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

491–500 of 724 posts

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#491

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

varloid wrote: post #468
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ...

They decided that at least some amount was acceptable - the minimum score on the AT-SAT was changed so that 95% of test takers would pass because the original threshold where 60% passed excluded too many black applicants. This was despite previous studies showing that a higher score on the AT-SAT was correlated with better job performance.

No, that's not an answer to that specific question.

Performance on the AT-SAT is not job performance.

If you have a qualification test that feels useful but also turns out to be highly non-predictive of job performance (as, for example, most college entrance exams turn out to be for college performance), you could change the qualification threshold for the test without any particular expectation of losing job performance.

In fact, it is precisely this logic that led many universities to stop using admissions tests - they just failed to predict actual performance very well at all.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#492

Post by PaulHoule »

LastTrain wrote: post #457
PaulHoule wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't completely understand it but Republicans manage cognitive dissonance better. Around 1994 I was interested in Trotskyism and Anarchism and wasn't sure if we needed to get the 4th international back in the US or start a 5th international. I believed in this really stupid kind of vanguardism where if you put up the biggest and most radical flag you would get everyone to rally behind it. I reformed because I got…

[Edit] From what you are saying, if someone is looking to be in a tribe, I would agree the American right is a good fit for that.

A group that wants to privilege winners is more likely to win than a group that wants to privilege losers, for one thing.

I was shocked at how long it took Labour to beat the Tories in the the UK in the last decade. I mean the Tories kept screwing up over and over and it had to go really far before voters finally gave up on them.

It's easy to conclude that politics in the US are like professional wrestling and the Democrats are getting paid to lose.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#493

Post by flak48 »

tstrimple wrote: post #412
tim333 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked at the info on the test here https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/ ? (copied from another post) To pass the test you have to click A on all 62 questions apart from question 16 where you have to click D to say your lowest grade in school was in history. The thing's a complete travesty.

Did you get a different question/answer than I did? For me it showed science as the only correct answer awarding 15 points.

it's science for school and history for college

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#494

Post by widowlark »

squigz wrote: post #250
widowlark wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By helping to make them qualified to pass the tests.

How, exactly? Perhaps by encouraging schools to accept more people from those groups?

more isnt the problem. or its not the first problem.

>predictions suggested only 3% of black applicants would pass.

Thats not '3% of the applicants are black'. It's '3% of black applicants pass the test'

Starting there alone would yield meaningful results - at the end of the day, you gotta pass the test. Changing the test so more people pass is illogical and dangerous.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#495

Post by janalsncm »

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…

> the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time

Yes, it’s lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can fix inequality by biasing hiring practices.

The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is made even worse.

All of the “wholistic evaluation” doublespeak and weird qualification exams in the world can’t fix that.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#496

Post by lmm »

immibis wrote: post #453
adolph wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the criticism was intended to be constructive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Cham...

There's zero difference between this memo and what is frequently said by people who just don't like black people (because it's too bad optics to say "I just don't like black people").

People who just don't like pakistani people spend a lot of time talking about pakistani child rape gangs. Does that mean we should ignore the pakistani child rape gangs?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#497

Post by vkou »

int_19h wrote: post #399
thot_experiment wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 equa…

> The problem is that DEI in practice tends to be the other kind of stuff

And what does the political opposite of those initiatives look like in practice?

What does it look like in practice when you don't stop and wonder why women make up 20% of your qualified candidate pool, but only 7% of your workforce? (As another poster observed.)

Do you just shrug your shoulders, assume that your perfectly meritocratic (By whose definition?) system is free of any form of systemic or personal bias, and move on, without wondering why?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#498

Post by lmm »

scott_w wrote: post #7
wand3r wrote: post #3

> I know, I know. The evidence is unambiguous that the bar was lowered, deliberately, over many years and with direct knowledge. The evidence is unambiguous that a cheating scandal occurred. The whole thing is as explosive as any I’ve seen, and it touches on a lot of long-running frustrations. This is likely the most common complaint about DEI, it provides grounds for race based discrimination and lowers the bar. I a…

I don’t think DEI itself provides the grounds. It’s simply a case of DEI either being implemented in a lazy or stupid way to tick boxes OR it being used as cover by a small number of activists to engage in discrimination of their own. If DEI didn’t exist, the above things would still happen, just for a different reason and possibly different group of activists.

> I don’t think DEI itself provides the grounds... it being used as cover by a small number of activists to engage in discrimination of their own.

That's exactly what providing the grounds means. It's like how the no-fly list provides a convenient way to trap your estranged wife outside the country. You can do a whole lot of racism, call it a DEI initiative and use the right terminology, and no-one bats an eye.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#499

Post by janalsncm »

scott_w wrote: post #158
subpixel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 put together some more concrete examples here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 None of them are “programs that discriminate against qualified applicants.”

This works if your demand is small enough. In the case of the FAA they are hiring thousands of ATCs.

The fundamental issue is that due to upstream inequalities (e.g. worse schools) there are downstream inequalities you can’t smooth out. There are literally fewer black people who know how to read or have graduated high school. So the correct solution is to concentrate resources upstream.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#500

Post by squigz »

widowlark wrote: post #494
squigz wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How, exactly? Perhaps by encouraging schools to accept more people from those groups?

more isnt the problem. or its not the first problem. >predictions suggested only 3% of black applicants would pass. Thats not '3% of the applicants are black'. It's '3% of black applicants pass the test' Starting there alone would yield meaningful results - at the end of the day, you gotta pass the test. Changing the test so more people pass is illogical and dangerous.

Okay, but... HOW do you enable more black people to pass the test?
Post reply on HN