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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#611

Post by harvey9 »

immibis wrote: post #448
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quota issue isn't that you have an explicit hiring quota for each race -- which might even be illegal. It's that if, at the end of the year, the number of people you hired had a large racial disparity, that's bad optics and you'll get in trouble, which you know so you fudge things to change it however you can. So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants.…

> 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.

The article specifically talks about how the college courses were in community colleges, not bastions of privilege of any kind.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#612

Post by kshahkshah »

soared wrote: post #574
kshahkshah wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Extra resources for schools = free breakfast, lunch, afterschool activities = kids cost less money = parents can work less demanding/normal hour jobs = more parental involvement. That’s a lot of logic, but resources for schools is a lot more than free food, better books, etc. schools are one of the best ways to distribute community resources. The alternative (read: kids who got expelled from normal schools) near me h…

Agree with all that in theory. I don't know of a good implementation of it.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#613

Post by codingrightnow »

avn2109 wrote: post #241
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…

> "... slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal..." Astounding level of misdirection/cope here, bordering on non-factual. Did we just read the same article? This is the textbook example of a DEI scandal and was so from the very beginning. I mean the "textbook" part literally, employment discrimination law textbooks will dedicate whole chapters to this scandal for decades at a…

"Students understood that the FAA hired virtually everyone who completed the program and passed the assessment."

It sounds like they couldn't hire enough people to fill vacancies. The diversity push could have been an attempt to encourage a wider range of people to consider the occupation.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#615

Post by philwelch »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #537
alcima wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think might be misreading the article. It says the answers were sent from the FAA to members of the "National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees". It went to all of them, not just friends. It was DEI, not cronyism. Soon, though, she became uneasy with what the organization was doing, particularly after she and the rest of the group got a voice message from FAA employee Shelton Snow: You might be confused…

It can be both.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#616

Post by dataflow »

boohoo123 wrote: post #118

There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring practices that no one seems to notice. Remove all demographic questions from the application. Hide the name and gender and attach a applicant ID. It's as easy as that. Every job should be looking for the most qualified individual regardless of race, nationality, religion, and sex. Demographics in the application are a recipe for disaster on both sides of the i…

> There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring practices that no one seems to notice. Remove all demographic questions from the application.

For job applications? (How) do you also hide their appearance in the interview?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#617

Post by caycep »

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…

If you look at the articles on this blog, it’s clear the author has an agenda. The site is filed away as “view with suspicion” for me

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#618

Post by amluto »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #558
amluto wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. It doesn't mean that at all. Well, depending on what you mean. It could just be that your premise is known to…

Of course my premise doesn’t hold, and the glaringly obvious cause is historical inequality. This doesn’t mean that the FAA should mess with its hiring process in an ill-conceived and very likely illegal attempt to make it look like the problem doesn’t exist.

But, to me, it would be absurd to suggest that the air traffic controllers should be “diverse” in the sense that a “minority” group should be represented in excess of its representation in the overall population, that there aren’t enough black people the US for a fair hiring process to achieve this, and that therefore an unfair process should be used to increase this sort of “diversity”. That’s all kinds of wrong!

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#619

Post by stackskipton »

dgfitz wrote: post #527
robocat wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some jobs, your aptitude should matter. If a test has some discriminating power between people with aptitude and those without aptitude, then perhaps failing that test should really matter. For ATC staff perhaps OCD-adjacent traits are good and ADD-adjacent traits are bad. Maybe you don't want someone with epilepsy in ATC even though that's unfair. Maybe we all want to be Olympic athletes and a few work hard to b…

US lawyers get multiple attempts to take the bar exam, as an example. Should they?

Bar exam is different because it's just taking a test. Testing is really easy to scale.

This is more not allowing something who dropped out of law school due to academics to be readmitted because law school slots are precious if your goal is to make X amount of lawyers per year.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#620

Post by scott_w »

adolph wrote: post #608
scott_w wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>> asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition

> At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,”

I highlighted the relevant points where I addressed your criticism. I hope this helps but feel free to copy-paste from Wikipedia again.

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