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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
671–680 of 724 posts
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#672Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're asking the wrong person there. "Both" concedes that it was "DEI" But to actually answer the question: while it can absolutely be both, you need to provide proof of the additional claim. "People cheated for DEI reasons" and "People cheated for cronyism reasons" are two separate claims. The article provides plenty of evidence for the former and not much for the latter.
What do you consider cronyism except ‘members of this organization share cheats and get each other in’?
"Cronyism (noun, derogatory): the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications."
Cronyism is advancing the interests of your personal connections. Friends and family. If you want an explicit cutoff, the Dunbar Number suggests this group should have 100, maybe 150 people in it.
Conversely, there's 40 million black people in the US, and I really doubt anyone is even associated with all of them, much less calling them one of their friends.
You can change who you're friends with a lot easier than you can change your skin color, so the two result in different problems. They're both bad, of course. Similar to how "wage theft" and "shoplifting" are different crimes, even though both of them involve taking money from someone else.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course it isn't made for me, and I do not expect it to be. The fact that you assume so points to a lack of empathy on your end, something that I think most Americans could really use more of right now. As another sibling comment previously stated, this forum is mainly for employees of US tech companies. I don't think I'm alone in thinking that this forum could do more to keep the number of polarizing non-tech topi…
I'm sorry someone put a gun to your head and forced you to read HN today.
Thanks for your insightful contribution. And for proving my point.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#674Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you consider cronyism except ‘members of this organization share cheats and get each other in’?
"Cronyism (noun, derogatory): the appointment of friends and associates to positions of authority, without proper regard to their qualifications." Cronyism is advancing the interests of your personal connections. Friends and family. If you want an explicit cutoff, the Dunbar Number suggests this group should have 100, maybe 150 people in it. Conversely, there's 40 million black people in the US, and I really doubt an…
Associates. You know like people who literally belong (aka associate) to the same organization?
Only hiring people who belong to the same fraternity is also cronyism, and is the same problem.
In this case, a criteria for joining this ‘fraternity’ is the color of their skin.
Hence double applicable with DEI.
Why do you keep insisting on ignoring half of what you are pasting?
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#675Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not about a particular pilot, it's about the system as a whole. As long as 99.9% of aircraft don't require any remediation, the air traffic controllers have the bandwidth to catch the few that do. Until you don't have enough air traffic controllers.
The pilot is an example consistent with no actions to correct pilots. Double controllers and these pilots can now fly twice as many missions before they kill someone. Controllers talk like an extra 9 for them is the focus and it is for them, the public acting like their ceremonies are about fixing the majority of the problem is a bold faced lie.
There are already many actions to correct pilots. But human efforts are never perfect and we don't expect them to be, for both the pilots and the air traffic controllers. Which is why they're designed to backstop one another, and why compromising either one of them increases the probability of a collision.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#676For those curious, you can try the FAA's air traffic controller test for yourself here: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/ After trying it, I recommend reading the article for yourself.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. How can an agency administer that travesty of a test? Heads should be rolling over this.
Congress stopped it 9 years ago
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#677This 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…
> 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. Respectfully, thats not accurate. The article actually shows that dei considerations were central to the original changes, not just recent framing. The FOIA requests show explicit discussions about "diversity vs performance tradeoffs" from the beginning. The NBCFAE role…
Congress stopped the shitty behavior quiz 9 years ago
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#678Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> It’s all the same issue and has been since the 1970s. Many people believe you need explicit racial references in hiring, government programs. I draw a line between "need explicit racial references in hiring" and the "biographical questionnaire" in the article. The later was explicit deception, what I want to call fraud though maybe dose not fit the technical definition, and was correctly labeled cheating since the…
Read Tracing Woodlines’ articles. The biographical questionnaire was a means to achieve indirectly what the FAA couldn’t achieve directly (explicit racial preferences).
I’m not oversimplifying it. A lot of people want explicit racial preferences to achieve racial diversity. That’s both unpopular and (now) illegal, so you get lots of different workarounds.
Not everyone who supports DEI programs wants explicit racial preferences. But in practice DEI programs turn into racial preferences and quotas because those people won’t stand up to the ones who want preferences.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#679Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#680Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree with all that in theory. I don't know of a good implementation of it.
There are loads of successful implementations! Just look outside of the US to Nordic countries or, say, Japan or Korea. The US does a lot of things pretty badly.
Sure, yes, I had meant in the US. I know it's possible, we just tend to make these things impossible via incompetent implementation.