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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#701

Post by navtoj »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #104
navtoj wrote: post #4

wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding social issues

I can't comment on DEI, I'm not qualified there. I can comment on software eng culture the past twenty years, however. My take is we, collectively, pride ourselves on staying up-to-date with the latest and best practices. However, that staying up to date tends to be a rather shallow understanding at best. It's as if we read a short summary of the best practice, then cargo cult it everywhere , fully convinced that we'…

yea, i agree — it’s definitely not just a software thing. good intentions don’t always translate into good execution.

i wonder if/when AGI becomes real, could it help with writing better policies/laws since it would have a broader understanding of issues and (hopefully) no bias so it would be able to predict outcomes we can't

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#702

Post by hitekker »

sethammons wrote: post #677
Jimmc414 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> The relationship between the FAA and CTI schools remains damaged, applicant numbers have declined significantly since 2014.

> The lawsuit is still ongoing. The scandal has not yet resolved.

Separate from the above posts, the FAA continued their discriminatory policies. For example, setting several DEIA initiatives and only one target for hiring more Air Traffic controllers. https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/about/office_org/hea...

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#703

Post by lazide »

immibis wrote: post #696
lazide wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your problem is who to hire this week, root causing back to someone’s childhood conditions 20 years ago does absolutely fuck all for you.

You're telling me they had this diversity mandate 10 years ago and in the last 10 years all they could think to do was to disqualify white people from hiring and there were absolutely no opportunities to go and encourage people to be air traffic controllers? Now that's proof that white hiring managers are incompetent! (that's a joke)

No? What are you talking about?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#704

Post by scott_w »

leftandright wrote: post #505
scott_w wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mout…

Yes, I rejected a number of CVs/screening calls that didn’t fit the criteria. In practice, this was a small number because our recruiter tried to pre-screen before reaching out. She was good at her job and she didn’t want to waste mine or the candidate’s time on a poor fit that could be seen quickly.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#705

Post by scott_w »

modo_mario wrote: post #631
scott_w wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do the teams you're hiring for know that you're looking to avoid contacting whites, Asians or black people depending on the demographics you're missing until given no other option? Do you try to get an approximation of society with that selective net you're casting? Of the field? Or is it more according to own preference with something like an equal amount of the subsections you can think of?

> Do the teams you're hiring for know that you're looking to avoid contacting whites, Asians or black people depending on the demographics you're missing until given no other option?

That’s a very strange reading of what I said. I need to remind you that the vast majority of applicants were white men. This headhunting merely added more minority (from a European perspective) candidates into our pipeline.

I was going to be their manager, so yes, I knew the process.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#706

Post by lazide »

handoflixue wrote: post #695
lazide wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Associates. You know like people who literally belong (aka associate) to the same organization? First, the FAA and the NBCFAE are different organizations. Second, "Associate" does not mean "employed at the same massive organization". It means someone you actually know, on a personal level. You and I are not "associates" just because we both post on Hacker News. Third, the question is whether you're associated with…

I’m saying going out of your way to get people from a specific organization that you are also a member of hired where you work, is cronyism.

Also, going out of your way to hire people of specific skin color where you work, is racism.

Seems like a bunch of folks at the FAA were doing both here, yes?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#707

Post by brookst »

frugalmail wrote: post #698
lazide wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it is impossible to implement Affirmative Action without discriminating based on race. And no one is going to care if some farmer won’t hire white people for his farm.

Affirmative Action is racisim. If you don't believe it, find the FAA people (or college students, law enforcement, numerous other recent cases) that were more qualified and excluded and ask them.

Affirmative action is racism. So is the lack of affirmative action.

Turns out this is a complex topic. Anyone pushing a simplistic viewpoint either doesn’t understand the topic or has ulterior motives.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#708

Post by TrapLord_Rhodo »

sethammons wrote: post #598
sashank_1509 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, how can anyone take that test and defend FAA hiring practices. This is dystopia level nonsense

Congress stopped it 9 years ago.

they scheduled the trial for 2026. Congress hasn't stopped or done anything since.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#709

Post by Invictus0 »

apical_dendrite wrote: post #694
adamsb6 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the point of such a questionnaire was? Why would you want to filter for applicants who report that their worst high school subject was science and their lowest college grades were in history?

As to why the questionnaire exists - It's the equivalent of something that's very common in the private sector. A company gets thousands of applicants for a job. They only have the resources to interview some small percentage of that. So they develop a very rough filter to narrow down the pool to something manageable. For instance, if it's an entry level job they'll typically just categorically reject anyone who has…

> I think was just an overfit model producing nonsensical results. That kind of statistically-significant-but-nonsensical parameter is exactly what Freedman's Paradox describes.

You just completely made this up. There isn't even evidence that a "model" exists or was fitted to.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#710

Post by ConradJarret »

malaise wrote: post #669
WillPostForFood wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I get that you’re trying to contribute to the conversation, but you do realize that what you’re saying sounds racist? In addition, this is a diversion from the elephant in the room, which is that right after some dramatic executive action, many people died within a short amount of time due to a crash that had nothing to do with race and everything to do with chaotic governance.

Oh no, what he said sounds racist! He shouldn’t contribute to the conversation then.
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