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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#601

Post by immibis »

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.

Which part of setting up a stall in a job fair in a more diverse part of town is "forcing blacks into the job"?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#602

Post by immibis »

lazide wrote: post #596
intended wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the thing that stopped the slot filling was funding, not a dearth of candidates. We had 500 open positions. We filled 100, and argued over 10. That’s still a gap of 400 positions. We have only 110 qualified applicants. The Math is missing a third variable.

Having been on the (explicit) receiving side of this - you just don’t fill the other positions until you find the right candidates (where right is whatever criteria you can’t say out loud - though has been said out load often in the last few years). Alternatively, this is a way for your boss to meet budget targets while not explicitly laying people off, and giving hope to people that help is coming.

Advertising your jobs to more people (including black ones) might help you find more candidates. If you're not finding enough candidates AND you're only finding white candidates, something is wrong, innit? There are all those people who aren't white who might be candidates who for some reason you're ignoring.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#603

Post by typewithrhythm »

munificent wrote: post #519
typewithrhythm wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Trying to apply the same idea of history to something as abstract as a government, as to an individual is impossible.

The current people and their representatives did not do those things, so acting as if you are doing the right thing by implementing policy that advances one group over another is immoral. It's just inventing a fictional justification, no better than dark skin being a mark of sin.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#604

Post by typewithrhythm »

thot_experiment wrote: post #539
typewithrhythm wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes we actually want to take from everyone and give to disadvantaged people, we should do this as a society because even crudely implemented it is a good first approximation of capturing externalities shareholder value fails to.

I'm sorry, but I genuinely don't follow what you mean by this...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#605

Post by rayiner »

davorak wrote: post #540
rayiner wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ack…

> Maybe we can acknowledge that there is a real problem that people were responding to. I am not seeped in all the cases you mention here. You have not drawn a picture for me though to see that all of these are the same issue and that should all be treated the same way rather than be dealt with individually.

Add to that the effort to repeal California’s ban on affirmative action: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/prop-16-failed-in-californ...

It’s all the same issue and has been since the 1970s. Many people believe you need explicit racial references in hiring, government programs. This is a deeply unpopular idea, so it gets hidden behind various labels. Though there was a “masks off” moment starting in 2020 when people were openly subscribing to Ibram Kendi thought (who lays out his view clearly that the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination).

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#606

Post by lazide »

immibis wrote: post #602
lazide wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been on the (explicit) receiving side of this - you just don’t fill the other positions until you find the right candidates (where right is whatever criteria you can’t say out loud - though has been said out load often in the last few years). Alternatively, this is a way for your boss to meet budget targets while not explicitly laying people off, and giving hope to people that help is coming.

Advertising your jobs to more people (including black ones) might help you find more candidates. If you're not finding enough candidates AND you're only finding white candidates, something is wrong, innit? There are all those people who aren't white who might be candidates who for some reason you're ignoring.

How long do you go before you call it quits, and how many white candidates do you need to pass over before you find ‘enough’ black candidates? What consequences need to happen with all those unfilled roles before it is ‘enough’?

Especially since the market of people willing to work the job AND take the pay AND work in the area is not infinite.

We’re talking about a group which went out of its way (apparently) already to recruit folks with the specific colors they wanted + these other criteria.

Don’t forget, everyone else in the country has been having similar constraints and has been trying to do the same thing near as I can tell.

Why do you think they were sharing test answers (it seems), and still only got x candidates in?

And also, doesn’t this entire thing seem actively unfair and racist (albeit to everyone except the chosen minority) instead of what at worst was perhaps a passively unfair and racist situation before? (Albeit to everyone except the majority)

How is that actually any better, except that it pisses off the majority instead of the minority?

Seems like a good way to lose elections, frankly. Or have a majority of the population angry at every minority out there.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#607

Post by K0balt »

bimguy wrote: post #559
K0balt wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you maybe misunderstood what I was saying. I’m saying that neurodivergence is why some people thrive at certain jobs that others would find exhausting. Ergo we should test for ability, not some arbitrary representation of race, sex, or other non-task related metric.

Testing for ability is exactly what they were originally doing before the NBCFAE got involved in the FAA's well established hiring process. I get your point, but to be clear this is already what they were doing since 1989 up until 2013.

Yes, exactly. They had it on lock until someone decided that we should not be selecting for the arguably unusual traits that foster excellence and talent retention in ATC.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#608

Post by adolph »

scott_w wrote: post #323
adolph wrote: post #268

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. No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or pr…

Copied from another comment: At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” since they clearly fit under the umbrella of DEI. I simply say they’re bad initiatives. You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.

No, that doesn’t clarify anything. Copy-pasting irrelevant responses is spam, please stop.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#609

Post by lazide »

amluto wrote: post #548
thaumasiotes wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are only so many black people in the country. Every skilled job has this problem; poaching can make you look slightly better but it does nothing overall and will make wherever you poached your qualified black applicants from look worse.

> There are only so many black people in the country. The US population is around 1/8 black. Which means, if every kid has an equal opportunity (in an absolute sense or on average) to develop the requisite skills to be an air traffic controller and if every kid was equally inclined to apply, and the application process were fair, then eventually around 1/8 of air traffic controllers would be black. Which seems like a…

Only if black candidates meet the criteria equally, are as interested to work as air traffic controllers as anyone else, have equivalent lifestyles and family support to allow them to do the job as effectively as anyone else, etc.

There are enough differences in socialization, current population education levels, current incarceration rates/history in the population, etc. to make that essentially impossible yes?

As to if they are fair or not? Probably not. are you going to fix it, and if so, how?

We can argue about theoretical from birth path differences all we want, but no one on the hiring side has the time to deal with those or to control them - and if looking at things from a coarse population level - it just doesn’t reflect actual reality right now, yes?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#610

Post by adolph »

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").

Why would a person misrepresent the memo when the file is there for anyone to read?
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