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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#501

Post by lukas099 »

sneedle wrote: post #465
immibis wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants What you're supposed to do is go to places with more black people and start advertising to people in general they can become air traffic controllers. Then take them through air traffic controller training school and at the end, you *don't* have only 10 qualified black applicants.

Or you stop trying to force blacks into the job and hire whoever applies and is the most qualified. This way people don't die just so leftists can feel satisfied.

What grandparent said wouldn’t lead to people dying though.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#502

Post by HideousKojima »

fallingknife wrote: post #291
eastbound wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2021, the Al Jezeera documentary on Boeing’s airframes was commented in Yt as a DEI scandal. Post-reframing consists in telling people it wasn’t introduced as this, which may be true for journalists but clearly understood by the audience as a DEI issue, then claiming the DEI issue is slapped upon an existing problem. Agressive DEI has been uniformly contested since it was introduced, by (practically) everyone who…

Not yet. The SC has ruled it illegal for university admissions but it somehow still remains allowed for corporate hiring. Even then, just because the court has ruled on it doesn't mean it will actually stop. The DEI people are snakes and will continue to find more sneaky ways to implement their illegal racist quotas and more newspeak to describe it in a "legal" way.

> Even then, just because the court has ruled on it doesn't mean it will actually stop.

See California public universities still practicing affirmative action despite it being made illegal decades ago for a good example of this

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#503

Post by bbreier »

BeetleB wrote: post #478
typewithrhythm wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does not align with any published goal of a dei program, or the actions of people who are saying "I am doing DEI".

This is (anti)-wishful thinking. The goal of the DEI program in my company was along the lines of: "Last year, 20% of all PhDs in areas we hire for were women. Yet only 7% of our actual PhD hires were women. Why?" Whether the actual implementation solved this problem is a different matter. The goal , however, was to reduce bias.

This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#504

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #484
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assumptions: 1. there is a test that is a decent proxy for job performance 2. the relationship between job performance and test score above some passing score is linear These both sound "common sense", but I suspect fail for a huge number of real world scenarios.

According to the article they actually tested the first assumption and it was true. The second assumption is not required. If people who score a 95 are only 5% better at the job than people who score a 70, all else equal you'd still pick the person who scored a 95 given the choice.

Non-linear doesn't mean "still monotonic". My experience has been that beyond a certain threshold on a given test, job performance is essentially uncorrelated with test performance.

As for the article, it's not given me particular solid vibes, a feeling not helped by some of the comments here (both pro and con).

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#505

Post by leftandright »

scott_w wrote: post #238
modo_mario wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants Which involved doingwhat exactly?

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.

Are the the two sources of resumes really treated the same?

If I'm contacted by a recruiter and encouraged to apply for a position, I would expect to at least get a phone screening if not a full interview. Are you really reaching out to minority candidates individually only to sometimes send back a message that you have decided not to proceed with them a few days later? I think that would leave a bad taste in my mouth and make me less inclined to apply or encourage anyone else to apply with your company.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#506

Post by AnthonyMouse »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #504
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article they actually tested the first assumption and it was true. The second assumption is not required. If people who score a 95 are only 5% better at the job than people who score a 70, all else equal you'd still pick the person who scored a 95 given the choice.

Non-linear doesn't mean "still monotonic". My experience has been that beyond a certain threshold on a given test, job performance is essentially uncorrelated with test performance. As for the article, it's not given me particular solid vibes, a feeling not helped by some of the comments here (both pro and con).

> Non-linear doesn't mean "still monotonic".

Satisfying the first assumption means "still monotonic".

Also, if you had a better test then you'd use it, but at some point you have 10 candidates and 5 slots and have to use something to choose, so you use the closest approximation available until you can come up with a better one.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#507

Post by mp05 »

hjgjhyuhy wrote: post #474

America should help its poor and underprivileged groups through stuff like progressive taxation, better social service, and extra resources for schools in poor areas. It’s not perfect, but kind of works. It helps people to achieve better educational outcomes already in their childhood. Discriminating against everyone else in school or work application processes is just wrong and insane way to handle things.

Well as they say, it's about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. Te former I believe strongly, no doubt. They latter? EH

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#508

Post by varloid »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #491
varloid wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 perform…

> Performance on the AT-SAT is not job performance.

No, but it was the best predictor of job performance and academy pass rate there was.

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA566825.pdf

https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear... (page 41)

There are a fixed number of seats at the ATC academy in OKC, so it's critical to get the highest quality applicants possible to ensure that the pass rate is as high as possible, especially given that the ATC system has been understaffed for decades.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#509

Post by kshahkshah »

hjgjhyuhy wrote: post #474

America should help its poor and underprivileged groups through stuff like progressive taxation, better social service, and extra resources for schools in poor areas. It’s not perfect, but kind of works. It helps people to achieve better educational outcomes already in their childhood. Discriminating against everyone else in school or work application processes is just wrong and insane way to handle things.

> better social service

we should just drop means testing of services

> extra resources for schools in poor areas

more funding != better outcomes. Parental involvement is what drives outcomes. If you don't have parents around, nothing matters.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#510

Post by russdill »

reducesuffering wrote: post #239
itronitron wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a myth that the bar is lowered for DEI hires.

You should listen to what Harj, a YC partner and former CEO of TripleByte an objective software engineer competency test for hiring, has to say about what many companies were trying to do in lowering the bar. He only admitted companies were doing this in the past week. https://x.com/jesslivingston/status/1884652626467303560

As someone who works in software, companies in general are not great at selecting software talent. The idea that there is some movable bar by which applicants are selected is clearly silly.
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