Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

tracingwoodgrains.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 724 posts

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#431

Post by fwip »

thijson wrote: post #318
dbspin wrote: 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…

Your mention of blind reviews reminds me of a social experiment I read about several years ago. All of this is anecdotal though. The article was written by someone that administered a web site that paired candidates with employers. Employers would conduct a phone screen via the web site to choose candidates. The web site saw that females had a lower chance of being selected, and based on the assumption that it was th…

Simply pitch shifting somebody doesn't make them sound like a normal male/female speaker. There's a lot more to it, including musicality of speech, word choice, resonant frequencies, etc.

If you pitch shifted the average American woman, you'd probably get a voice that sounded like a gay (camp) man.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#432

Post by arp242 »

subpixel wrote: post #114
scott_w wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably. Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qu…

> I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context

Go to a predominantly black school/neighbourhood and hand out flyers with "hey, we have this great programme you should consider applying for!"

Provide financial support for candidates who cannot afford to go through the programme on their own means (which will be disproportionately, though not exclusively, from minority groups).

And generally, "most qualified candidate" doesn't really exist. Usually what you have is something like "50% clearly unqualified, 25% maybe, and 25% seems qualified" and that's it. Numbers vary and there are exceptions, but by and large, that's basically how it works. So you need a "tie-breaker", which is usually "person I got along with the best", which is just as biased as "person from $minority_group" as a tie-breaker.

Obviously things didn't go well at the FAA, but it really doesn't take that much imagination to come up with some basic measures that are reasonable and don't discriminate anyone.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#433

Post by AnthonyMouse »

snailmailstare wrote: post #415
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's obviously some number of mistakes one party can make in a single incident such that the other has a limited probability of preventing an accident. If flight control is the robustness, it would take flight control with a lot of free time to be reducing those mistakes in pilots by following up on all sorts of errors unrelated to an incident until a pilot rarely makes multiple overlapping mistakes.

You're still going to try to reduce the errors by each party as much as you can. The point is that if they each do the right thing 99.9% of the time, the overlap allows you to prevent a problem 99.9999% of the time. Whereas if you compromise one of them so that it's 80% instead of 99.9%, the chance that something makes it through the net increases by a factor of 200.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#434

Post by daveguy »

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.

This is not the FAA's air traffic controller test. This is the biographical assessment. The air traffic controller test is called the ATSA (formerly AT-SAT) for Air Traffic Skills Assessment (Test).

This gives examples of the test format and questions:

https://pointsixtyfive.com/xenforo/threads/atsa-compilation....

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#435

Post by cyberax »

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.

Blind auditions in orchestras, efforts to get women into sciences are all great examples.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#436

Post by dragonwriter »

typewithrhythm wrote: post #430
scott_w wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased funnels.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#437

Post by Devilspawn6666 »

kalensh wrote: post #244
d1str0 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s literally what this whole article was about. Removing a high correlation performance test, that black candidates didn’t pass as frequently, and replacing it with a very low correlation questionnaire that provided a more diverse applicant pool while weeding out highly qualified individuals.

They still had to pass the performance test. It was just no longer the first step in the process. I want to be clear, that doesn't mean the questionnaire was a good thing. It just means that the questionnaire did not lower the bar. Instead it reduced the applicant pool in a sudden and unfair manner, which is it's own issue.

No, read the article again. They didn't need to pass the same test to the same degree - the criteria was also changed to have "qualified" and "well qualified".

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#438

Post by adamrezich »

kenjackson wrote: post #302
adamrezich wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 rat…

The conundrum is that by thinking this way about population groups that are not your own, and imposing your will—no matter how well-intentioned—upon them, you are undermining the agency and self-determination of said population groups.

I believe that in order to actually enact meaningful change, even deeper-rooted causes must be discovered and examined—and while this is certainly possible in theory, it's essentially impossible to do under the auspices of what currently qualifies as “political correctness”.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#439

Post by typewithrhythm »

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 both are still sexist; where is the money to pay for training coming from?

If it's a government initiative then it's taking from all to only give to women.

If it's a publicly owned company, then can you actually make a convincing case that it's a benefit to stockholders?

Only in the case of a private company does this lack ethical issues, but at that point it's just some billionaires whim.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#440

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

aesh2Xa1 wrote: post #296
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.

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…

The answer to the question you've quoted is important, since it could be "none", "a little bit", "a lot", "any amount", each of which has very different ramifications. There is no answer on the slide ...
Post reply on HN