post by intended »

skellington wrote: post #382
intended wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found one thing odd, which was outside of the scope over the zero sum game being fought here. If you are understaffed, AND you are hiring traditionally, it would make sense that recruiting people would go up. That would mean diverse hires anyway - based on the article, it seems that even increasing diversity was not between undeserving candidates and ideal candidates (the second band section of the article) Is the…

If you are trying to reach race/gender based quotas, you simply cannot hire white men anymore when they are 90% of the applicants. Or at least, you must attempt to minimize it as much as possible. Math.

Yeah but thats not how any quota based system works. Thats the strawman of quota systems. The article itself showed that the quota is some fraction of total applicants that results in minimal impact to performance.

Also I heard "math" with a youtube overlay.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#392

Post by ImJamal »

riskable wrote: post #326
ImJamal wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I deliberately hire whites more than other races nobody would deny that is discrimination. If I deliberately hire more minorities than whites, that is not discrimination?

That depends: Are you underpaying them? The question, "why" matters here a lot. "I tend to prefer minorities because I can underpay and get away with more" is a thing that exists in the real world. See: Immigrant farm workers and H1B visa holders. Is that discrimination against white/majorities or is it a kind of discrimination against minorities? It's injustice, for sure but I point it out because DEI policies, disc…

I think specifically hiring somebody because of their race is not just problematic but outright racist. I don't care if you are doing it because you want to underpay them or because you just dislike their race.

If somebody decided he wanted more white people because he prefers whites, that would be discrimination. Nobody denies that, but when the races are swapped, suddenly it is nuanced? Give me a break!

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#393

Post by Devilspawn6666 »

ryandrake wrote: post #350
rdtsc wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just looking at the Meta article: The article cites "pressure from conservative critics and customers" as the reason, not financial performance. The Meta representative was quoted pointing to "legal and policy landscape" changes. Nothing about if or how the initiative affected the company's bottom line. Of course they won't say it doesn't work. They'll cite external pressure or other reason. But they get pressure f…

If the real reason these companies dropped the policies was that they were unprofitable, and their bottom lines showed it, then why did they wait until exactly November 2024 to all drop them at once? Surely they could have discovered this many quarters ago. Did the policies just suddenly become unprofitable right as the next political administration was decided? Why would company directors across entire industries ju…

They couldn't drop it as it would have affected their ESG rating, which impacts the ability to get loans and raise capital, etc.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#394

Post by vichle »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #387
vichle wrote: post #384

There's a very high amount of political topics lately, and it's very uninteresting to non-US readers. Please stop.

It is a US based website, mostly about US tech companies. You may find it uninteresting but it has large impacts on these companies so would not be out of place here.

I see absolutely zero comments in this thread about how it affects tech companies. Please elaborate.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#395

Post by AnthonyMouse »

snailmailstare wrote: post #378
alcima wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was deeply aware of it at the time - was not really a DEI issue even then - it was pure cronyism.

If we step away from the traffic controllers nonsense for a moment, the actual problem sounded like a military pilot to me. It's my understanding that people who have a family line of pilots go into that funnel knowing a specific nepotism related result occurs such that when it comes time to become a commercial pilot you are probably from such a family. I have no idea if helicopter pilots work the same way or are sta…

Robust systems are designed to avoid single points of failure. Humans are fallible. So, for example, both the pilot and the air traffic controller are intended to be paying attention so that if one of them makes a mistake the other can pick it up. If the pilot is making an error, the air traffic controller gets on the radio to tell them they're getting too close to another aircraft, in time for them to course correct.

If air traffic control is under-staffed, now the warning the pilot gets might come a minute later than it would have otherwise, and already be too late. Then you no longer have a robust system and it's only a matter of time before one of the pilot errors the system was designed to be able to catch in time instead results in a collision.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#396

Post by cyberax »

intended wrote: post #353
aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source article includes primary material that strongly contradicts your anecdote. The policy change arrived in 2013, and there are materials from that same year indicating DEI. For example, here's an FAA slide from 2013 which explicitly publishes the ambition to place DEI as the core issue ("- How much of a change in jo performance is acceptable to achieve what diversity goals?"): https://archive.ph/Qgjy5 The evi…

I found one thing odd, which was outside of the scope over the zero sum game being fought here. If you are understaffed, AND you are hiring traditionally, it would make sense that recruiting people would go up. That would mean diverse hires anyway - based on the article, it seems that even increasing diversity was not between undeserving candidates and ideal candidates (the second band section of the article) Is the…

> AND you are hiring traditionally

And the FAA stopped doing that. They revamped the hiring process to screen against the White applicants. The way they did it, is also highly insulting to Black people, btw.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#397

Post by vichle »

mfkp wrote: post #386
vichle wrote: post #384

There's a very high amount of political topics lately, and it's very uninteresting to non-US readers. Please stop.

Nobody is forcing you to read this or comment. Go find a local news website if you're so displeased with the US content.

Not every forum needs to be an arena for your polarized world views. This used to be a place where all types of scientific and tech related content was posted. Not so much right now, everyone is just throwing shit at each other but with nicer choice of words than on Twitter.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#398

Post by naijaboiler »

barbazoo wrote: post #309
timewizard wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

innate personality types?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#399

Post by int_19h »

thot_experiment wrote: post #129
scott_w wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

These are really good points, it's depressing as hell to see the the quality of discussion around this stuff. Obviously DEI is great when it's trying to fix things on the input side. Perhaps I can simplify this argument. If you have a lift heavy things job, which we can agree that women on average are worse at, you shouldn't hire more women by quota, but you could provide free weight training for women. Both things a…

The problem is that DEI in practice tends to be the other kind of stuff. I think at this point it's actually kinda disingenuous to pretend that "DEI" is "just diversity, equity, and inclusion" (i.e. that you can just point at the dictionary definitions of these words to explain what it is). No, it's a very specific political mindset, and the label is now firmly associated with it. You can't say that "DEI is just equality" anymore so than you can say that about "all lives matter".

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#400

Post by aydyn »

ryandrake wrote: post #322
aydyn wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he truly believes it, but given the totality of his post it's very likely wrong. I'm not saying he is lying or a liar. Again: > blind reviews where you can’t see the name or details of the applicant (to minimise subconscious bias). Its been shown that doing so _increases_ the amount of non-minority candidates selected, not the other way around.

I've done hundreds of interviews and have also never been asked to raise or lower any bar based on the gender or race of the candidate. Would you say my statement is "not true"?

In a vacuum I wouldn't make a conjecture.

Given the current subject matter I would ask for clarification. For example, is one of your personal goals OR corporate goals within those hundreds of interviews to promote DEI?

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