The FAA’s Hiring Scandal • Hacker News Board

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#421

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:31 PM UTC

intended wrote: post #391

skellington wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The quota issue isn't that you have an explicit hiring quota for each race -- which might even be illegal. It's that if, at the end of the year, the number of people you hired had a large racial disparity, that's bad optics and you'll get in trouble, which you know so you fudge things to change it however you can.

So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants. Worse, if you hire based on highest test scores you'd only hire 2 of the black applicants and end up with 99.6% white hires. The obvious thing to do to improve the optics is to figure out how to hire all 10 of the qualified black applicants, which is the thing that would have "minimal impact to performance", but you have two problems. First, picking them explicitly because of their race is illegal, so you have to manufacture some convoluted system to do it in a roundabout way. Second, even if you do that you're still screwed, because even hiring all 10 of them leaves you with 98% white hires and that's still bad optics.

Their workaround was to use a BS biographical test to exclude most of the white applicants while giving the black applicants the answers. If you do that you can get 90 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants. That'll certainly improve the optics, but then you have 400 unfilled slots.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#422

Post by Spivak » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:34 PM UTC

lordloki wrote: post #310

scott_w wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What do you expect the approach to be when your goal is to go out into the world and find qualified people in demographics you aren't getting naturally in your applicant pool? If you want to hire women software engineers you solicit applicants from "women in tech" events and groups.

The belief, whether you agree with it or not, is that diverse teams produce better results. If your natural applicant pool is all dudes then your job as a headhunter is to find a woman who you think can beat them on merit.

The other way you do it is you hire them on as juniors where everyone's resumes might as well be written on toilet paper and "most qualified applicant" is a bit of a joke and train them up.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#423

Post by Devilspawn6666 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:36 PM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #40

wand3r wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of like the argument that communism is great but no one has been able to implement it correctly yet. "Setting targets" having highly paid DEI consultants, and identity based hiring is what DEI is. Lowercase diversity and inclusion are good ideals, which I think is what you are saying. Uppercase DEI are the exact policies we are talking about here.

I’ve provided a list of DEI hiring policies that don’t fit into your list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the i…

You don't seem to understand the difference between equity and equality (of opportunity).

Equity is actively discriminating, based on measures like race or sex to try to force an ideological outcome.

Equality (of opportunity) is treating people the same irrespective of race, sex, etc...

Equity is clearly racist, sexist, bigotry. Progressives seems to think this is okay, unlike previous examples from history, as their preferred race isn't white and their preferred sex isn't male.

Equality (of opportunity) is the opposite - it isn't racist, sexist bigotry.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#424

Post by kristjansson » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:37 PM UTC

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.

NB they still administered a cognitive test to candidates that passed (blegh) the biographical assessment

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#425

Post by adamsb6 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:37 PM UTC

spectraldrift wrote: post #42

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right. My bad. Please disregard the first line. The tapes thing still holds, tho. They have tapes. Care to comment on those?

I disagree with the actions of the rogue employee who leaked those instructions, that's clearly wrong and illegal, and it's right to call that out. However, I believe there is some misunderstanding because sharing those answers doesn’t mean the FAA lowered the bar. What happened was akin to someone unethically telling people how to cheat to get an interview referral at google- yet the actual subsequent qualification…

In what context would it ever make sense to preferentially hire a population whose worst high school subject was science and lowest college grades were in history?

Sharing the answers wasn't someone going rogue, it was the whole point.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#426

Post by drjasonharrison » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:39 PM UTC

cyberax wrote: post #396

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…

> 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.

By "hiring traditionally" they may have meant "posting a job description and application instructions". They definitely didn't continue to interact with the CTI schools.

What they didn't appear to do, at least it is not discussed, is targeted advertising towards underrepresented groups.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#427

Post by rayiner » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:40 PM UTC

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 FAA worked with a race advocacy group to create a screening test blatantly calculated to give preferences to that race. That’s not an isolated incident. Harvard was smacked down by the Supreme Court for racially discriminating in admissions. Biden was smack down by courts for racially discriminating in small business loans. A court just smacked down NASDAQ for diversity quotas on corporate board. Maybe we can acknowledge that there is a real problem that people were responding to.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#428

Post by adamsb6 » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:40 PM UTC

apical_dendrite wrote: post #212

Manuel_D wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly’s friends in the program encouraged her to join the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She signed up as the February wave started. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA e…

I've read it. I've seen all the weightings. My point is that after reading the IG report, I think it's most likely that when he made the following statement he was exaggerating and claiming that he knew the right answers when he didn't: > I am going to send it out to each of you and as you progress through the stages refer to those images so you will know which icons you should select…I am about 99 point 99 percent s…

What do you think the point of such a questionnaire was?

Why would you want to filter for applicants who report that their worst high school subject was science and their lowest college grades were in history?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#429

Post by fwip » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:42 PM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #401

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.

It turns out you can’t be an ATC unless your worst subject is science. It’s the only question which awards points.

I think you misread something, because that's not true.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#430

Post by typewithrhythm » Wed, Feb 05, 2025, 11:44 PM UTC

scott_w wrote: post #23

ars wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this not DEI? This was a deliberate and conscious attempt to create a test that would pass DEI candidates at higher rates, with question that had nothing to do with the actual needed skills. And they did it because they were pressured to "increase diversity".

As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time. It’s things like outreach, financial support, changing societal attitudes. Instead of that, they took the lazy opt…

Spending any tax money on programs designed to only help "DEI" causes is racist.

From rich to poor I see as ethical, but there are current programs that are gated on race. This is taking from all to give to a chosen race, all DEI practices should be eliminated from government actions.