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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#511

Post by kenjackson »

adamrezich wrote: post #461
kenjackson wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that in order to actually enact meaningful change, even deeper-rooted causes must be discovered and examined How do you discover deeper-rooted causes if you can't be provided resources to study the distinction? How can you understand why black women are 3x more likely to die at child birth than white women if the funding agencies don't care about the answer?

That sure is a topic that is well outside the purview of this discussion. But for what it's worth, I generally don't place a lot of stock in studies that report such findings anymore—their methods don't usually hold up to much scrutiny, in my experience.

It’s about things that may have impacts on future outcomes with discrepancies based on race. Probably some correlation with child outcomes and their mother dying at birth.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#512

Post by 0xB31B1B »

teractiveodular wrote: post #348
0xB31B1B wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. There’s like 5 conditions of automation commercial planes can be in. The automation mostly functions to make the pilots workload manageable, not to make their workload non existent. Commercial flights used to have a crew of 3, captain, first officer and flight engineer. The automation has reduced the workload to eliminate the flight engineer role and make flights operable by 2 people.

Flights are operable by 1 person, and this is in fact the normal state of affairs in general aviation. The second person on commercial aircraft is there mostly for redundancy, although obviously having another pair of hands makes things easier.

Redundancy is definitely part of it, but 2 people also make things much much easier and reduce accident likelihood when unexpected things start happening and the workload increases. Lets say there is some severe mechanical issue, you want someone to run through a checklist to address the mechanical issue and fly the plane which is likely now out of autopilot, and another to find alternate places to land, etc.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#513

Post by [deleted] »

hitekker wrote: post #145
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…

That's a misreading of the article. This scandal was not just "cheating and recruitment" but forcing "Diversity" with a side of "Equity". To quote the facts: > The NBCFAE continued to pressure the FAA to diversify, with its members meeting with the DOT, FAA, Congressional Black Caucus, and others to push for increased diversity among ATCs. After years of fiddling with the research and years of pressure from the NBCFA…

[deleted]

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#514

Post by int_19h »

vkou wrote: post #497
int_19h wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 who…

It's not wrong to stop and wonder why, but if you do, the answers are nearly always systemic, and cannot be solved at any single point by basically handicapping people to "make room".

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#515

Post by SolarNet »

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.

As the article itself describes, programs that expose kids to fields they might otherwise not have a chance to interact with. A field trip for kids that focuses on creating more people in the future who are interested in the field from more diverse background.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#516

Post by alcima »

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…

Actually the source article is quite clear about the implementation of cronyism - friends were emailed the answers to the bizarre hiring test and others were not. It is typical behavior of machine politics - give good jobs to those who support you and block others from having them. Certainly the FAA did have DEI goals, but you can't attribute this patronage to them.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#517

Post by biosonar »

PaulHoule wrote: post #492
LastTrain wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 De…

and yet Labour in less than a year in office have manage to underperform the Tories to a disasterous degree for the UK

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#518

Post by sneedle »

lukas099 wrote: post #501
sneedle wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[flagged]

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#519

Post by munificent »

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.

The US has spent tax money to enslave and police Black people, exterminate Native Americans, deport Mexicans who were sometimes American citizens, and force Japanese American citizens into internment camps.

Does a government carry any moral responsibility to right its previous wrongs? If so, what sort of policies would that look like?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#520

Post by clutchdude »

diogocp wrote: post #489
clutchdude wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because COVID happened much sooner and has likely had a bigger impact than the hiring practices from a decade ago - notice we don't have a concrete number of "disadvantaged qualified candidates" from this article. Whereas, I can point COVID with actual numbers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42952695 If we're going to say "Did that contribute to a shortage of qualified ATC..?" then you have to considering all i…

Weren't you the one who said ... > the 1-2 year interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that take years-to-decades to resolve. Looking at [1], the difference between planned and actual hires in 2013–2015 was 1362, much higher than during 2020–2022 when it was just 384 (and this is using the pre-COVID target). I don't know what happened in 2013–2015, but whatever it was, it seems to have had a 3.5 tim…

You know what also happened in 2013?

> The Federal Aviation Administration has imposed a hiring freeze to help blunt the sequester’s impact, but that threatens to disrupt the pipeline of new air traffic controllers needed to replace the thousands of workers eligible for retirement.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/air-controllers-caugh...

We know that happened as well.

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