[HN Gopher] The FAA's Hiring Scandal
___________________________________________________________________
The FAA's Hiring Scandal
Author : firebaze
Score : 671 points
Date : 2025-02-05 05:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tracingwoodgrains.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tracingwoodgrains.com)
| widowlark wrote:
| This is a great read - thanks for sharing. This provides valuable
| context to this whole situation that I was wholly unaware of.
| wand3r wrote:
| > I know, I know. The evidence is unambiguous that the bar was
| lowered, deliberately, over many years and with direct knowledge.
| The evidence is unambiguous that a cheating scandal occurred. The
| whole thing is as explosive as any I've seen, and it touches on a
| lot of long-running frustrations.
|
| This is likely the most common complaint about DEI, it provides
| grounds for race based discrimination and lowers the bar. I am
| sure this was not the only government agency that did something
| like this and it will really hurt the Democrats chances of
| success for the future. Their core messaging has really boiled
| down to "black and brown people, women and LGBTQ are our
| constituency" and predictably this has turned a lot of people off
| the party. Especially since they haven't really delivered much
| even for these groups.
| scott_w wrote:
| I don't think DEI itself provides the grounds. It's simply a
| case of DEI either being implemented in a lazy or stupid way to
| tick boxes OR it being used as cover by a small number of
| activists to engage in discrimination of their own. If DEI
| didn't exist, the above things would still happen, just for a
| different reason and possibly different group of activists.
| ars wrote:
| How is this not DEI? This was a deliberate and conscious
| attempt to create a test that would pass DEI candidates at
| higher rates, with question that had nothing to do with the
| actual needed skills.
|
| And they did it because they were pressured to "increase
| diversity".
| scott_w wrote:
| 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 option and just threw out white
| candidates from the pipeline. I also include "setting
| hiring targets" as a lazy and stupid way of "achieving
| DEI," just for clarity.
| wand3r wrote:
| This is kind of like the argument that communism is great
| but no one has been able to implement it correctly yet.
| "Setting targets" having highly paid DEI consultants, and
| identity based hiring is what DEI is. Lowercase diversity
| and inclusion are good ideals, which I think is what you
| are saying. Uppercase DEI are the exact policies we are
| talking about here.
| scott_w wrote:
| I've provided a list of DEI hiring policies that don't
| fit into your list here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302
|
| I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people
| in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully
| has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I
| think the downvotes and responses to my comments are
| minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of
| discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the
| "debate" breaks down into "DEI bad" on your side and
| "saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc." on the other side.
| dbspin wrote:
| Blind reviews (and even interviews) are great ways of
| making hiring more fair. They are explicitly the inverse
| of DEI approaches. DEI is predicated on outcome
| diversity, rather than treating applicants equally
| irrespective of background. That's the E and I part. The
| entire premise is that certain groups require special
| support (fair - e.g.: blind people, wheel chair users),
| and have been historically excluded because of bias
| (sometimes true, often wholly false - much of the time
| differential hiring is path dependent with fewer
| qualified applicants from a given group).
| scott_w wrote:
| > They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches.
|
| This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's
| DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not
| part of DEI.
|
| > DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than
| treating applicants equally irrespective of background.
|
| The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about
| creating a level playing field (as you correctly point
| out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously,
| this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees
| we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver.
|
| > The entire premise is that certain groups require
| special support
|
| This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be
| levied at those which don't do this effectively and
| instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said
| multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid
| because they don't address the lack of opportunity for
| disadvantaged backgrounds.
|
| > and have been historically excluded because of bias
| (sometimes true, often wholly false
|
| This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some
| groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to
| bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors
| (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to
| poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these,
| with varying levels of success.
|
| Let me take the article as an example. They identified an
| advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also
| happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have
| advantaged people who could afford to attend the
| programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good
| DEI initiative might have been to put the work into
| outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of
| colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI
| programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and
| seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas.
| Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively
| reduced the number of qualified ATC operators.
|
| Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI
| bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues
| within the article.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| These are really good points, it's depressing as hell to
| see the the quality of discussion around this stuff.
| Obviously DEI is great when it's trying to fix things on
| the input side.
|
| Perhaps I can simplify this argument. If you have a lift
| heavy things job, which we can agree that women on
| average are worse at, you shouldn't hire more women by
| quota, but you could provide free weight training for
| women. Both things are DEI, the latter is the kind of DEI
| we want.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think in your example, you shouldn't hire by quota, but
| you also shouldn't exclude women or introduce obstacles
| that exclude them. It's so weird that this has turned
| into such a controversial statement!
| int_19h wrote:
| 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 equality" anymore so than
| you can say that about "all lives matter".
| vkou wrote:
| > 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 whose definition?) system is
| free of any form of systemic or personal bias, and move
| on, without wondering why?
| int_19h wrote:
| 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".
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| 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.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| 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.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| I'm sorry, but I genuinely don't follow what you mean by
| this...
| dbspin wrote:
| To expand my point. DEI is explicitly designed not to
| make hiring fair, but to make unfair hiring policy.
| Making accommodations for people who need special help (I
| work with the blind community so that was where my mind
| immediately went), but who are otherwise capable could
| hypothetically be part of DEI. But it also predates the
| term and connects to initiatives like UNCRPD Article 27
| and the Americans with Disabilities Act. In other words -
| helping disabled people or ethnic or sexual minorities
| gain equal access to work could be described as DEI, but
| it's not what DEI usually is. You can't simply reframe
| good initiatives that help these groups as DEI and then
| wear the glow of that history with reference to what has
| in practice been an entirely different set of initiatives
| rooted in ideas like privilege theory, capital A
| 'Antiracism' and the like.
|
| Explicitly in the American context DEI is primarily about
| hiring more members of minority groups at the expense of
| members of majority groups, based primarily on race and
| sexuality. This is perfectly exemplified in the FAA
| scandal.
|
| In the context of DEI 'helping' the disadvantaged is
| never _never_ done by expanding access to educational
| opportunities in order to find equally talented people
| who have been financially excluded or barred entry by
| prejudice. It is always a matter of lowering the bar for
| certain protected groups, and often also a matter of
| removing opportunities altogether for members of
| perceived privileged groups.
|
| This is especially visible in the arts and education here
| in Europe - where funding and employment opportunities
| are overwhelmingly based in exclusion. Primarily of
| straight, white, cisgender men. You site the example of
| young white men in the UK having worse outcomes. Please
| point me to a DEI initiative that targets employing them
| over other groups. What happened at the FAA is what
| always happens under the banner of DEI, capital A
| 'Antiracism' and other successor ideology initiatives.
| The goal is never fairness, and always power.
|
| The issue with these approaches is simple. They are
| massively divisive. Rather than aiming to address
| prejudice, hiring bias or systemic barriers to entry -
| they actively create them, with the justification of
| historic prejudice. I heard a joke once in college -
| whats the difference between an activist and a social
| justice warrior? An activist sees a step and builds ramp,
| a social justice warrior tears down the stairs.
|
| DEI is a bad idea, rooted in bad ideology and the stolen
| valour of movements towards genuine equality. As is any
| ideology that privileges members of one group over
| another - however 'noble' its adherents pretend to be.
|
| If you're advocating for approaches like blind hiring, or
| addressing poverty, or providing educational aids to help
| neurodiverse or disabled people, or free school meals, or
| free university, or increased arts and community funding
| or any of a thousand other initiatives that help people
| based on real need rather than perceived privilege,
| you'll find me and many others whom you presume to
| disagree with support you. But the entire brand and
| practice of DEI and associated initiatives and
| terminology is beyond saving.
| scott_w wrote:
| Your entire argument can be boiled down to:
|
| > If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by
| definition, not part of DEI.
|
| The FAA scandal, among other things I've seen, like Matt
| Walsh's "Am I Racist?" show there's plenty of DEI
| initiatives that are simply bad, stupid and lazy. As
| you've seen elsewhere in this topic, I've also
| highlighted DEI hiring policies that have thought behind
| them and attempt to improve diversity without engaging in
| discrimination.
|
| Bitching about DEI only panders to such divisiveness and
| does not solve any of the problems with the bad
| initiatives. Neither does ignoring the problems, or
| calling genuine criticism "racist." Both lead us to the
| place we're at today where Trump blames people with
| "severe mental and psychological issues" for a plane
| crash.
| dbspin wrote:
| Here's another way to think of it... Very real
| substantive criticisms of the whole DEI project and
| identity politics have been rubbished for years. It was
| in fact impossible within the liberal left either in the
| academy or journalism to criticise this stuff without
| being labelled racist or misogynist.
|
| Meanwhile countless people have experienced being
| excluded from funding, employment opportunities etc.
| Countless more have sat through (demonstrably
| ineffective, and even counterproductive) mandatory
| reeducation in the form of diversity workshops,
| antiracism training and so on. This is absolutely a major
| part of why we got Trump in the first place. The lefts
| complete unwillingness to address the failure and
| unpopularity of these policies. It's not a case of Trump
| demonising otherwise good initiatives. Quite the
| opposite. Rather, Trump an opportunistic populist, seized
| on valid criticisms to promote himself as the sane
| alternative.
|
| Policies that served to derail opportunities for
| substantive change (Bernie in the US, Corbin in the UK)
| in favour of shiny new posts in HR at every university
| and corporation. Vivek Chibber is brilliant on this
| stuff, I'd recommend you check him out for a more cogent
| critique.
|
| https://jacobin.com/2025/01/elite-identity-politics-
| professi...
| scott_w wrote:
| > Very real substantive criticisms of the whole DEI
| project and identity politics have been rubbished for
| years.
|
| That's a fair point, I've certainly seen aspects of this.
| I see similar criticisms coming from the left being
| thrown at the current Labour government as well as the
| unhinged people calling Harris "Killer Kamala" and Biden
| "Genocide Joe" (ironic given what Trump just proposed in
| Gaza). I don't think the far right has the monopoly on
| idiots and lunatics.
|
| I should counter, however, that many of the criticisms of
| DEI were also masked racism/misogyny/ableism. Trump's
| rhetoric should make that blindingly obvious. We'll now
| get countless people being discriminated against by a
| hostile federal government and the people who voted for
| that also need to take accountability for their vote.
|
| This isn't to excuse the poor engagement from the left
| (especially whilst in government!), merely to point out
| the nuance of the debate and why "DEI bad" isn't a useful
| framing.
| lordloki wrote:
| Your entire argument is the No True Scotsman fallacy, so
| it's rather ironic for you to accuse others of it.
| scott_w wrote:
| 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.
| thijson wrote:
| Your mention of blind reviews reminds me of a social
| experiment I read about several years ago. All of this is
| anecdotal though. The article was written by someone that
| administered a web site that paired candidates with
| employers. Employers would conduct a phone screen via the
| web site to choose candidates. The web site saw that
| females had a lower chance of being selected, and based
| on the assumption that it was their gender being the
| reason, decided change the pitch of voices to mask their
| gender. This experiment actually backfired and lowered
| the chance of women being hired though. The author's
| conclusion in the end was that women had a lower chance
| of being hired because they gave up too easily, they
| couldn't handle rejection as well as men.
| thijson wrote:
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/06/30/2035225/women-
| inter...
| derangedHorse wrote:
| I like this method of interviewing. If it results in more
| men initially then that's fine. As long as the mechanism
| for hiring is such that it reduces discrimination for
| everyone, then it's one worth pushing. If there are
| traits employers reject candidates on en-masse, then at
| least this data would help us analyze what these traits
| are.
|
| Once we know what the determining traits for hiring are,
| we can either debate whether their importance in the job
| at hand (if there are doubts) or find ways to encourage
| these traits in underrepresented communities.
| fwip wrote:
| Simply pitch shifting somebody doesn't make them sound
| like a normal male/female speaker. There's a lot more to
| it, including musicality of speech, word choice, resonant
| frequencies, etc.
|
| If you pitch shifted the average American woman, you'd
| probably get a voice that sounded like a gay (camp) man.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > and have been historically excluded because of bias
| (sometimes true, often wholly false - much of the time
| differential hiring is path dependent with fewer
| qualified applicants from a given group).
|
| It's _very_ hard to find a company that does real
| "blind" interviews. And by blind, I mean where networking
| doesn't positively impact your application.
|
| As long as networking boosts your chances of getting
| hired somewhere, you've got a very wide open door to
| biases, because networks are almost always biased. I
| should not be able to give me resume to a friend to
| ensure the hiring manager gets to see it. Yet I haven't
| found a company where that behavior is detrimental.
| Devilspawn6666 wrote:
| You don't seem to understand the difference between
| equity and equality (of opportunity).
|
| Equity is actively discriminating, based on measures like
| race or sex to try to force an ideological outcome.
|
| Equality (of opportunity) is treating people the same
| irrespective of race, sex, etc...
|
| Equity is clearly racist, sexist, bigotry. Progressives
| seems to think this is okay, unlike previous examples
| from history, as their preferred race isn't white and
| their preferred sex isn't male.
|
| Equality (of opportunity) is the opposite - it isn't
| racist, sexist bigotry.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Where do you think communism has been implemented
| correctly?
| RIMR wrote:
| China is an economic giant that strongly competes with
| the the supremacy of the United States.
|
| "Correctly" is a hard test to pass, because everyone is
| going to have a different opinion of what is "correct",
| but it's impossible to honestly say that China's
| government hasn't been effective and successful, policy
| disagreements notwithstanding.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Yes, but is China actually communist? That's the point
| that needs to be contended with, and you seem rather
| intent on avoiding it instead.
|
| Everyone does in fact have a different opinion on what
| communism is or should be. That means that we should not
| pretend that China has exhaustively implemented the
| entire subject!
|
| Yes, we can point to China as an example of what _can_
| happen when a _specific_ group of people implements
| _their specific idea_ of what communism means. No more,
| no less. That is literally the point you brought up.
| int_19h wrote:
| Not even China says that it is communist. It's officially
| "socialist with Chinese characteristics".
|
| In fact, no country in the world ever claimed to have
| been communist in a sense of having a communist society.
| They were all "building communism", rather, with
| socialism as "intermediate stage".
| tstrimple wrote:
| And there it is. When China needs to be a scary enemy of
| the US then it's a communist hell hole. When trying to
| explain their successes, it's because they aren't really
| communist.
| subpixel wrote:
| > That's because the actual work to get more candidates
| from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time
|
| On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or
| hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual
| work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds"
| cannot be done equitably.
|
| Selective institutions are a reflection of the society
| from which they draw candidates. As society produces more
| kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective
| organizations will change.
|
| Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the
| result of a process and not the start of one.
|
| I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support'
| mean in this context, but I disagree that societal
| attitudes must change more than they already are
| changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified
| candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject
| discrimination on the basis of race and background. That
| is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in
| place that discriminate against qualified applicants.
| scott_w wrote:
| I put together some more concrete examples here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302
|
| None of them are "programs that discriminate against
| qualified applicants."
| janalsncm wrote:
| This works if your demand is small enough. In the case of
| the FAA they are hiring thousands of ATCs.
|
| The fundamental issue is that due to upstream
| inequalities (e.g. worse schools) there are downstream
| inequalities you can't smooth out. There are literally
| fewer black people who know how to read or have graduated
| high school. So the correct solution is to concentrate
| resources upstream.
| scott_w wrote:
| While I don't disagree, we should remember a few things:
|
| Diversity isn't just about skin colour. Getting more
| women in expands opportunities for women, who still
| suffer pay gaps, and this would help close that.
|
| Even black people who _do_ have enough education suffer
| discrimination (conscious or not), so working to improve
| things is a net good.
|
| That's not to say the FAA did the right thing (it appears
| not) but it's important to not just throw our hands up
| and keep saying it's someone else's problem!
| naijaboiler wrote:
| outreach and financial support means getting potentially
| qualified people in the piepeline much earlier in the
| process, by reaching out to potential and providing
| financial assistance for those who may not be have the
| finances.
|
| In this example, before it was CTI schools that were
| providing most of the candidates. There's a lot of
| potentially qualified minorities who absolutely have no
| clue such schools or opportunities even exist, and a few
| who even if they knew were so financially disadvantaged
| to take care of the opportunities. Outreach in this case,
| will be combing high schools and making more people aware
| of the opportunities, and providing financial assistance
| for those who may be qualified but are too poor.
| arp242 wrote:
| > I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial
| support' mean in this context
|
| Go to a predominantly black school/neighbourhood and hand
| out flyers with "hey, we have this great programme you
| should consider applying for!"
|
| Provide financial support for candidates who cannot
| afford to go through the programme on their own means
| (which will be disproportionately, though not
| exclusively, from minority groups).
|
| And generally, "most qualified candidate" doesn't really
| exist. Usually what you have is something like "50%
| clearly unqualified, 25% maybe, and 25% seems qualified"
| and that's it. Numbers vary and there are exceptions, but
| by and large, that's basically how it works. So you need
| a "tie-breaker", which is usually "person I got along
| with the best", which is just as biased as "person from
| $minority_group" as a tie-breaker.
|
| Obviously things didn't go well at the FAA, but it really
| doesn't take that much imagination to come up with some
| basic measures that are reasonable and don't discriminate
| anyone.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Exactly. Needed a slightly more imaginative approach that
| this bad one they came up with. Would also be nice if
| this early outreach and assistance could be done on a
| wider scale, not just for air traffic controllers.
| adolph wrote:
| > 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
| providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the
| original claim is changed by using a non-substantive
| modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic",
| "real", or other similar terms._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
| scott_w wrote:
| 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.
| adolph wrote:
| No, that doesn't clarify anything. Copy-pasting
| irrelevant responses is spam, please stop.
| scott_w wrote:
| >> 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.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Spending any tax money on programs designed to only
| help "DEI" causes is racist.
|
| DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding
| discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by
| subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased
| funnels.
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| This does not align with any published goal of a dei
| program, or the actions of people who are saying "I am
| doing DEI".
| BeetleB wrote:
| This is (anti)-wishful thinking.
|
| The goal of the DEI program in my company was along the
| lines of:
|
| "Last year, 20% of all PhDs in areas we hire for were
| women. Yet only 7% of our actual PhD hires were women.
| Why?"
|
| Whether the actual _implementation_ solved this problem
| is a different matter. The _goal_ , however, was to
| reduce bias.
| bbreier wrote:
| This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or
| similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with
| really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias
| exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge
| candidates by their performance and nothing else", which
| always seemed pretty reasonable to me.
| greenchair wrote:
| wrong, it doesn't avoid discrimnation, it enforces it.
| companies are doing stuff like 'must include candidates
| from <minority race> for open reqs at grade XX or above'
| beej71 wrote:
| Those companies (I'm having trouble finding any current
| ones, though there are few notable past examples that
| have been shot down in court) are doing DEI wrong.
|
| The last two places I've worked (one a university) had
| DEI goals of hiring the most qualified person for the
| job, without regard to race, etc. The whole point was to
| stress the "without regard to" part.
|
| We do collect data and try to correct imbalances by
| making sure our candidate pools have good coverage (i.e.
| they aren't discriminatory). But every offer we extend
| goes to the most qualified candidate, without regard to
| race, etc., to the very best of our ability.
|
| It's also more comprehensive than just hiring and race.
|
| For example, one goal is that a student in the National
| Guard with a side job gets the same shot as one
| unemployed living with their parents. What can you do to
| help facilitate that without reducing the impact of the
| program?
|
| There's evidence that spatial reasoning is important for
| learning Computer Science. There's evidence that men and
| women can both develop spatial reasoning skills. There's
| evidence that men in general get more practice than women
| in this regard, potentially putting women at a
| disadvantage in the program. What can you do to help
| level that playing field without weakening the material?
|
| Lastly, coming out against DEI programs whose goal is to
| hire based solely on merit and not race or other
| factors... not a good look. So you might want to specify
| which kind of DEI you're really against.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| There are very boring things that have been done in the
| past to increase diversity, like making sure recruiters
| actually went to black universities to recruit, instead
| of... mysteriously skipping them. Technically that cost
| something, but basically negligible.
|
| The problem cases are after that, when people get upset
| the numbers didn't change as much as they hoped, and
| decide to go do fiddle with the hiring process.
| munificent wrote:
| 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?
| typewithrhythm wrote:
| 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.
| janalsncm wrote:
| > the actual work to get more candidates from diverse
| backgrounds is difficult and takes time
|
| Yes, it's lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can
| fix inequality by biasing hiring practices.
|
| The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth
| inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated
| with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes
| fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is
| made even worse.
|
| All of the "wholistic evaluation" doublespeak and weird
| qualification exams in the world can't fix that.
| javajosh wrote:
| Complex philosophy has a way of devolving almost
| inevitably into a kind of "four legs good two legs bad"
| sort of way a la Animal Farm. In the same way dei seems
| to inevitably devolve into white people bad non-white
| people good. It doesn't really matter what it was
| originally. Philosophies that become popular will always
| devolve into some easy to understand but wrong version of
| itself. I personally believe this is the single biggest
| argument in favor of color blindness since it's
| relatively unambiguous.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| From my perspective, the issue is the activists/most
| motivated to work in jobs focused on and implement DEI
| appear to judge the outcome and speed of that outcome as
| the only important metrics of success in any and all
| fields. The methods of getting there can't be questioned
| without being cast a racist or right wing or anti-DEI in
| these circles so its self-reinforcing, and if you aren't
| in these circles you aren't listened to either.
| lmm wrote:
| > I don't think DEI itself provides the grounds... it being
| used as cover by a small number of activists to engage in
| discrimination of their own.
|
| That's exactly what providing the grounds means. It's like
| how the no-fly list provides a convenient way to trap your
| estranged wife outside the country. You can do a whole lot of
| racism, call it a DEI initiative and use the right
| terminology, and no-one bats an eye.
| spectraldrift wrote:
| The bar wasn't lowered at all. What happened was that the FAA
| stopped giving preferential treatment to a separate group--
| namely, CTI graduates--by replacing their streamlined path with
| a flawed biographical screening. Every candidate still has to
| pass the same rigorous training and certification.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, the FAA also leaked the official answers to the
| biographical screen to black interest groups so that they
| could teach black applicants to cheat on the screen.
| spectraldrift wrote:
| That's not exactly what happened. The article shows that an
| FAA employee leaked guidance on answering the biographical
| questionnaire to members of the NBCFAE. This wasn't an
| official FAA policy but a rogue action.
|
| Every candidate still had to pass the same rigorous
| training and certification process, which is extremely
| difficult and selective.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Every candidate still had to pass the same rigorous
| training and certification process, which is extremely
| difficult and selective.
|
| According to the post, candidates who weren't capable of
| passing the training were promoted into management
| positions instead.
|
| > This was [...] a rogue action aimed at reducing
| competition, not at giving any specific group an undue
| advantage.
|
| I'm honestly curious whether you think that sentence
| means something.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| It's hard to defend it as a rogue action, given:
|
| > The FAA investigated, clearing the NBCFAE and Snow of
| doing anything wrong in an internal investigation.
|
| They don't seem to have overlooked what he did either,
| they just determined that it was okay
| ars wrote:
| That's not an accurate way of describing this.
|
| The biographical screen was not flawed, it was designed to
| try to pass minority students at higher rates than non
| minority (for example that question on "your hardest topic"
| needing to be science). And it did exactly what it was
| designed to do.
|
| Which had the effect of dramatically reducing the available
| candidates.
|
| CTI never had preferential treatment, they simply were
| students who learned the skills needed to pass the actual
| ability test. That's not preferential treatment, that's
| exactly what school is meant to do.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| You created this account 1hr ago, and are already 3 comments
| in on this topic. In all your comments you're doing mental
| gymnastics on a pretty clear-cut case. _they have tapes_.
|
| Imagine, for a second, having tapes on someone saying "Our
| organization, he said, "wasn't for ~~Caucasians~~ <insert
| minority here>, it wasn't for, you know, the ~~white~~
| <insert minority here> male, it wasn't for an alien on Mars,"
| and he confirmed that he provided information "to minimize
| the competition."
|
| Would you still argue this the way you are doing? Would this
| still have been buried? Are you actually trying to argue this
| isn't a blatant case of racism?!
| spectraldrift wrote:
| Let's focus on the article and evidence rather than
| personal details or dismissive labels. Personal attacks
| don't add to the discussion and go against HN guidelines
| for civil and substantive debate.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| You are right. My bad. Please disregard the first line.
|
| The tapes thing still holds, tho. They have tapes. Care
| to comment on those?
| spectraldrift wrote:
| I disagree with the actions of the rogue employee who
| leaked those instructions, that's clearly wrong and
| illegal, and it's right to call that out. However, I
| believe there is some misunderstanding because sharing
| those answers doesn't mean the FAA lowered the bar. What
| happened was akin to someone unethically telling people
| how to cheat to get an interview referral at google- yet
| the actual subsequent qualification process, the rigorous
| training and certification, including the AT-SAT remained
| unchanged. The FAA still demands the same high standards
| from all candidates once they enter the pool.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| What if corporation A wanted to fill their CFO position.
| They put out an ad, but decided to interview folks only
| from ethnicity W. They then hired a qualified person from
| ethnicity W. When challenged about excluding from the
| process non-ethnicity W folks, they respond "but they
| still had to be qualified." Are you fine with that?
| spectraldrift wrote:
| Respectfully, that's a strawman and not what happened.
| Realistically the inverse happens more, and we often only
| interview people from certain backgrounds even though
| qualified people exist in other walks of life. Just look
| at the racial and wealth backgrounds of people who
| eventually become CEOs.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| In what context would it ever make sense to
| preferentially hire a population whose worst high school
| subject was science and lowest college grades were in
| history?
|
| Sharing the answers wasn't someone going rogue, it was
| the whole point.
| arkh wrote:
| Ok, let's focus on the article. Directly from it:
|
| > they concluded the following:
|
| > Snow was the one in the recording Reilly obtained. He
| explained to people how they should answer the
| biographical questionnaire. He advertised the telephone
| conference process via text, emphasizing that it was for
| members only, and saying things like "If you don't answer
| that your friends feel you are well respected you can
| cancel yourself out of this announcement." He instructed
| people to mention that they were NBCFAE members, as he
| explained it, "so the FAA would know [...] this applicant
| is being groomed [...] by an [...] FAA-approved and
| recognized association." Our organization, he said,
| "wasn't for Caucasians, it wasn't for, you know, the
| white male, it wasn't for an alien on Mars," and he
| confirmed that he provided information "to minimize the
| competition."14
| wbl wrote:
| CTI graduates had a much better rate of actually becoming ATC
| professionals. So why should the FAA ignore that instead of
| spin one up at Howard?
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'm in two of those groups and I feel like they ignore me and
| take me for granted.
| itronitron wrote:
| It's a myth that the bar is lowered for DEI hires.
| mistermann wrote:
| It isn't possible for you to know this.
| djohnston wrote:
| You should RTFA before making such an obviously disprovable
| assertion.
| MisterTea wrote:
| And you are backing this claim up with what exactly?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| There are methods of practicing DEI that don't lower the bar.
| There are methods of DEI that do lower the bar. There's no
| single answer to that question, it depends on how DEI is
| implemented in that particular case.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| You should listen to what Harj, a YC partner and former CEO
| of TripleByte an objective software engineer competency test
| for hiring, has to say about what many companies were trying
| to do in lowering the bar. He only admitted companies were
| doing this in the past week.
|
| https://x.com/jesslivingston/status/1884652626467303560
| russdill wrote:
| As someone who works in software, companies in general are
| not great at selecting software talent. The idea that there
| is some movable bar by which applicants are selected is
| clearly silly.
| adolph wrote:
| > it will really hurt the Democrats chances of success for the
| future
|
| "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
|
| Nevermind all the people who wanted and invested in attaining
| this seemingly awful but crucial job and got the shaft.
| navtoj wrote:
| wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect regarding
| social issues
| motorest wrote:
| > wow.. our society really has a tendency to overcorrect
| regarding social issues
|
| I don't agree. You're reacting to a one-sided, very partial
| critique of a policy change that no longer benefitted a
| specific group and the only tradeoff was a hypothetical and
| subjective drop of the hiring bar. This complain can also be
| equally dismissed as members of the privileged group
| complaining over the loss of privilege.
|
| The article is very blunt in the way their framed the problem:
| the in-group felt entitled to a job they felt was assured to
| them, but once the rules changed to have them compete on equal
| footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
|
| To make matters worse, this blend of easily arguable nitpicking
| is being used to kill any action or initiative that jeopardizes
| the best interests of privileged groups.
|
| Also, it should be stressed that this pitchfork drive against
| discriminate hiring practices is heard because these privileged
| groups believe their loss of privilege is a major injustice. In
| the meantime, society as a whole seemed to have muted any
| concern voiced by any persecuted and underprivileged group for
| not even having the chance of having a shot at these
| opportunities. Where's the outrage there?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The undisputed facts at hand are:
|
| * The FAA introduced a bigraphical questionnaire which
| screened out 90% of applicants.
|
| * The answers to this questionnaire were distributed to
| members of the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation
| Employees.
|
| * Members were explicitly told not to distribute the answers
| to other people, to reduce competition for admission.
|
| This is as bad a scandal as though the answers to the SAT
| were leaked.
| motorest wrote:
| > I'm... totally at a loss as to you you can get this
| takeaway from this piece. The undisputed facts at hand are:
|
| This is exactly the kind of one-sided nitpicking I pointed
| out. You purposely decided to omit the fact that the
| "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way
| applicants were evaluated, which eliminated the privilege
| of an in-group to avoid to compete with "walk-ons", i.e.,
| anyone outside of the privileged group. At best you're
| trying to dismiss the sheer existence of such an evaluation
| process by putting up strawmen over the implementation of
| this evaluation.
| cakealert wrote:
| [flagged]
| LightHugger wrote:
| Is "eliminated the privilege of" some kind of dogwhistle
| for being racist against white people? You're
| intentionally using circuitous language but that appears
| to be the message. People are individual human beings,
| discrimination on the basis of skin color is evil. Not
| sure why this is so hard to understand for some people.
| albedoa wrote:
| > You purposely decided to omit the fact that the
| "biological questionaire" was in fact a change in the way
| applicants were evaluated
|
| Man, you are now losing audiences that are sympathetic to
| your position. Are you accusing Manuel_D of edit-sniping
| you? Or are you claiming that the comment as it is
| currently written omits the above fact?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| For transparency, yes, I did remove that first sentence a
| few minutes after posting (but before the reply was
| posted). I felt it was too harsh in tone. I don't
| remember changing "biological" to "bigraphical"
| arkh wrote:
| > equal footing
|
| So, the candidates who were not members of some racially
| based association also got access to the answers to the first
| test?
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| > once the rules changed to have them compete on equal
| footing for the same position... That's suddenly a problem.
|
| It wasn't on equal footing, so your entire post is based on
| either a misunderstanding or you're just blatantly trolling
| in which case well done, I totally bit.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| 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're right
| because it is the current best practice.
|
| The psychological intent is to outsource accountability and
| responsibility to these best practices. I'd argue that goal
| isn't always consciously undertaken. I'm not asserting
| malevolence, but more a reluctance to dig into the firehose of
| industrial knowledge that gets spewed at us 24/7.
|
| I suspect this is not just confined to software dev. It's a
| sort of anti-intellectualism, ultimately. And it's hard to cast
| it as that, because I don't think we should tell people they're
| wrong for triaging emotional energy. But it also isn't right
| that we're okay with people generally checking out as much as
| possible.
| spectraldrift wrote:
| The article presents a dramatic narrative that implies the FAA
| deliberately lowered its hiring standards by replacing the
| traditional system with a biographical questionnaire. It's clear
| from the account that many qualified CTI graduates (note: CTI
| schools are third parties) were unfairly filtered out from the
| applicant pool, and there's documented evidence of a cheating
| scandal that casts further doubt on the process. However, the
| reality is nuanced. Although the new process may have altered who
| got to start the journey, every candidate still had to pass the
| FAA's rigorous and extremely selective training and
| certification-- which remain the true measure of an air traffic
| controller's capability. In an ideal world, we could put everyone
| through this process to see who passes.
|
| Critics argue that this change, driven in part by diversity
| goals, compromised the quality of candidates entering the
| pipeline, but the actual FAA hiring and training criteria
| remained exactly the same as before. It's an extremely difficult
| and selective program. The ongoing issues in air traffic control,
| such as understaffing and controller fatigue, stem from a range
| of systemic challenges rather than a simple lowering of the
| qualification bar.
|
| This isn't a straightforward case of DEI lowering standards; it's
| about how changing the initial screening affected a well-
| established pathway. The FAA aimed to broaden the applicant pool,
| and while that decision led to unfair outcomes in unusual
| directions, controversy, and discontent among CTI graduates, it
| doesn't translate to less competent controllers.
| mik3y wrote:
| A very well-written and persuasive critique, thank you for it.
|
| (And god I hope you're not a state-of-the-art summarization
| LLM.)
| gundmc wrote:
| It's less about lowering standards and more about artificially
| disqualifying thousands of qualified candidates based on their
| race.
| garbagewoman wrote:
| if people who have been historically quantifiably
| discriminated against and disqualified based on that
| discrimination, how can that imbalance be corrected?
| widowlark wrote:
| By helping to make them qualified to pass the tests.
| squigz wrote:
| How, exactly? Perhaps by encouraging schools to accept
| more people from those groups?
| widowlark wrote:
| more isnt the problem. or its not the first problem.
|
| >predictions suggested only 3% of black applicants would
| pass.
|
| Thats not '3% of the applicants are black'. It's '3% of
| black applicants pass the test'
|
| Starting there alone would yield meaningful results - at
| the end of the day, you gotta pass the test. Changing the
| test so more people pass is illogical and dangerous.
| squigz wrote:
| Okay, but... HOW do you enable more black people to pass
| the test?
| widowlark wrote:
| You offer more and better training for everyone. It's not
| the job of the organization itself to enable their
| success - just offer a fair test. Others, like the
| organization mentioned in this article, can and should
| focus on specific constituent representation. However,
| the goal of getting more of a specific group into an
| organization is NOT more important than the safety and
| efficacy of the organization.
| drawkward wrote:
| But but but I was told that DEI lowered standards
| jsnell wrote:
| How many people (in absolute and relative terms) from each
| cohort passed/failed the training program and how long did they
| take to do so? Did the numbers change with the two policy
| changes described in the article?
|
| If there was no change (or an increase) in the absolute numbers
| of passing graduates, that would support what you're saying. If
| there was a drop in the absolute numbers, it implies that
| there's at the very least _fewer_ competent controllers. (And
| changes in the relative numbers tell us about whether the
| efficiency of the program changed.)
|
| Given the litigation and FOIA requests around this, it seems
| like this data should be floating around, and should be fairly
| conclusive for one side.
| gedy wrote:
| > This isn't a straightforward case of DEI lowering standards;
| it's about how changing the initial screening affected a well-
| established pathway
|
| It seems like you are mincing words, similar to my previous
| company that wanted to hire more women. They started attending
| the women-only hiring convention and we could only interview
| from those candidates (HR filtered out the rest). So while we
| hired the best candidates we could, on average they weren't
| that great, they just passed a minimum bar.
| drawkward wrote:
| the average engineer is not 10x.
| scott_w wrote:
| This is a truly excellent article and shines a light on a real
| problem and how it affects people in a real way. It's an example
| of something that I'd seen rumblings of in left leaning media:
| that DEI was being implemented in the laziest and stupidest
| possible ways (though the ire was mostly directed at marketing
| efforts by corporations).
|
| A story of a smaller, not that harmful, example of this laziness
| and stupidity: I was talking to a friend just a couple of weeks
| ago who'd left software engineering to become a paramedic around
| 2012 after experiencing misogyny in the workplace. A recruiter
| reached out on LinkedIn a few weeks ago about applying to a
| software engineering role. Her reaction was understandably
| irritated that the basic skill of reading her work history seemed
| missing before reaching out.
|
| I do think that, particularly in the USA, the refusal of the left
| in power to critically engage with this topic in a thoughtful way
| has left the space open to Trump and people like him to turn it
| into a toxic rallying cry for supporters. I see something similar
| in the UK where Labour ministers are slammed by left leaning
| media for taking positions to address the public's concerns in a
| way that's more thoughtful that how the Tories were handling it,
| as the far right in the country has toxified the issue for them.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's an example of something that I'd seen rumblings of in
| left leaning media: that DEI was being implemented in the
| laziest and stupidest possible ways
|
| That's not news; it's been true for several decades. There
| isn't another legal way to do it.
|
| The least harmful thing you can do, assuming you need to meet
| hiring quotas, is to specify that you have X slots for whites
| and Y slots for nonwhites, and then hire by merit into those
| separate groups.
|
| That's so clean that it was outlawed very quickly. So instead,
| you still have X slots for whites and Y slots for nonwhites,
| but you have to pretend that they're all available to
| everybody, and you have to stop using objective metrics to
| hire, because doing that would make you unable to meet quota.
|
| And you have to call Asians "white".
| scott_w wrote:
| You fell into the instant trap I was talking about by
| equating DEI to "hiring quotas." That's a lazy and stupid
| approach to the problem of increasing opportunities for
| people from disadvantaged backgrounds. The solution is,
| unfortunately, much more difficult and requires work across
| society to achieve it.
| ars wrote:
| In theory sure, in practice DEI = hiring quotas.
|
| The definition you _want_ DEI to have: Extra training for
| DEI students, does not exist in the real world. And if it
| did no one is complaining about it.
|
| > That's a lazy and stupid approach
|
| Exactly. Which is why DEI has becomes such a negative term.
| You want a different definition, but that's simply not how
| it's used.
| scott_w wrote:
| To avoid repeating myself:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302
|
| > Exactly. Which is why DEI has becomes such a negative
| term. You want a different definition, but that's simply
| not how it's used.
|
| No, the reason has been the refusal of people in
| positions of power to engage thoughtfully with the
| genuine criticism.
| int_19h wrote:
| It is kind of inevitable when you think of it. Regardless
| of how one implements DEI, its success is still going to
| be measured by looking at the demographic breakdown. So
| even if the implementation isn't literally quotas, the
| metric is - and once you have the metric, everything else
| is optimized around that. If quotas cannot be used
| directly, then other mechanisms will be introduced that
| amount to the same thing in practice (as with Harvard
| character assessment etc).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You're imagining that there's ever been a meaning of DEI
| other than quotas, but there hasn't. That's the way it
| began and the only thing it's ever done or wanted.
| scott_w wrote:
| Then maybe you should see how it's done in other
| countries and companies. I've worked on hiring and we've
| never once lowered our standards just to get in a black
| candidate. What I've seen done is conscious outreach to
| increase diversity of applicants, changing language to
| increase applications from women, blind reviews where you
| can't see the name or details of the applicant (to
| minimise subconscious bias).
|
| All of these actually happen and, to a greater or lesser
| extent, do help without discriminating against white
| applicants. How do I know? I ended up only hiring two
| white men in that particular round!
| modo_mario wrote:
| >conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants
|
| Which involved doingwhat exactly?
| scott_w wrote:
| 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.
| lordloki wrote:
| So you started out your hiring practices focused solely
| on one race...and you don't think it's racist?
| scott_w wrote:
| Weird how I knew performative outrage would be the
| response, just as night follows day.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| It's not performative outrage, it's a statement of fact.
| You didn't merely widen the net, you spearfished
| candidates of the right race and ignored those of the
| wrong ones. Regardless of your intentions, how is that
| _not_ racist?
| scott_w wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Try again.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| > In our case, the recruitment team started by only
| headhunting target candidates. Once we exhausted that
| pool, they would headhunt any candidate.
|
| "Target candidate" = those in minority groups, yes?
| scott_w wrote:
| Before answering your question, I quickly checked your
| history to confirm my suspicion that you don't give a
| fuck about racism unless it's against white people and
| found this gem:
|
| > You're assuming there is no genetic component
| whatsoever to human skills and interests, and the only
| reason women are not studying computer science/car
| repair/welding is sexism.
|
| Your outrage against our hiring practice is 100%
| performative. So no, I'm not going to engage with you any
| further.
| Spivak wrote:
| What do you expect the approach to be when your goal is
| to go out into the world and find qualified people in
| demographics you aren't getting naturally in your
| applicant pool? If you want to hire women software
| engineers you solicit applicants from "women in tech"
| events and groups.
|
| The belief, whether you agree with it or not, is that
| diverse teams produce better results. If your natural
| applicant pool is all dudes then your job as a headhunter
| is to find a woman who you think can beat them on merit.
|
| The other way you do it is you hire them on as juniors
| where everyone's resumes might as well be written on
| toilet paper and "most qualified applicant" is a bit of a
| joke and train them up.
| sneedle wrote:
| >diverse teams produce better results
|
| Obviously untrue. Diverse teams result in workforces that
| are harder to unionize because they have less in common.
| They introduce language and cultural barriers that
| disrupt communication. They hinder innovation because the
| types of people that want diverse workforces are
| ironically never interested in diverse ideas. They
| produce worse results across the board, which explains
| enshittification in literally all areas touched by DEI
| and why the US is losing the tech race to China
| specifically.
| leftandright wrote:
| 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 mouth and make me less inclined
| to apply or encourage anyone else to apply with your
| company.
| modo_mario wrote:
| 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?
| rayiner wrote:
| Except that's what it becomes in practice. As soon as you
| inject race into these decisions, it becomes de facto
| racial quotas and preferences:
| https://nypost.com/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-
| acti...
|
| It took like five minutes for Biden to start deploying SBA
| loans whites weren't eligible for and for NASDAQ to create
| diversity quotas for boards. Racial gerrymandering is
| always the ultimate goal of this stuff.
| flocciput wrote:
| > there isn't another legal way to do it
|
| The least harmful way to improve hiring outcomes for
| qualified individuals from historically marginalized groups
| is to increase their representation in your hiring pool.
| That's fundamentally it.
|
| This means making the effort to recruit at e.g. career fairs
| for Black engineers and conferences for women in STEM in
| addition to broader venues, and to do outreach at low-income
| high schools that makes it clear to bright kids trapped in
| poverty that there is a path to success for them.
|
| The "clean" solution you have presented IS the lazy route.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The least harmful way to improve hiring outcomes for
| qualified individuals from historically marginalized groups
| is to increase their representation in your hiring pool.
| That's fundamentally it.
|
| Except that that won't actually improve hiring outcomes, if
| by "improve hiring outcomes" you mean "hire more
| individuals from historically marginalized groups".
|
| You're saying that hiring is a pipeline problem. And that's
| true. But every prior stage of the process, including the
| stage where children are too young to enroll in
| kindergarten, exhibits exactly the same pipeline problem.
| There is no point at which there are enough "qualified
| individuals from historically marginalized groups" to meet
| demand. If you want "improved" hiring outcomes, the only
| thing you can do is accept that better hiring means worse
| on-the-job performance.
| tzs wrote:
| > You're saying that hiring is a pipeline problem. And
| that's true. But every prior stage of the process,
| including the stage where children are too young to
| enroll in kindergarten, exhibits exactly the same
| pipeline problem. There is no point at which there are
| enough "qualified individuals from historically
| marginalized groups" to meet demand. If you want
| "improved" hiring outcomes, the only thing you can do is
| accept that better hiring means worse on-the-job
| performance.
|
| So if we take a random assortment of preschool age
| children and give them all the the same resources and
| education we are still going to find when they come out
| of the other end of the pipeline as adults and ready to
| work those from historically marginalized groups are
| still going to be underrepresented unless we lower hiring
| standards?
| pjc50 wrote:
| > that DEI was being implemented in the laziest and stupidest
| possible ways
|
| This is .. certainly something that might be happening, but
| it's also something that a lot of people are lying about. It's
| become increasingly difficult to find out what actually
| happened once it's been filtered through media, social media,
| activists, and algorithmic propaganda.
|
| What happens if every single instance of "DEI overreach" is
| overreported, but incidents of actual racism aren't?
|
| > slammed by left leaning media for taking positions to address
| the public's concerns in a way that's more thoughtful that how
| the Tories were handling it, as the far right in the country
| has toxified the issue for them.
|
| Again, something a lot of people are lying or selectively
| reporting about. Which is why it's become toxic in the first
| place. You could occasionally see the same people who were
| complaining about Rotherham not being investigated complain
| when other allegations of sexual assault _were_ being
| investigated ( "cancel culture"). Or not investigated, such as
| the Met police rapist.
|
| Investigations of the form "what actually happened here, who
| was actually responsible, what should have been done
| differently, and what could be done differently in the future"
| simply get _destroyed_ by very loud demands for racially
| discriminatory violence, culminating in rioters trying to burn
| people alive in a hotel.
| rayiner wrote:
| It's absolutely not being over reported. In the last four
| years, we have had the Supreme Court smack down Harvard for
| blatantly discriminating against whites and Asians (granting
| admission to black and Hispanic applicants with similar
| academic credentials at 3-10x the rate). A federal court
| smacked down Biden for racially discriminating in granting
| SBA loans. Another federal court smacked down NASDAQ for
| diversity quotas for board seats.
|
| Just personally, in the last four years:
|
| 1) The acting Dean at my law school held a struggle session
| where white people declared they were "white supremacists"
|
| 2) My kids' school adopted racially segregated affinity
| groups. My daughter was invited to go to the weekly "black
| girl magic" lunch once a month (because I guess half south
| Asian = quarter black in the DEI hierarchy). Following that
| lead, a kid tried to kick my daughter out of a group chat for
| her circle of friends by making it black-kids only.
|
| 3) I've had coworkers ask if I count as "diverse" for
| purposes of a client contract and have had to perform
| diversity jigs during client meetings.
|
| I'm not even going to list all the alienating behaviors from
| overly empathetic but deeply ignorant white people--the likes
| of which I never encountered living in a nearly all white
| town in the 1990s.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| In the UK Black was an umbrella term that included South
| Asians. In the US pre 1965 era Bengalis especially tended
| to integrate into the black community (cf. Vivek Bald's
| book). My Punjabi great grandfather married a light skinned
| mixed-race woman in the 1920s.
| scott_w wrote:
| > This is .. certainly something that might be happening, but
| it's also something that a lot of people are lying about
|
| For the avoidance of doubt, I 100% agree that right-wing
| media is telling a lot of outright lies and you pointed out
| some good examples. However, I have seen left-leaning
| criticise tokenism in companies' DEI efforts. Philosophy Tube
| and Unlearning Economics are 2 examples off the top of my
| head.
|
| > Investigations of the form "what actually happened here,
| who was actually responsible, what should have been done
| differently, and what could be done differently in the
| future" simply get destroyed by very loud demands for
| racially discriminatory violence, culminating in rioters
| trying to burn people alive in a hotel.
|
| I disagree with this because I feel it misrepresents the
| riots this summer as a genuine expression of rage. It was
| not. It was organised violence by hardcore Nazis and football
| hooligans bussed in from Stoke to smash up a job centre in
| Sunderland and attempt to murder women and children.
| account42 wrote:
| > What happens if every single instance of "DEI overreach" is
| overreported, but incidents of actual racism aren't?
|
| DEI _is_ actual racism.
| bena wrote:
| > I do think that, particularly in the USA, the refusal of the
| left in power to critically engage with this topic in a
| thoughtful way has left the space open to Trump and people like
| him to turn it into a toxic rallying cry for supporters.
|
| You've said this, but in this thread alone you've seen the
| opposition refusing to engage with the topic thoughtfully. They
| just repeat their rhetoric ad nauseum.
|
| I don't think critical thinking and thoughtfulness from the
| left, or lack thereof, is the issue here.
|
| I think the issue is simple, rhetoric beats nuance, every time.
| Rhetoric is the rock to nuance's scissors. We need to find the
| paper.
| mistermann wrote:
| The paper "is pedantic" and rejected by everyone except
| "pedants".
| scott_w wrote:
| > You've said this, but in this thread alone you've seen the
| opposition refusing to engage with the topic thoughtfully.
| They just repeat their rhetoric ad nauseum.
|
| I don't disagree with you, however I singled out the USA
| because, over the period of this article, both Obama and
| Biden were both president. Ultimately, the people arguing
| against my point _can_ point to kernels of truth and of
| things that did happen. While I disagree with their
| diagnosis, I _can 't_ point to the fact that the issues were
| recognised and attempts made to address them. And,
| ultimately, Trump _did_ win the presidential election
| partially off the back of this!
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Is your friend interested perhaps in getting back in at the
| intersection of EMS and software engineering? She is welcome to
| contact me at my HN handle at gmail or my LinkedIn from the who
| wants to be hired post. We might have an opportunity for her
| she might find agreeable.
| scott_w wrote:
| Unfortunately not. She soured on the profession quite badly
| quite a while ago and she's never expressed a desire to go
| back.
| michaelteter wrote:
| > the basic skill of reading her work history seemed missing
| before reaching out
|
| 70% of the many recruiter messages I receive are like this.
| This began 20 years ago and has gotten increasingly worse.
|
| It has nothing to do with your topic.
| scott_w wrote:
| >> the laziest and stupidest possible ways
|
| > 70% of the many recruiter messages I receive are like this.
|
| You're not disputing my core point.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| > left software engineering to become a paramedic around 2012
| after experiencing misogyny
|
| Said who? Maybe she wasn't a good developer or a teammate, how
| do you know? Did you talk to her ex-coworkers?
| scott_w wrote:
| You're exhibiting all the behaviours that push women out of
| Software Engineering right in this post.
| stackedinserter wrote:
| Got it, millennia old "listen to the other side" principle
| pushes women out of software engineering. Such a pity.
| sschueller wrote:
| I don't have a problem with hiring qualified people instead of
| meeting quotas but the fact that the ones pushing this are them
| selves the most unqualified people is just beyond me.
| justonceokay wrote:
| That's because it isn't actually about qualification. It's
| actually about a lack of accountability. Trump wants everyone
| to be able to hire their friends just like he does, optics be
| damned. I think a lot of people actually agree with this at a
| visceral level.
|
| Left leaning people are more concerned with power controlled by
| nepotism and "unfair" connections. To me that is a kind of sour
| grapes view fueled by too many participation trophies.
|
| A government full of cronies sucks but we can at least hope to
| get our own cronies in at some point. A
| meritocratic/technocratic government sounds like a dystopian
| novel.
| solfox wrote:
| In your view, is that how all businesses should be run as
| well? Hiring your least qualified friends? Surely, cronyism
| exists in corporate America, but I'd venture a guess that a
| company run in this way would fail almost immediately. No,
| this style of management and hiring is more like that of a
| crime boss - and it's not about friendships - it's about
| LOYALTY.
| TehCorwiz wrote:
| They don't "fail" as such. They burn through the money,
| spread it around, and then declare bankruptcy while
| everyone involved is somehow wealthier. It's kleptocracy.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| This is kinda becoming a thing with VC based startups.
| But beyond that, where does the money come from?
| rbanffy wrote:
| Most of Trump's money always came from investors that
| bought in his enterprises.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| >A government full of cronies sucks...
|
| >A meritocratic...government sounds like a dystopian novel.
|
| So nepotism + networking = bad, but meritocracy also =
| bad...?
|
| >...we can at least hope to get our own cronies in at some
| point.
|
| OR you reduce the risk vector and limit the size & scope of
| government. Most people agree with your earlier premises, so
| why would I support adding powers to a structure where folks
| I strongly disagree with will lead that structure ~50% of the
| time?
| cratermoon wrote:
| > So nepotism + networking = bad, but meritocracy also =
| bad...?
|
| The downsides of meritocracy invalidate the almost
| idolatrous worship of the idea seen in the tech field.
|
| Tolstoy wrote "It is principally through this false idea of
| inequality, and the intoxication of power and of servility
| resulting from it, that men associated in a state
| organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to their
| conscience without the least scruple or remorse."[1]
|
| See also:
|
| Sandel, Michael J. The Tyranny of Merit : What's Become of
| the Common Good?. [S.l.]: Penguin Books, 2021.
|
| Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study
| in Ethics and Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
| https://archive.org/details/moralmanimmorals00nieb_0.
|
| [1] Tolstoy, Leo,. 1894. "'The kingdom of God is within
| you' Christianity not as a mystic religion but as a new
| theory of life;" New York: Cassell Pub. Co. /z-wcorg/.
| 1894. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/385976
| 1.html.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Biggest issue with Democrats is learning that "People are
| born with different abilities."
|
| Biggest issue with Republicans is learning that "People
| are born with different abilities."
| cratermoon wrote:
| Thank you for your analysis. It is both penetrating and
| diffuse.
| sollewitt wrote:
| Sour grapes rather than valuing fairness?
|
| Elementary school kids are huge on fairness and injustice. It
| seems like it's built in to facilitate group social dynamics
| in great apes. It takes a lot of sophistication to be able to
| frame valuing fairness as a character flaw.
| drawkward wrote:
| elementary kids are also some of the most violent people
| per capita.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3283570/
|
| Downvote if you like, but kids' community values are
| typically enforced with antisocial behavior
| paulddraper wrote:
| Well then it demonstrates their sincerity I suppose.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I'm not sure about most unqualified but I will say that it's
| people the bubble who are most impacted by these policies.
|
| The elite are getting hired no matter what. It's the average
| person who was just barely above the bar that gets bumped to
| make room for a quota based hire that really feels the impact.
| K0balt wrote:
| Working effectively in ATC without burnout hanging over your head
| constantly favours a certain amount of neurodivergence. A certain
| kind of delight in detail, delight in predictable progression of
| system. The overload needs to invigorate , not fatigue.
|
| This doesn't make ATC professionals better people. It doesn't
| make them smarter. It doesn't make them superhuman. It makes them
| better at a certain specific kind of work, and the same traits
| probably make them worse at many others.
|
| We need to stop treating neurodiversity as if it's a scale from
| good to bad. It's just a kind of diversity.
|
| Just like physical diversity. Strong, big frames make a person
| better suited to certain kinds of work. Lithe, diminutive builds
| make great aircraft mechanics. Thin, tall builds favour other
| work, short and stocky morphology makes other jobs more
| comfortable and easier.
|
| Why should neurodiversity be any different? People are good at
| different things. Genetics plays a huge role in morphological and
| neurological development. is there really any difference, or is
| neurodiversity just hidden morphological diversity?
|
| Different is not a value judgement.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| In case you [need citation] of this analysis, please see the
| 1999 "documentary" Pushing Tin, starring John Cusack. :)
| timewizard wrote:
| Not all people are the same.
|
| Their differences make them better suited to some jobs than
| others.
|
| Neurodiversity is a useless reframing of something
| exceptionally simple.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What's a better word?
| ironmagma wrote:
| Autism...
| K0balt wrote:
| That is really not what I meant. I meant that people have
| a variety of innate cognitive strengths and weaknesses,
| similar to physical strengths and weaknesses. Clinical
| autism and other disorders are when a cognitive trait
| becomes so extreme that it represents a significant
| obstacle to normal functioning in the context of your
| cultural environment.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| innate personality types?
| K0balt wrote:
| Maybe it's become politicised or fetishized and we need a new
| word again. But yeah, that was kinda my point. Hire people
| that thrive in that environment.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Neither the FAA situation nor the article are about
| neurodiversity.
|
| > We need to stop treating neurodiversity as if it's a scale
| from good to bad. It's just a kind of diversity.
|
| In the situation of hiring people for specific jobs, filtering
| for a perceived "neurodiversity" would have no scientific
| basis.
|
| Fortunately, hiring doesn't work this way. The idea is to hire
| for people who are qualified for and capable of the job, not to
| try to evaluate questionable proxies like neurodiversity.
| K0balt wrote:
| 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.
| bimguy wrote:
| 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.
| K0balt wrote:
| 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.
| legitster wrote:
| 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 extra
| wary of stories like this being massaged.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| The cheating element is only _part_ of it, and the dominant
| regime at the time downplayed / ignored the DEI elements
| because that was supported by their ideology...like a sacred
| cow. Litigating "disparate impact" cases across any category
| became a successful attack vector against capitalist
| structures, and supported by Democratic leadership.
|
| This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but
| rather exposing the rest of the iceberg that was otherwise
| concealed. Both pieces are relevant.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda,"
| but rather exposing the rest of the iceberg that was
| otherwise concealed.
|
| Our Blessed Homeland vs. Their Barbarous Wastes
| s3r3nity wrote:
| Their Blessed Homeland vs. Our Barbarous Wastes
| legitster wrote:
| > and the dominant regime at the time downplayed / ignored
| the DEI elements because that was supported by their ideology
|
| In the eye of the beholder. The current regime is upplaying
| the DEI elements because of their ideology.
|
| The difference though is, unless everyone involved has a time
| machine, using current cultural agenda items and going back
| in time and attributing them to people is always going to be
| wild speculation.
| SR2Z wrote:
| > using current cultural agenda items and going back in
| time and attributing them to people is always going to be
| wild speculation.
|
| I'm as blue as they come, but let's not mince words.
|
| This was a racial equity policy. Like a lot of them, it was
| designed by idiots and/or racists.
|
| Much like the elite college admissions lawsuit, we don't
| need to guess at people's ideology - they WROTE DOWN that
| the cognitive test "disadvantaged" black applicants and so
| a biographical questionnaire was needed to re-advantage
| them.
|
| When Trump opened his mouth to blame DEI for the crash,
| about 95% of what he said was hateful, totally-made-up
| bullshit. Despite that and speaking practically, DEI had a
| significant role to play in the ATC understaffing during
| the crash.
|
| I really wish that our party was better at calling out
| crazy people within our ranks, ESPECIALLY when they do
| stuff that's guaranteed to alienate a solid chunk of the
| country just based on if "their worst subject in school was
| science" or whatever other deranged, racist proxy for race
| they come up with.
| legitster wrote:
| The difference between this and the college scandal is
| that there were limited numbers of seats at colleges, so
| to putting in an underqualified white student meant you
| had to pull an overqualified Asian student.
|
| The situation here was the ATC was chronically
| understaffed and unable to fill positions. So an effort
| for them to boost applications makes sense even under
| non-DEI principles.
| jtbayly wrote:
| If they wanted _more_ applicants, then they shouldn't
| have been _disqualifying_ good applicants on the basis of
| their biography.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense whatsoever given the facts on
| the facts on the ground. Have you read the article at
| all?
|
| What we are talking about here is people who already
| finished the ATC school and aced the technical aptitude
| test, but got filtered out by the incoherently test which
| was explicitly designed to filter out people of
| undesirable race at higher rates. It would make no sense
| to filter out if they needed to cast wider net due to
| being short staffed. Rather, it's more likely they are
| understaffed precisely because they filter out eligible
| and eager people in order to meet race quotas.
|
| It's hard to get across to people the mechanicsof DEI
| policies as actually practiced, because it sounds too
| insane to be real, so people (like probably you) dismiss
| it as just another instance of crazy Republican
| screeching.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > The difference between this and the college scandal is
| that there were limited numbers of seats at colleges, so
| to putting in an underqualified white student meant you
| had to pull an overqualified Asian student.
|
| I know this is a tangent, but in case people read this,
| they may get the wrong idea. While some elite
| universities like Harvard have a cap on how many people
| they admit (leading to the displacement you refer to),
| the vast majority of universities (including probably all
| top public universities) do not have a cap. Simply put,
| if you met the (academic) criteria, you got admission.
| That they also admitted people who did not meet that
| criteria had no impact on your admission.
|
| (Sorry - just hear this complaint too often from people
| who did not get into "regular", non-elite universities.
| No, affirmative action isn't the reason you did not get
| admission. You just weren't good enough).
| varloid wrote:
| The ATC academy can only handle ~1800 students per year.
| The issue is high failure rates at the academy and then
| at the facilities graduates are sent after graduation;
| increasing the quality of applicants should be the FAA's
| #1 goal.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > they WROTE DOWN that the cognitive test "disadvantaged"
| black applicants
|
| Which would mean entirely different things if (a) that
| were true (b) that were not true.
|
| It sounds as if you are completely convinced that it is
| not true, but what is your conviction based on, and why
| do you think they believed the opposite (or perhaps you
| take the position that they did not, in fact, believe
| this) ?
| davorak wrote:
| I agree with calling people out.
|
| > This was a racial equity policy. Like a lot of them, it
| was designed by idiots and/or racists.
|
| So a policy can be labeled an 'equity policy' and have
| nothing to do with equity in either intent or result,
| which is what I would expect from an 'equity policy'
| written by a racist.
|
| Call it corruption, call it fraudulent activity, but it
| does it seems like there was only lip service to equity.
| So why would you call it DEI or equity or anything
| similar?
|
| Company A: Our equity policy is to only hire white men!
| We are proud of how we are striving towards equity with
| our new DEI policy.
|
| observer: Damn those DEI policies ruining everything.
|
| To me it is obvious you do not blame 'DEI policies' but
| the leadership and corruption in Company A.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If I had to blame anything on the Democrats it is this:
|
| Valuing competence is one thing. Valuing diversity is another
| thing. You can have neither, either one, or both. The
| democrats make a conspicuous show of not valuing competence
| in addition to making some noises about diversity.
|
| Nobody said Barack Obama was an affirmative action case, no,
| he was one of the greatest politicians of the first quarter-
| century. On the other hand I feel that many left-leaning
| politicians make conspicuous displays of incompetence, I'd
| particularly call out Karen Bass, who would fall for whatever
| Scientology was selling and then make excuses for it. I think
| they want donors to know that whatever they are they aren't
| capable, smart and ambitious like Ralph Nader but rather they
| don't connect the dots between serving donors and what effect
| it has on their constituents.
|
| When Bass was running for mayor of L.A. in a contested
| election for which she had to serve the whole community she
| went through a stunning transformation and really seemed to
| "get it", all the duckspeak aimed at reconciling a lefty
| constituency and rightist donors went away.
|
| Nowhere is this disregard for competence more conspicuous in
| the elections where a senile or disabled white man is running
| against a lunatic. Fetterman beat Oz (they said, it's
| nothing, he just has aphasia, except his job is to _speak_
| for Pennsylvania) but they held on to Biden until the last
| minute against Trump and his replacement lost.
|
| Democrats need to make it clear that you can have both, but
| shows of competence increase the conflict between being a
| party that is a favorite of donors and being a party that has
| mass appeal. Being just a little sheepish and stupid is the
| easy way to reconcile those but we see how that went in 2024.
| techapple wrote:
| I would more likely say that the qualities that make one
| popular or wanting to deal with the bullshit of managing
| Americans disputes are in opposition to the qualities that
| make one qualified. See: almost every politician that's not
| a Democrat. Incompetence is staggeringly bipartisan.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| But you also have MTG who literally believes "they" control
| the weather so I'm not sure exactly why you single
| democrats out here or even the it to any kind of ideology
| specific consequence.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I don't completely understand it but Republicans manage
| cognitive dissonance better.
|
| Around 1994 I was interested in Trotskyism and Anarchism
| and wasn't sure if we needed to get the 4th international
| back in the US or start a 5th international.
|
| I believed in this really stupid kind of vanguardism
| where if you put up the biggest and most radical flag you
| would get everyone to rally behind it. I reformed because
| I got tough love from black nationalists who told me in
| no uncertain words they wanted to decide things for
| themselves and not get bossed around by some white guy.
|
| A modern form of this involves the adding of random
| stripes to the rainbow flag which means that when you
| really do put that flag up you won't have anybody under
| it, at least not when the going gets tough, when it
| rains, etc.
|
| For one thing left-wing movements have this divergent
| character where they feel they have to follow all these
| people who are subaltern for different reasons. Right-
| wing movements have this convergent character that moves
| towards something which makes it much easier form them to
| manage inconsistencies.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > manage cognitive dissonance better.
|
| what on earth does this mean?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It means he's neck deep in outgroup homogeneity.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Having contradictory beliefs that don't really make sense
| if you look at them together but still listening to _The
| Rush Limbaugh Show_ , still showing up and really voting
| Republican consistently, etc.
|
| On the other hand leftists are always telling Hispanic
| people that they have to have solidarity with black
| people, telling trans people they have to have solidarity
| with animal rights people (or the animals?), etc. And...
| crickets. The people never quite tell you that they don't
| agree with you but they don't really give money, they
| don't really listen to you, they don't really turn out at
| your march, they don't really vote for you, etc.
|
| I've been there, done that, and lived it. If you listen
| to people you make a little more progress than you make
| by just flying a really big flag. The antipattern is
| common in articles from Trotskyite papers which you will
| find collected here:
|
| https://www.wsws.org/en?redirect=true
|
| Often there is some issue that the people involved see as
| an isolated issue, but the Trotskyite always wants to
| smack it together like a Katamari Ball [1] with other
| issues and conclude _a socialist revolution is necessary_
| and the answer from most people is [2] [3] [4].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(Beatles_song)
|
| [3] "But if you go carryin' pictures of Chairman Mao: You
| ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow"
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGLGzRXY5Bw
| LastTrain wrote:
| [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.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| 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 Democrats are getting paid
| to lose.
| biosonar wrote:
| and yet Labour in less than a year in office have manage
| to underperform the Tories to a disasterous degree for
| the UK
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| > When Bass was running for mayor of L.A. ... she went
| through a stunning transformation and really seemed to "get
| it"....
|
| This is what _always_ happens to politicians. Their mumbles
| become coherent. Shyness fades. Vague dithering words
| transform to bold calls to action. Infirm display vitality.
|
| This is what politicians _do_. Otherwise they would be
| school teachers and programmers.
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| From an external (not US) PoV, it might also be that DEI was
| too much of a sacred cow before to call a spade a spade.
| legitster wrote:
| Maybe! But in this case, the bulk of the mistakes by the FAA
| happened in the 2012-2014. In the middle of the Obama
| administration, but well before the bulk of the really
| controversial post-BLM DEI stuff that the current
| administration is largely attacking.
| Covzire wrote:
| It's all connected, DEI(B) is just the latest revision of
| the beast.
| aikinai wrote:
| DEI quotas have been around for decades. We just used to
| call it affirmative action and it was far less aggressive
| and blatant.
| SR2Z wrote:
| It was MORE blatant and transparent, which IMO is the
| bare minimum for government-sanctioned racism. If we are
| going to do AA, we owe it to EVERYONE to make it clear
| exactly how and when we will do it. Sneaking it in
| disingenuously will rightfully piss people off.
| cyberax wrote:
| Affirmative action is strictly _better_ than some of the
| DEI nonsense. With affirmative action, you just reserve a
| bunch of positions for minorities, and then give them out
| based on merit.
|
| With most of DEI, you either tweak the criteria to make
| job positions easier to get for minorities, or you lower
| your standards.
| dowager_dan99 wrote:
| > to call a spade a spade
|
| intentional? one of the dumber virtue-signaling "no-nos" from
| the worst of DEI.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Yes. It was also often career suicide to criticize DEI
| indicatives.
| adolph wrote:
| Even if the criticism was intended to be constructive.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideological_Echo_Cha
| m...
| immibis wrote:
| 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").
| lmm wrote:
| People who just don't like pakistani people spend a lot
| of time talking about pakistani child rape gangs. Does
| that mean we should ignore the pakistani child rape
| gangs?
| davorak wrote:
| What part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google's_Ideo
| logical_Echo_Cham...
|
| serves the role of "pakistani child rape gangs"? Right
| now the analogy does not makes sense to me. "pakistani
| child rape gangs" are reprehensible, nothing that extreme
| comes to mind when I think of James Damore's memo or
| similar.
| adolph wrote:
| Why would a person misrepresent the memo when the file is
| there for anyone to read?
| fallingknife wrote:
| From an internal US pov, yes you are correct that's exactly
| what the culture is here. Call out the obviously lowered
| standards for women and minority candidates and expect severe
| consequences to your career.
| greenchair wrote:
| like the n word?
| andsoitis wrote:
| > then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for
| state-sponsored propoganda,
|
| I don't know that it is limited to, or even most prevalent, in
| state-sponsored propaganda. Private individuals, media, etc. do
| this too without any state sponsorship.
| legitster wrote:
| Sure, I wasn't even insinuating that _this_ was state-
| sponsored, just highlighting that it 's known to be a super
| effective way to manipulate stories.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > I wasn't even insinuating that this was state-sponsored,
| just highlighting that it's known to be a super effective
| way to manipulate stories
|
| And yet, although this is a fact, the choice and the
| phrasing paints a particular story.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Taking old, resolved scandals
|
| The lawsuit is still ongoing. The scandal has not yet resolved.
| legitster wrote:
| No, but the problematic assessment in question was eliminated
| by congress in 2016. That would not explain the FAA's
| _current_ recruitment problems.
| stackskipton wrote:
| ATC training and dropout rate is so long and high, that
| mistakes made 8-9 years ago could still be impactful.
| clutchdude wrote:
| COVID would likely have a bigger hand in the current
| issues than mistakes from 10-15 years ago though.
|
| I found it somewhat puzzling we discuss ATC staffing and
| don't mention it:
|
| https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/air-
| transport/2024-0...
|
| > When training at the academy resumed in July 2020,
| after the four-month shutdown, class sizes were cut in
| half to meet the Centers for Disease Control and
| Prevention's social distancing guidelines.
|
| > The pandemic hit controller hiring and training hard
| with on-the-job training for developmental controllers
| significantly dropping at facilities, resulting in
| delayed certification. In fiscal year 2021, the
| controller hiring target was dropped from 910 to 500.
|
| > Since then, the FAA has been working to restore the
| training pipeline to full capacity. The agency's
| Controller Workforce 2023/2032 Plan had a hiring target
| of 1,020 in FY 2022 (actual hires were 1,026) and 1,500
| in FY 2023. The is set to increase to 1,800 in the
| current fiscal year.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Yep, COVID didn't help either.
|
| However, I'll note that hiring != actual ATC controllers
| because drop/fail rate which for some insane reason is so
| hard to find.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I'll never find it, but a few days ago someone here
| posted an anecdotal story that class sizes were between
| 10-20 and failure/drop rate was ~50%.
| reginald78 wrote:
| I probably read the same thing, the most galling to me
| wasn't the failure rate it was that once you've failed
| you can never reapply.
| robocat wrote:
| 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 become so, but what should happen if we lack some
| necessary skill?
| dgfitz wrote:
| US lawyers get multiple attempts to take the bar exam, as
| an example. Should they?
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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.
| varloid wrote:
| Across 2023 and 2024 the en route academy pass rate was
| ~66% and terminal pass rate was ~73%. Of that, ~25% of en
| route trainees fail at their facility and ~15-20% of
| terminal trainees fail at their facility. There are ~2 en
| route trainees per terminal trainee.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Here ya go:
|
| Academy attrition on page 38.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_s
| taf...
| stackskipton wrote:
| Figure, it was in a PDF that search engines had trouble
| scraping. I feel like FAA is burying this data on purpose
| because it looks terrible.
|
| Reading deeper, on page 40 that has historical data,
| starting FY14 when this survey had been implemented and
| initial class hired, Academy Training Attrition appears
| to be much higher though all I can base this on is
| comparing bar graph sizes. So yes, this change to hiring
| process did impact staffing levels because academy
| attrition was higher.
| clutchdude wrote:
| Possibly but I'd argue it's far from a smoking gun.
|
| The sequester of 2013 did a number on things and they
| hired to maximum capacity in the years after to make up
| for lost time. It stands to reason that by filling
| training to the max, they'd have more washouts due to
| lack of more attention during training.
|
| > The sequestration in 2013 and subsequent hiring freeze
| resulted in the FAA not hiring any new controllers for
| nearly 9 months across FY 2013 and FY 2014. The effects
| of this disruption on the hiring pipeline, as well as the
| FAA Air Traffic Academy's operations, were substantial.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_s
| taf...
| stackskipton wrote:
| Yep, _hmmm_. It just sucks that this data which should be
| easy to find is not and FAA clearly has since they put
| out the report with it.
| TraceWoodgrains wrote:
| This is really helpful. I take something different from
| it than you do (it looks like attrition starkly increases
| after 2014, in ways I'd strongly argue it's reasonable to
| attribute to the new hiring methods), but I'm grateful
| you posted it. Do you know if more complete/precise
| numbers are available anywhere (hiring counts,
| hiring+attrition, etc?
|
| I'm aware of this but it leaves attrition to be inferred.
| https://www.natca.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/04/FY23-Staffi...
| clutchdude wrote:
| I'm going to assume you mean "academy" attrition for sake
| of conversation.
|
| You have a wave of much higher attrition after 2013
| because....You have a lot more trainees on fewer
| trainers.
|
| That means more load is placed on fewer trainers
| resulting on page 45 where you spike from 20% to 25%
| ratio.
|
| Combine that with the very valid point that this is not
| CIT folks but qualifying citizens being admitted, you can
| see the impact of having a 56% higher attrition rate!
|
| Here's a bunch of plans to comb through for the full
| numbers. I don't have a spreadsheet off hand.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_s
| taf...
|
| https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/2021-11/FAA-
| Controll...
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_s
| taf...
|
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_s
| taf...
|
| Alas - my key point is this: the statement
|
| > Has this had a long-term impact on aviation safety and
| air traffic controller shortages? Likely yes."
|
| may have been highly attributable in 2018 timeframe but
| the real culprit is just as likely the 2013 sequester -
| I'd caution to say any one cause is the reason but rather
| there is a combination between a shift in applicant pool,
| having to deal with a slight burst in retirements,
| recovering from sequester and revamped training
| processes. Heck - maybe even not having an administrator
| from 2017-2018 might have caused issues.
|
| In the cold light of 2025 with impacts from COVID still
| reverberating, I'd doubt hiring practices as much as any
| other arbitrary reason.
| briandear wrote:
| It wasn't "Covid" -- it was the vaccine mandate.
| hitekker wrote:
| Yes, the scandal is not over because the FAA continued to
| conflate diversity with performance.
|
| In 2023, the FAA set several, major goals for DEIA
| initiatives and only one target for hiring more Air Traffic
| controllers. https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/FY23%20O
| SI-M%20and%2...
|
| Or from 2021, where they wrote "Diversity + Inclusion =
| Better Performance" https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/a
| bout/office_org/hea...
|
| Too many examples. Compared to 2016, the FAA of the 2020s was
| better at hiding their written bias. Nonetheless, they failed
| to attract the talent they needed.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| The Brigida lawsuit, from which we get a lot of the documents
| in the article, was filed in 2016 and has framed this as a DEI
| discrimination issue from the get-go.
| legitster wrote:
| With a grain of salt - any hiring lawsuit by its nature is
| going to be a discrimination case.
|
| The fact that everyone is really quick to just throw around
| DEI = discrimination is kind of my point. Even the text of
| the Brigida lawsuit clearly points out that nobody would have
| a problem with the FAA increasing minority representation in
| other ways.
| oremolten wrote:
| Could you please elaborate how DEI is not discrimination?
| Is hiring based on someone's RACE _ever_ not
| discrimination?
| dingnuts wrote:
| if this question is in good faith, you can read about
| this ideology by looking up Robin DiAngelo or Ibram X
| Kendi, who are experts on the pro-DEI academic theory
| that answers your question.
|
| It seems that the American voter disagrees with Kendi et
| al
|
| > The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist
| discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is
| present discrimination. The only remedy to present
| discrimination is future discrimination. As President
| Lyndon B. Johnson said in 1965, "You do not take a person
| who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate
| him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then
| say, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and
| still justly believe that you have been completely fair."
| As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in
| 1978, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take
| account of race. There is no other way. And in order to
| treat some persons equally, we must treat them
| differently.
|
| - Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
| armitron wrote:
| This is not a serious answer. IMO the fairest but not
| necessarily most accurate characterization for Ibram X.
| Kendi would be charlatan (others could say he's
| deliberately inducing racial hatred and stoking
| division). Additionally, according to recent news Boston
| University fired him and closed down his "antiracist
| research" center.
| dingnuts wrote:
| He's an academic with multiple publications in the field.
| How am I, a lay person, supposed to tell if he's a
| charlatan? He certainly takes himself seriously and has a
| successful academic career.
|
| Any example could be a false Scotsman. If my example is
| bad, please provide some that are better. I tried to
| educate myself on this five years ago and I looked up the
| people who were recommended to me by DEI practitioners.
| At the time, Kendi and DiAngelo were held up as icons of
| the movement.
|
| In American public school twenty years ago we also read
| Why Do All The Black Kids Sit Together In The Cafeteria.
| That would also be a good place to start learning about
| this ideology. Or is that book written by a charlatan,
| too?
|
| This kind of goalpost moving is as predictable as it is
| disappointing. You cannot argue with an ideology if it
| can't be defined, so the practitioners of this one --
| descended from Deconstructionism so no wonder they are
| happy to play word games -- won't allow opponents to
| define the ideology in the first place!
|
| Well good job, folks, because the reaction to this
| movement is MAGA.
| some_random wrote:
| As soon as they "fired" him he was hired by Howard to
| direct a new institute there.
| e44858 wrote:
| That just leads to an endless cycle where each group
| tries to avenge discrimination by the other group.
| legitster wrote:
| DEI is just a loose label for having less discrimination
| in the workforce. There's nothing that implies exclusion
| unless you are intentionally bad faithing the meaning.
|
| Imagine the FAA was only attending job fairs in white
| parts of the country. Then they decide to attend job
| fairs in more diverse parts of the country. No one would
| suddenly decide they were prejudiced against white
| people!
|
| There's a difference between forcing a white person to
| give up a seat, and letting a black person sit anywhere
| on the bus. But both of these are being labelled "DEI" in
| this thread.
|
| Again, nobody is arguing that the FAA didn't shoot
| themselves in the foot by introducing a dumb assessment
| that threw out good candidates. But I think there should
| be nothing scandalous or wrong with the FAA trying to be
| available to more candidates.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a
| loose label for having less discrimination in the
| workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to
| use it for more forceful discrimination.
|
| It would serve those who truly just want to make sure our
| society all starts from the same starting line to come up
| with a new term, one that encompasses meritocracy as the
| goal along with generous helping hands along the way
| (training programs, tutoring programs, outside-the-class
| mentorship opportunities). And to focus on helping lower
| _class and income_ folks get a leg up, not on including
| or excluding people by characteristics that are a
| circumstance of birth (skin color).
| jmye wrote:
| > The problem here is that the notion that "DEI is just a
| loose label for having less discrimination in the
| workforce" is always hidden behind by people who want to
| use it for more forceful discrimination.
|
| Nah. The problem is dishonest hucksters who want to
| broadly label _everything_ , regardless of applicability,
| as bad in an effort to provide their supporters with an
| easy "anti-X" bumper sticker.
|
| DEI advocates _came up_ with DEI to do precisely what you
| suggest - the right wing _rebranded_ it as "everyone
| hates white men" and "be afraid of black pilots". Almost
| like they just did the same thing with "woke" and "CRT"
| before it.
|
| It's extremely tiring to have people like you waltz into
| conversations to complain about terms you're busily
| redefining, being used in their original context, because
| you don't like what your own redefinitions imply.
|
| > _class and income_
|
| Yes, part of my company's DEI effort was to ensure that a
| JD didn't, for instance, specify a college degree if it
| wasn't really needed. Thank you, again, for restating
| things that are already occurring because you're not a
| part of those conversations or are unaware of those
| conversations.
| ivewonyoung wrote:
| > DEI advocates came up with DEI to do precisely what you
| suggest - the right wing rebranded it as "everyone hates
| white men"
|
| Ironic that you're posting this on a story that shows DEI
| was applied in exactly the opposite way you're claiming,
| because certain people passed the AT-SAT at higher rates
| so they had to be eliminated from consideration before
| they could even take it.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| The DEI label has indeed been placed on overtly
| discriminatory practices. At 3 out of the 4 companies
| I've worked at carried out explicit discirmination under
| the banner of DEI. One such DEI policy was reserving a
| segment engineering headcount for "diverse" candidates.
| Quite literally forcing white and Asian men to give up
| their seat.
|
| You're not in the position to unilaterally declare what
| DEI is and is not. I don't deny that there are plenty of
| non-discriminatory DEI programs that genuinely do aim to
| reduce discrimination. I don't think it's a good move to
| try and deny that DEI encompasses exclusionary and
| discriminatory practices, when so many people have
| witnessed exclusionary and discriminatory DEI programs
| firsthand.
| briandear wrote:
| That isn't what happened though. What happened was they
| intentionally turned down highly qualified white
| applicants. It wasn't like they found new "diverse"
| applicants -- they actively didn't hire people that were
| qualified and happened to be white. They weren't being
| "available" to more applicants, they became outwardly
| hostile to white applicants. They didn't grow the pie,
| they moved the pie.
|
| Huge difference.
| ImJamal wrote:
| If I deliberately hire whites more than other races nobody
| would deny that is discrimination. If I deliberately hire
| more minorities than whites, that is not discrimination?
| riskable wrote:
| That depends: Are you underpaying them? The question,
| "why" matters here a lot.
|
| "I tend to prefer minorities because I can underpay and
| get away with more" is a thing that exists in the real
| world. See: Immigrant farm workers and H1B visa holders.
|
| Is that discrimination against white/majorities or is it
| a kind of discrimination against minorities? It's
| injustice, for sure but I point it out because DEI
| policies, discrimination, racism, and sexism come in
| many, many forms. There's a ton of nuance and grey areas.
| ImJamal wrote:
| I think specifically hiring somebody because of their
| race is not just problematic but outright racist. I don't
| care if you are doing it because you want to underpay
| them or because you just dislike their race.
|
| If somebody decided he wanted more white people because
| he prefers whites, that would be discrimination. Nobody
| denies that, but when the races are swapped, suddenly it
| is nuanced? Give me a break!
| risenshinetech wrote:
| The "nuanced" argument you're responding to at least
| gives a window into why LLMs all talk about this same
| sort of nonsense and have this same bias. This kind of
| thinking is absolutely rampant these days -- especially
| on Reddit, which makes up a large portion of the training
| data.
| polski-g wrote:
| Using race as a metric in your hiring decisions, for any
| reason at all, is illegal. You simply cannot do it. Not
| as a tie breaking point, not a plus factor-- nothing at
| all.
|
| The law is crystal clear on this:
|
| https://x.com/andrealucasEEOC/status/1752006517761421719?
| t=v...
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| tremon wrote:
| If your candidate pool is 80% white and you hire 25%
| minorities, is that discrimination? I have seen people
| argue (rabidly!) both ways on that question.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Discrimination involves deliberately factoring the
| applicant's class into hiring decisions.
|
| Discrimination isn't determined by looking at single
| digit percentage differences in aggregate statistics.
| ImJamal wrote:
| That is not deliberately hiring whites? That is just
| hiring whites by happenstance. I am talking about
| choosing the white candidate because he is white.
| hitekker wrote:
| 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 NBCFAE, the FAA landed on a strategy: by using a
| multistage process starting with non-cognitive factors, they
| could strike "an acceptable balance between minority hiring and
| expected performance"--a process they said would carry a
| "relatively small" performance loss. They openly discussed this
| tension in meetings, pointing to "a trade-off between diversity
| (adverse impact) and predicted job performance/outcomes,"
| asking, "How much of a change in job performance is acceptable
| to achieve what diversity goals?"
|
| This was DEI before it was called DEI. The label changed, the
| spirit did not.
|
| That spirit, of sublimated racial grievance, metastasized
| everywhere in our society. It went from quiet, to blatant, and
| now to a memory hole.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't think I even know what "DEI" is anymore. Political
| pundits have turned it into a generic slur, a boogeyman that
| vaguely means "I have to work with minorities now??"
|
| I've always thought it simply meant "drawing from the widest
| possible candidate funnel, including instead of excluding
| people who have traditionally been shut out." At least that's
| how all of my training sessions at work frame it. But, like
| everything, the term has become politically charged, and
| everyone now wants to overload it to mean all sorts of things
| they simply don't like.
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| DEI: Diversity Equity Inclusion
|
| Diversity of race (encouraging racism), equity of income
| (encouraging envy), inclusion of "the marginalized"
| (discouraging free association)
|
| Except, as a government program, this turns from mere
| encouragement to forcing the issues, under threat of fines,
| imprisonment, and ultimately death.
|
| In the words of famous actor Morgan Freeman; "If you want
| to end racism, stop talking about it." (1)
|
| 1) https://atlantablackstar.com/2024/06/16/morgan-freeman-
| doubl...
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >including instead of excluding people who have
| traditionally been shut out
|
| I think that is the crux of the issue right there. It's
| taken as a "sky-is-blue" level fact that everyone is equal
| in all regards, and therefore any inequality in outcome is
| a function of bigoted policy at some level. This is despite
| a mountain of evidence to the contrary, which kind of
| elevates DEI to an ideological position rather than a
| logical one, and arguably undermines the confidence of
| people who would ostensibly be considered "DEI Hires".
|
| Companies have largely side-stepped this however, because
| underneath it all, they still want the most productive
| workers, regardless of their labels. So they implement a
| farcical DEI to keep up appearances, while still allowing
| hiring of whoever is deemed the most productive for a team.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| I'll try to assume good faith, but this is the sort of
| framing often used in the waning days of unpopular ideas.
|
| That's not what DEI ever was. It fundamentally came down to
| evaluating disparate impact and then setting targets based
| on it. The underlying idea is that if a given pool (in the
| US, generally national- or state-level statistics) has a
| racial breakdown like so: 10% X 30% Y
| 60% Z
|
| But your company or organization had a breakdown of:
| 5% X 25% Y 70% Z
|
| You are institutionally racist and need to pay money to
| various DEI firms in order to get the right ratios, where
| 'right' means matching (or exceeding) the population for
| certain ethnic minorities. The 'certain ethnic minorities'
| value changed over time depending on who you would ask.
|
| The methods to get 'the right ratios' varied from things
| like colorblind hiring (which had a nil or opposite
| effect), to giving ATS-bypassing keywords to minority
| industry groups (what the FAA did here).
| jquery wrote:
| I think it's helpful to distinguish between botched DEI
| efforts and the broader intent behind DEI. Just because
| certain organizations implement it clumsily or rely on
| simplistic quota-filling doesn't mean the entire idea is
| inherently flawed--any more than a poorly executed
| "merit-based" system would mean all attempts at measuring
| merit are invalid. If anything's really losing
| credibility right now, it's the myth of a pure American
| meritocracy.
|
| At its best, DEI is about recognizing that systemic
| barriers exist and trying to widen the funnel so more
| people get a fair shot. That doesn't have to conflict
| with a desire for genuinely skilled employees. Of course,
| there are ham-fisted applications out there (as with any
| policy), but that doesn't negate the underlying
| principles, which aren't just about numbers--they're
| about improving access and opportunity for everyone.
| coderc wrote:
| Can you provide an example of what you would consider a
| good implementation of DEI efforts, as opposed to a
| "botched" one?
| jquery wrote:
| For me, the best DEI successes are the ones that reduce
| bias without relying on clumsy quotas. Blind auditions in
| orchestras led to a big jump in women getting hired.
| Intel's push to fund scholarships and partner with HBCUs
| broadened their pipeline in a real way. And groups like
| Code2040 connect Black and Latino engineers with mentors
| and jobs, targeting root causes instead of surface-level
| fixes.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Hilarious that you mentioned the blind auditions in
| orchestras because now the DEI goons want to get rid of
| them! They say it hasn't got enough minorities in.
| Absolute proof that these people care only about race and
| don't give a damn about fairness. Source https://www.goog
| le.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=8997844...
| ryandrake wrote:
| The article you linked discusses how problematic the
| _other_ non-blind parts of the audition are: leaving
| people out ahead of the blind audition, pre-advancing
| people, and so on. One of the conclusions was that if the
| whole process was actually blind, the outcome would be
| better.
| jquery wrote:
| That article is not "absolute proof" of anything, it's
| just a discussion if blind auditions are the be-all end-
| all. Your comment is very low quality and unnecessarily
| hostile. Referring to Black people discussing how to get
| more minorities interested in orchestras as "DEI goons"
| is one step removed from a slur.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I intend to slur the DEI goons. My opinion of the DEI
| bureaucracy is such that there is no way to express it
| politely. 'Contempt' and 'hate' would be such an
| understatement as to be dishonest.
| jquery wrote:
| So what do you think of all the "DEI" hires in the Trump
| administration? Or do you think a second-rate alcoholic
| domestic abusing Fox News host is the best individual on
| the merits to run the DoD?
| Khaine wrote:
| Yes, famously the Australian Government tried that and
| undid it as pesky white men were being hired at a greater
| rate because of them[1].
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-
| recruitment-tri...
| jquery wrote:
| The difference was within the margin of error (only a 3%
| change), which is very inconclusive. That's fine. Making
| the world a more inclusive place is hard. There's lots of
| people (see this thread) who clearly believe that certain
| races and genders are biologically superior.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think the vast number of small and medium sized
| companies who quietly opened their hiring funnel up to a
| wider audience, would be considered good implementations.
| Not all companies reached for quotas and other hamfisted
| efforts that detractors constantly point to.
| vladgur wrote:
| DO you have examples of companies whose funnels were not
| open to "wider audience" prior to DEI? Lets say this
| century.
|
| Tech has been meritocratic for decades with few
| exceptions.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Examples are going to be hard to come by. No company is
| going to publicly admit that they used to be limiting
| their hiring pipeline in such a way. Admittedly, this
| also means that I'm speculating that the number of
| companies are "vast". Surely many have quietly made the
| change.
|
| Sample size of one, I worked in the past for a company
| whose entire staff was white men, 100%. Except for a
| single role: the receptionist at the front desk. There is
| no reasonable biological explanation for this extreme
| distribution.
| cycomanic wrote:
| There are tons of studies that have shown that if your
| name is sounding like you're from a minority your chances
| of being invited for an interview are significantly
| lower. Similar if you include photos.
|
| As a side note, it's quite ironic that engineers often
| tend to complain about performance metrics and that they
| are being gamed, not really a good measure of merit...,
| but the same people turn around and argue that the
| everything should be a meriocracy.
| Khaine wrote:
| DEI was the reason GitHub was forced to remove its
| meritocracy rug. Do you remember that? People questions
| whether it was a meritocracy based on disparate
| impact[1].
|
| It has almost never been about widening the size of the
| funnel, and almost always about putting the thumb on the
| scales for chosen people.
|
| [1] https://www.creators.com/read/susan-
| estrich/03/14/whats-wron...
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| > If anything's really losing credibility right now, it's
| the myth of a pure American meritocracy.
|
| It only became a myth when we were forced to consider
| factors beyond merit in hiring.
| adamrezich wrote:
| The part that always made this obviously insane for any
| systems-thinking person is as follows:
|
| For the sake of the argument, assume that X, Y, and Z all
| have ~100% equal _preference_ for positions A, B, and C
| at a given company or organization, _and_ assume that it
| is merely "historical /institutional discrimination" that
| has led to X, Y, and Z percentages of A, B, and C failing
| to match X, Y, and Z population percentages at any given
| company or organization.
|
| If both of these suppositions were 100% verifiably true,
| then it would stand to reason that, due to
| historical/institutional reasons, there would not _be_
| equal percentages of X, Y, and Z people who are
| _competent_ at A, B, and C positions, relative to X, Y,
| and Z population percentages--because competency at a
| given position at a given company /organization is not
| generally something you are born with, but a set of
| skills/proficiencies that were honed over a period of
| time.
|
| Therefore, the solution in this scenario _should_ be to
| _solely_ focus on education /training A, B, and C
| skills/proficiencies for whichever X, Y, and Z
| populations are "underrepresented"--plus also,
| presumably, some sort of oversight that ensures that a
| given person _of equal competency /proficiency_ is given
| equal consideration for a given position at a given
| company/organization, regardless of whether they are X,
| Y, or Z.
|
| But this would _necessarily_ mean that, for some period
| of time until sufficient "correction" could occur, X, Y,
| and Z percentages for positions A, B, and C would
| _continue_ to fail to match X, Y, and Z population
| percentages... because one doesn 't simply become
| proficient at A, B, or C overnight, in the vast majority
| of cases.
|
| However, the "DEI" proponents wanted to have their cake
| and eat it too. They wanted to claim that not only are
| the preceding assumptions regarding equal population
| group preferences completely, verifiably, absolutely true
| --but _also_ , that this problem should be solvable
| essentially overnight, such that, in short order, one
| could casually glance at a given slice of
| employees/members of a given company/organization and see
| a distribution of individuals that maps ~1:1 with the
| breakdown of the population.
|
| Any systems-thinking person could (and did) rather easily
| realize that this is just not how systems like these work
| --you cannot "refactor" society so easily, such that the
| "tests" (output) continue to "pass", simply by tweaking
| surface-level parameters ("reverse" hiring
| discrimination). If the problems are indeed as dire as
| claimed, then instead, proper steps must be taken to
| solve the _root causes_ of the perceived disparities--and
| also, proper steps must be taken to ensure that the base
| assumptions you started with (~100% equal career
| preference between population groups) were indeed correct
| to begin with.
|
| This is not to say that things were and are perfect, or
| as close to perfect as we can get--nor that attempts to
| improve things and reduce and remove bias and
| discrimination as much as possible are anything but noble
| goals.
|
| But if you want to solve a problem, you have to do so
| correctly, and that is quite clearly not what has been
| done--therefore, perhaps it's time to take a few steps
| back and reconsider things somewhat.
| programjames wrote:
| This is where the "critical mass" argument comes in: you
| (allegedly) need people who superficially look like you
| in the roles to inspire you to learn the skills needed
| for that position. Thus, working to correct poor
| education due to systemic racism isn't enough, you need
| to also temporarily fill role-model positions with less-
| qualified candidates.
| adamrezich wrote:
| And this argument reveals the grotesque truth of the
| matter: it's not actually about ensuring that everyone is
| treated equally and fairly--it's actually about socially
| engineering segments of the population other than one's
| own, to act in accordance with one's wishes, such that
| one feels good about oneself. This is all done utterly
| selfishly and self-servingly, regardless of not only
| whatever said population segments actually desire for
| _themselves_ , but also regardless of potential nth-order
| consequences of these actions for the rest of society.
|
| Additionally, in acting this way, one unwittingly (I
| _hope!_ ) _infantilizes_ these other population segments,
| robbing them of agency and self-determination in the
| process!
|
| The whole thing is a complete mess, top-to-bottom--and,
| as a society, we are _long_ overdue in reevaluating this
| entire line of thinking and how willfully we accept it at
| face value.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > The part that always made this obviously insane for any
| systems-thinking person is as follows [...] if the
| problems are indeed as dire as claimed, then instead,
| proper steps must be taken to solve the root causes of
| the perceived disparities--and also, proper steps must be
| taken to ensure that the base assumptions you started
| with
|
| That's why a smart systems-thinking person kept it to
| themselves.
|
| It's a funny thing. It's one of those issues where
| everyone in the room will publicly always nod and agree
| with at the time, yet everyone thinks "this is not going
| to lead to a good outcome".
|
| So basically everyone could see the train crashing at
| some point but nobody would say anything.
|
| An evidence of this is as soon as the "floodgates"
| opened, all these companies started dropping DEI
| initiatives and closing departments like that. If their
| bottom lines clearly showed they had improved their
| financials due to it, they would adamantly defend it or
| double down. But they are not:
|
| Boeing:
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/boeing-quietly-
| dis...
|
| Meta:
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/10/tech/meta-ends-dei-
| progra...
|
| Not sure how you'd call this phenomenon? Ideological
| prisoner's dilemma? It should have a name, I feel.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > An evidence of this is as soon as the "floodgates"
| opened, all these companies started dropping DEI
| initiatives and closing departments like that. If their
| bottom lines clearly showed they had improved their
| financials due to it, they would adamantly defend it or
| double down.
|
| Just looking at the Meta article: The article cites
| "pressure from conservative critics and customers" as the
| reason, not financial performance. The Meta
| representative was quoted pointing to "legal and policy
| landscape" changes. Nothing about if or how the
| initiative affected the company's bottom line.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Just looking at the Meta article: The article cites
| "pressure from conservative critics and customers" as the
| reason, not financial performance. The Meta
| representative was quoted pointing to "legal and policy
| landscape" changes. Nothing about if or how the
| initiative affected the company's bottom line.
|
| Of course they won't say it doesn't work. They'll cite
| external pressure or other reason. But they get pressure
| from customers for privacy and other issues, yet that
| doesn't phase them much. So if they saw clear advantage
| to the policy, say it just improved their bottom line,
| stock price, etc, they would have easily brushed away the
| "pressure" and said "sorry, we're here to make a profit
| and this makes us a profit, tough luck".
| ryandrake wrote:
| If the real reason these companies dropped the policies
| was that they were unprofitable, and their bottom lines
| showed it, then why did they wait until exactly November
| 2024 to all drop them at once? Surely they could have
| discovered this many quarters ago. Did the policies just
| suddenly become unprofitable right as the next political
| administration was decided? Why would company directors
| across entire industries just sit there nodding their
| heads, as you say, voluntarily not making more profit for
| shareholders? It doesn't seem like the bottom line was
| the real reason in this case.
| macrocosmos wrote:
| They may have feared the negative PR of dropping the
| policies would be more costly than the policies
| themselves.
| Devilspawn6666 wrote:
| They couldn't drop it as it would have affected their ESG
| rating, which impacts the ability to get loans and raise
| capital, etc.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Looks like you've been getting downvoted, but I think you
| raise perfectly valid points -- and I say this as a
| proponent of DEI, but not of quotas (or this type of
| population matching).
|
| I believe that the best solutions occur when we try to
| address root causes -- sincerely attempt to address them.
| The problem is that even in doing that, you often have to
| introduce inequality into the system. For example,
| mortality rates for black females giving birth are
| multiples higher than white females. To address this will
| likely mean spending more money on black female health
| research. The question is where is the line. Is prenatal
| spending inequality OK? Is early childhood development
| inequality of spending OK? What about magnet HS? What
| about elite colleges? What about entry level jobs?
| Executive positions? Jail sentencing? Cancer research?
| Etc...
|
| The other thing we can do is simply say, "This is too
| much. Lets just assume race doesn't exist." This is
| almost tempting, except outside of government policy race
| is such a big factor in how people are treated in life --
| it seems like we're just punting on a problem because its
| hard.
|
| I think when we as humans can say, "Hmm... there is
| someting impacting this subset of humans that seems like
| it shouldn't. I'm OK overindexing on it." then we will
| make progress. But I think while we view things as "this
| is less good for me personally" it will always be
| contentious.
| adamrezich wrote:
| The conundrum is that by thinking this way about
| population groups that are not your own, and imposing
| your will--no matter how well-intentioned--upon them, you
| are undermining the agency and self-determination of said
| population groups.
|
| I believe that in order to actually enact meaningful
| change, even deeper-rooted causes must be discovered and
| examined--and while this is certainly possible in theory,
| it's essentially impossible to do under the auspices of
| what currently qualifies as "political correctness".
| kenjackson wrote:
| > 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?
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| 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.
| kenjackson wrote:
| DEI started as exactly what the original poster stated.
| It then has transformed many times, including through
| quotas (ruled unconstitutional in the 70s), and something
| similar to what you're talking about, to the more modern
| notion which is more about getting the best candidates
| from all populations.
|
| Is there an example where colorblind hiring had a nil or
| opposite effect? In places I've seen, the opposite has
| happened. For example,
| https://www.ashkingroup.com/insights-media/the-power-of-
| blin...
|
| The only place I can think of where the opposite is with
| college admissions, but college admissions is a weird
| thing in general in that I've never understood why
| admissions is tied to a stronger academic record (ties
| into, what's the goal of a given college). In areas such
| as sports, the impact has been even greater -- and there
| it's not even colorblind, but simply opened up the pool,
| and is more metrics driven than just about any
| profession.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| Not really. Everything is downstream of the pressure on
| organizations to address disparate impact. Some examples:
|
| When a company is under pressure to boost the number of X
| engineers, they quickly run into the 'pipeline problem'.
| There simply isn't enough X engineers on the market. So
| they address that by creating scholarship funds
| exclusively for race X.
|
| When a school is under pressure to have the racial makeup
| of it's freshman class meet the right ratios, it has to
| adjust admission criteria. Deprioritize metrics that the
| wrong races score well on, prioritize those that the
| right races score well on. If we've got too many Y, and
| they have high standardized test scores? Start weighing
| that lower until we get the blend we're supposed to have.
|
| The goal of the college is not to get the students with
| the strongest academic record: it's to satisfy the demand
| for the right ratios.
|
| Repeat over and over in different ways at different
| institutions.
|
| > Is there an example where colorblind hiring had a nil
| or opposite effect? In places I've seen, the opposite has
| happened. For example ...
|
| The study underlying that post is a great example of
| another downstream effect of DEI efforts. That study did
| _not_ show what the headline or abstract claimed.
|
| When you hide the gender of performers, it ends up either
| nil or slightly favoring men. That particular study has
| been cited thousands of times, and it's largely nonsense.
|
| http://www.jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/blinda
| udi...
| kenjackson wrote:
| The study did show it. The author of this critique
| properly notes that Table 4 is not an apples to apples
| comparison. The author of the study notes that expanding
| the pool of women as used in Table 4 likely brought in
| less talented musicians disproportionately.
|
| Table 5 does the more apples to apples comparison. The
| critique notes that sample size is too small, but it
| captures 445 blind women, 816 blind men, 599 non-blind
| women, and 1102 non-blind men auditions. That's certainly
| sufficient for a study like this.
|
| The study also does reflect how when a population feel
| like there is less bias against them in a system they are
| more likely to participate -- even if that means on
| average the level of "merit" might go down, but those
| that make it through the filter will better reflect
| actual meritocracy -- and that's what this study showed
| as well.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| No, it doesn't. This is a dramatic reach and complete
| misunderstanding of the stats. The data in table 5 is not
| statistically significant.
|
| If you go down to table 6 (which is also incredibly
| weak), it shows the opposite: men are advancing at a
| higher rate than women in blind auditions.
|
| Andrew Gelman reviewed the link as well and agreed:
|
| https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-
| blind-...
| kenjackson wrote:
| Table 5 is stat sig. There's not a p-value given but the
| effect sizes are large. The knit place it's not is the
| semi-final and final rounds with their smaller sizes.
|
| And table 6 shows blind auditions significantly increased
| the chances of women advancing from the preliminary round
| and winning in the final round. However women were less
| likely to advance past semifinals when auditions were
| blind. But still a net win.
|
| Gellman is focused on the "several fold" and "50% claims"
| it made. But the paper shows 11.6 and 14.8 point jumps,
| which are supported by the paper.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| Re-read the original link, posted again below. The claims
| you're making are specifically addressed and are wrong.
|
| There are multiple critical reviews of this paper. It is
| well-known to be largely nonsense.
|
| http://www.jsmp.dk/posts/2019-05-12-blindauditions/blinda
| udi...
| kenjackson wrote:
| I've read it and the author doesn't address them. Unless
| they have access to additional data, such as their claims
| about the standard errors in Table 5 (only the Finals
| result has large enough errors to possibly discount). The
| original paper is pretty clear.
| gadders wrote:
| >>I've always thought it simply meant "drawing from the
| widest possible candidate funnel, including instead of
| excluding people who have traditionally been shut out."
|
| I don't think anyone objects to that, but the unspoken part
| that seemed to be enforced was "...even if it means
| lowering standards and overlooking the best qualified
| candidates for the job, as long as we get kudos for meeting
| our diversity targets."
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| Right, if you look at the documents there was clear racial
| discrimination involved.
|
| It's bizarre to see people say that since the media initially
| didn't report on the full story, telling people the full
| story is similar to "state-sponsored propoganda." That
| mindset appears to be saying that once the media has made up
| a narrative for the story, people should be hostile to other
| pertinent information, even when it's uncovering major
| aspects of the story that the media didn't report on.
|
| That kind of attitude runs counter to anyone interested in
| finding out the truth.
|
| Edit: Also worth pointing out the author's original article
| on this scandal was written a year ago, and a followup was
| recently written to clarify things in response to increased
| discussion about that article. They're a law student who
| initially wrote about it after coming across court documents
| and being surprised that there had been almost no coverage
| regarding what actually had happened.
| legitster wrote:
| > How much of a change in job performance is acceptable to
| achieve what diversity goals?
|
| The key part though is that the FAA was worried about the
| _job performance_ of diverse candidates they brought in. They
| did not see a trade off between their _staffing levels_.
|
| There are two separate arguments happening:
|
| Did changing their application process create less qualified
| ATC controllers? Maybe! But no one seems to be arguing this.
|
| Did changing their application process create a shortage of
| ATC controllers? Probably not! If anything, the evidence
| points to the FAA being worried they were going to get too
| many mediocre candidates.
| stackskipton wrote:
| The thing I keep looking for is dropout/failure rate. If
| their change in hiring procedure resulted in higher
| dropout/failure rate, then yes, this impacting ATC staffing
| but it would have been slow burn.
|
| ATC staffing is bottlenecked by the training
| dropout/failure rate. 1000 people a year go in, pretty
| sizable dropout or fail so you are left with 500. If 700
| are retiring, that's -200 overall. At some point, that -200
| year over year becomes impactful.
|
| So, if you need more people, you have two options. Increase
| the class size but obviously that's expensive and makes the
| problem slightly worse up front as you are pulling
| qualified people into instructor roles.
|
| Or try to filter out those who will drop/fail in hiring
| process so they don't occupy class slots. One of the ways
| FAA had done that is CTI college courses because those
| graduates had lower drop/fail rate.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| >Probably not!
|
| The linked article explicitly disagrees with this opinion.
| In fact it comes to almost literally the opposition
| conclusions:
|
| >Not only that, it shattered the pipeline the FAA had built
| with CTI schools, making the process towards becoming an
| air traffic controller less certain, undercutting many of
| the most passionate people working to train prospective
| controllers, and leading to a tense and unclear
| relationship between the FAA and feeder organizations.
|
| >Did anyone truly unqualified make it all the way through
| the pipeline? There's no reason to think so. Did average
| candidate quality decrease? There's every reason to think
| so. Would that lead to staffing issues? Unambiguously yes.
|
| That's not to say that you are wrong and the article is
| correct, but in a discussion that is started by an article,
| and when the article addresses exactly the points you are
| making, I feel that it is helpful to give explicit reasons
| why you think the article is mistaken.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah nobody is arguing it because even the FAA admits it's
| true. When you talk about a "tradeoff" between quality and
| diversity that is an admission that DEI lowers quality.
| some_random wrote:
| Framed as a cheating and recruiting scandal by who? Is it truly
| resolved if the racial discrimination element was never
| addressed?
| taeric wrote:
| Worse, it doesn't prove what it asserts. The assertion is that
| the quality of hires obviously got impacted. But, not once does
| it look at performance of hires.
|
| This narrative also doesn't expand the look at hiring numbers
| over the years, where it would be seen that the last 4 years
| are the only growth years in the organization going back even
| before this scandal.
|
| Nor does it look at any other problems. Sequestration is
| mentioned in passing, but the impact it had was sizeable. By
| the numbers, it is almost certainly more impactful than even
| the scandal that is focused on.
|
| What this does is appeal to the public court for justice on an
| old scandal. And right now, the public court is dominated by
| Trump and his supporters. One can try and couch ideas by "guys,
| I'm not an extreme Republican" all one wants, but that doesn't
| change that this feeds their narrative far more than it does to
| help any progress on the actual court case that is ostensibly
| being highlighted.
|
| So, now instead of getting quantitative analysis in a rigorous
| court with investigations, we get people carrying water for
| Trump as he blames DEI.
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Hiring people who are responsible for the safety of people
| lives on anything but merit is a problem no matter how you
| frame it. Not only is it racism, it is dangerous.
| taeric wrote:
| You are begging the question that they were hired on
| anything other than merit. Do you have hard evidence that
| the people that were hired did not pass qualifications?
|
| The main evidence of the scandal is that the recruitment
| funnel prioritized on things that were bad. And, make no
| mistake, that was a scandal. It does not, however, even
| attempt to show that recruitment forced hiring to accept
| people that lacked merit.
|
| That is, it does show there is a good chance RECRUITING
| rejected qualified people. But that is not enough to show
| that HIRING was necessarily lowering the bar.
|
| There is a begging of the question where we assume that
| they must have. But show the performance numbers! Without
| those, you don't know.
|
| And again, in context of the current debate, realize that
| the last 4 years are the only growth years in that agency.
| Such that the last 4 years are the only ones that made ANY
| progress on helping understaffed towers.
| bz_bz_bz wrote:
| How is re-weighting the AT-SAT so that >80% of applicants
| pass (vs. ~60% previously) not "lowering the bar"?
|
| "One method of measuring test validity (job-relatedness)
| is to correlate test scores with job performance. After
| reweighting, the AT-SAT validity co-efficient went from
| .69 to .60..."
|
| https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1849
| &co...
| taeric wrote:
| That was the recruitment pipeline. You still had to pass
| the hiring one.
|
| This is akin to schools that got rid of testing
| requirements. Agreed it was a terrible choice that should
| get reversed. But, to say that standards went down on
| graduates of the schools, you would look at the scores of
| graduates from said schools.
|
| And to be clear, the expectation of lowering standards
| for admits to a school would be a higher dropout rate.
| More stress on the school and testing protocols. But this
| is not, itself, evidence that graduates are worse.
| kalensh wrote:
| It's valuable to note that this paper is from 2006, and
| states:
|
| "Reweighting was based on data collected from incum- bent
| ATCSs who took AT-SAT on a research basis; some of these
| employees achieved overall scores less than 70 (that was
| one of the reasons for the reweighting effort - a belief
| that incumbent employees should be able to pass the
| entry-level selection test)"
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| > 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 and
| the "barrier analysis" were both explicitly focused on
| diversity outcomes in 2013.
|
| The article provides primary sources (internal FAA documents,
| recorded messages, investigation reports) showing that racial
| considerations were explicitly part of the decision making
| process from the start. This is documented in realtime
| communications.
|
| The scandal involved both improper hiring practices (cheating)
| AND questionable DEI implementation. These aren't mutually
| exclusive; they're interrelated aspects of the same event.
|
| > Taking old, resolved scandals
|
| In what way do you consider this resolved?
|
| The class action lawsuit hasn't even gone to trial yet (2026).
|
| The FAA is still dealing with controller shortages. (facilities
| are operating understaffed,controllers are working 6-day weeks
| due to staffing shortages, training pipelines remain backed up)
|
| The relationship between the FAA and CTI schools remains
| damaged, applicant numbers have declined significantly since
| 2014.
| alcima wrote:
| Was deeply aware of it at the time - was not really a DEI
| issue even then - it was pure cronyism.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| 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 evidence in this source does not discuss cronyism,
| although I believe you that it could have been relevant to
| your personal experience; it's just false to claim the
| issue as a whole was unrelated to DEI.
| intended wrote:
| I found one thing odd, which was outside of the scope
| over the zero sum game being fought here.
|
| If you are understaffed, AND you are hiring
| traditionally, it would make sense that recruiting people
| would go up. That would mean diverse hires anyway - based
| on the article, it seems that even increasing diversity
| was not between undeserving candidates and ideal
| candidates (the second band section of the article)
|
| Is the third variable at play here a lack of funding from
| congress for recruitment?
| skellington wrote:
| If you are trying to reach race/gender based quotas, you
| simply cannot hire white men anymore when they are 90% of
| the applicants. Or at least, you must attempt to minimize
| it as much as possible. Math.
| intended wrote:
| Yeah but thats not how any quota based system works.
| Thats the strawman of quota systems. The article itself
| showed that the quota is some fraction of total
| applicants that results in minimal impact to performance.
|
| Also I heard "math" with a youtube overlay.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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. Worse, if
| you hire based on highest test scores you'd only hire 2
| of the black applicants and end up with 99.6% white
| hires. The obvious thing to do to improve the optics is
| to figure out how to hire all 10 of the qualified black
| applicants, which is the thing that would have "minimal
| impact to performance", but you have two problems. First,
| picking them explicitly because of their race is illegal,
| so you have to manufacture some convoluted system to do
| it in a roundabout way. Second, even if you do that
| you're still screwed, because even hiring all 10 of them
| leaves you with 98% white hires and that's still bad
| optics.
|
| Their workaround was to use a BS biographical test to
| exclude most of the white applicants while giving the
| black applicants the answers. If you do that you can get
| 90 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black
| applicants. That'll certainly improve the optics, but
| then you have 400 unfilled slots.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There seems to be implication of confusion of what a
| qualified applicant means in your example above.
|
| If there's a test used as the basis of consideration, and
| some process has decided that any score over X makes the
| candidate qualified, but then you are later going to
| claim that actually, given that there were candidates
| with a score of X+Y, a score of just X does not really
| constitute "qualified" and the higher scoring candidates
| should have been chosen, then the whole nature of the
| test and the ranking becomes rather suspect.
|
| So either everyone who is judged to be qualified really
| is qualified, and it makes no difference that they were
| not necessarily the highest scoring candidates ... or ...
| the test for "qualified" is not suitable for purpose.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Suppose you have a test which is a decent proxy for how
| well someone will do a job. The median person currently
| doing the job scored 85 and their range is 70-99. If you
| put someone who scored a 4 in the job, people will die
| almost immediately. If you put someone who scored a 50
| there, people will be at a higher risk of death and you'd
| be better off passing on that candidate and waiting for a
| better one. From this we might come up with a threshold
| of 70 for the minimum score and call this "qualified".
| Then if you have to fill 5 slots and you got candidates
| scoring 50, 75 and 95, you should hire the latter two and
| keep the other slots unfilled until you get better
| candidates.
|
| But if you have to fill 5 slots and you have 10
| candidates who all scored above 70, you now have to
| choose between them somehow. And the candidates who
| scored 95 are legitimately expected to perform the job
| better than the ones who scored 75, even though the ones
| who scored 75 would have been better than an unfilled
| position.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Assumptions:
|
| 1. there is a test that is a decent proxy for job
| performance
|
| 2. the relationship between job performance and test
| score above some passing score is linear
|
| These both sound "common sense", but I suspect fail for a
| huge number of real world scenarios.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| According to the article they actually tested the first
| assumption and it was true.
|
| The second assumption is not required. If people who
| score a 95 are only 5% better at the job than people who
| score a 70, all else equal you'd still pick the person
| who scored a 95 given the choice.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Non-linear doesn't mean "still monotonic". My experience
| has been that beyond a certain threshold on a given test,
| job performance is essentially uncorrelated with test
| performance.
|
| As for the article, it's not given me particular solid
| vibes, a feeling not helped by some of the comments here
| (both pro and con).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Non-linear doesn't mean "still monotonic".
|
| Satisfying the _first_ assumption means "still
| monotonic".
|
| Also, if you had a better test then you'd use it, but at
| some point you have 10 candidates and 5 slots and have to
| use _something_ to choose, so you use the closest
| approximation available until you can come up with a
| better one.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Satisfying the first assumption means "still
| monotonic".
|
| Sorry, but I just don't agree. There are "qualifying
| tests" for jobs that I've done that just do not have any
| sort of monotonic relationship with job performance. I'm
| a firefighter (volunteer) - to become operational you
| need to be certified as either FF I or FF II, but neither
| of those provide anything more than a "yes, this person
| can learn the basic stuff required to do this". The
| question of how good a firefighter someone will be is
| almost orthogonal to their performance on the
| certification exams. Someone who gets 95% on their IFSAC
| FF II exam is in no way predicted to be a better
| firefighter than someone who got 78%.
| immibis wrote:
| > 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.
| sneedle wrote:
| 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.
| lukas099 wrote:
| What grandparent said wouldn't lead to people dying
| though.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Depends if you are able fill the slots, and how quickly.
| intended wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| immibis wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| 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.
| XCabbage wrote:
| The problem, of course, is that due to "disparate impact"
| doctrine, this (and colourblind hiring in general) is de
| facto illegal, and DEI scale-tipping is de facto
| mandatory (even though it's almost always de jure
| illegal).
|
| Large American employers basically all face the same
| double bind: if they do not disriminate in hiring, they
| almost certainly will not get the demographic ratios the
| EEOC wants, and will get sued successfully for disparate
| impact (and because EVERYTHING has disparate impact, and
| you cannot carry out a validation study on every one of
| the infinite attributes of your HR processes, everyone
| who hires people is unavoidably guilty all the time). But
| if they DO discriminate, and get caught, then that's even
| more straightforwardly illegal and they get sued too.
|
| There is only one strategy that has a chance of not
| ending you up on the losing end of a lawsuit:
| deliberately illegally discriminate to achieve the
| demographic percentages that will make the EEOC happy,
| but keep the details of how you're doing so secret so
| that nobody can piece together of the story to directly
| prove illegal discrimination in a lawsuit. (It'll be
| kinda obvious it must've happened from the resulting
| demographics of your workforce, but that's not enough
| evidence.) The FAA here clearly failed horribly at the
| "keep the details secret" part of this standard plan.
| caminante wrote:
| Curious to see if "disparate impact" criteria gets
| softened, i.e., impose requirement to find "intentional
| bias" (c.f. status quo)
|
| What I think is weird is how many firms have this reason,
| but do it for other stated reasons and don't simply state
| this compliance nuance. I figure more people would accept
| your "paragraph three strategy" as an acceptable means to
| a required end. Maybe this threat is more of a "what if"
| that has lower probability of enforcement so in practice,
| getting hunted for this is not that likely.
| immibis wrote:
| Which part of setting up a stall in a job fair in a more
| diverse part of town is "forcing blacks into the job"?
| lazide wrote:
| From what I saw, people did that years and years ago.
| What happens when that isn't sufficient?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| 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.
| amluto wrote:
| > 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 good outcome.
|
| If 1/8 of the population is black and someone is trying
| to get 1/4 of air traffic controllers to be black, that
| seems like a mistake.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > 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 be false.
| amluto wrote:
| _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!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > _Of course_ my premise doesn't hold, and the glaringly
| obvious cause is historical inequality.
|
| No, this is false. You don't appear to know what you're
| trying to postulate.
| lazide wrote:
| 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?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Ah yes, but that isn't guaranteed to work, and if someone
| is going to get in trouble if they don't make their
| numbers then they start making contingencies.
| harvey9 wrote:
| The article specifically talks about how the college
| courses were in community colleges, not bastions of
| privilege of any kind.
| cyberax wrote:
| > AND you are hiring traditionally
|
| And the FAA stopped doing that. They revamped the hiring
| process to screen against the White applicants. The way
| they did it, is also highly insulting to Black people,
| btw.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| By "hiring traditionally" they may have meant "posting a
| job description and application instructions". They
| definitely didn't continue to interact with the CTI
| schools.
|
| What they didn't appear to do, at least it is not
| discussed, is targeted advertising towards
| underrepresented groups.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The answer to the question you've quoted is important,
| since it could be "none", "a little bit", "a lot", "any
| amount", each of which has very different ramifications.
| There is no answer on the slide ...
| varloid wrote:
| They decided that at least some amount was acceptable -
| the minimum score on the AT-SAT was changed so that 95%
| of test takers would pass because the original threshold
| where 60% passed excluded too many black applicants. This
| was despite previous studies showing that a higher score
| on the AT-SAT was correlated with better job performance.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| No, that's not an answer to that specific question.
|
| Performance on the AT-SAT is not job performance.
|
| If you have a qualification test that feels useful but
| also turns out to be highly non-predictive of job
| performance (as, for example, most college entrance exams
| turn out to be for college performance), you could change
| the qualification threshold for the test without any
| particular expectation of losing job performance.
|
| In fact, it is precisely this logic that led many
| universities to stop using admissions tests - they just
| failed to predict actual performance very well at all.
| varloid wrote:
| > Performance on the AT-SAT is not job performance.
|
| No, but it was the best predictor of job performance and
| academy pass rate there was.
|
| https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA566825.pdf
|
| https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/res
| ear... (page 41)
|
| There are a fixed number of seats at the ATC academy in
| OKC, so it's critical to get the highest quality
| applicants possible to ensure that the pass rate is as
| high as possible, especially given that the ATC system
| has been understaffed for decades.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That is NOT what the first study you've cited says at
| all:
|
| > "The empirically-keyed, response-option scored biodata
| scale demonstrated incremental validity over the
| computerized aptitude test battery in predicting scores
| representing the core technical skills of en route
| controllers."
|
| I.e the aptitude test battery is WORSE than the biodata
| scale.
|
| The second citation you offered merely notes that the AT-
| SAT battery is a better predictor than the older OPM
| battery, not that is the best.
|
| I'd also say at a higher level that both of those papers
| absolutely reek of non-reproduceability and low N
| problems that plague social and psychological research.
| I'm not saying they're wrong. They are just not obviously
| definitive.
| varloid wrote:
| > I.e the aptitude test battery is WORSE than the biodata
| scale.
|
| You're mistaken, it's the opposite. The first one found
| that AT-SAT performance was the best measure, with the
| biodata providing a small enhancement:
|
| > AT-SAT scores accounted for 27% of variance in the
| criterion measure (b=0.520, adjusted R2=.271,p<.001).
| Biodata accounted for an additional 2% of the variance in
| CBPM (b=0.134; adjusted DR2=0.016,DF=5.040, p<.05).
|
| > In other words, after taking AT-SAT into account, CBAS
| accounted for just a bit more of the variance in the
| criterion measure
|
| Hence, "incremental validity."
|
| > The second citation you offered merely notes that the
| AT-SAT battery is a better predictor than the older OPM
| battery, not that is the best.
|
| You're right, and I can't remember which study it was
| that explicitly said that it was the best measure. I'll
| post it here if I find it. However, given that each
| failed applicant costs the FAA hundreds of thousands of
| dollars, we can safely assume that there was no better
| measure readily available at the time, or it would have
| been used instead of the AT-SAT. Currently they use the
| ATSA instead of the AT-SAT, which is supposed to be a
| better predictor, and they're planning on replacing the
| AT-SAT in a year or two; it's an ongoing problem with
| ongoing research.
|
| > I'd also say at a higher level that both of those
| papers absolutely reek of non-reproduceability and low N
| problems that plague social and psychological research.
| I'm not saying they're wrong. They are just not obviously
| definitive.
|
| Given the limited number of controllers, this is going to
| be an issue in _any_ study you find on the topic. You can
| only pull so many people off the boards to take these
| tests, so you 're never going to have an enormous sample
| size.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| > The second citation you offered merely notes that the
| AT-SAT battery is a better predictor than the older OPM
| battery, not that is the best.
|
| How is that a criticism? It is always possible that
| someone could invent a better test.
|
| In any case, the second citation directly refutes your
| point in another sub-thread with AnthonyMouse, the
| assertion that higher-performing applicants above the
| cutoff do not perform better on the job:
|
| "If all applicants scoring 70 or above on the AT-SAT are
| selected, slightly over one-third would be expected to be
| high performers. With slightly greater selectivity,
| taking only applicants scoring 75.1 or above, the
| proportion of high performers could be increased to
| nearly half."
|
| Also:
|
| "The primary point is that applicants who score very high
| (at 90) on the AT-SAT are expected to perform near the
| top of the distribution of current controllers (at the
| 86th percentile)."
| alcima wrote:
| 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.
| like_any_other wrote:
| "Friends" here means members of the National Black
| Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| ... You concede that it was cronyism here. Unless you
| want to expand on what you are saying.
| XCabbage wrote:
| He concedes no such thing. Reserving jobs for members of
| a "black coalition" that any black person can join is
| obviously DEI, not cronyism. It's a de facto race-based
| filter, not one based on favour-trading or past links to
| the applicant.
| lazide wrote:
| Why not both? Near as I can tell, Cronyism goes hand in
| hand. Someone has to gatekeep who counts in what bracket,
| someone has to represent the bracket, etc.
|
| And the beauty is, the more brackets, the more true this
| is, and the more can be extracted from the system.
| handoflixue wrote:
| 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.
| lazide wrote:
| What do you consider cronyism except 'members of this
| organization share cheats and get each other in'?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| give up. you won't convince anyone. if corruption have
| any minority scape goat, it's "them".
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| 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 by this line:
|
| _As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly's friends
| in the program encouraged her to join the National Black
| Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees_
|
| That may or not be cronyism, but once she joined, the
| whole org got the answers, so clearly it was aimed at
| getting more Blacks through the process.
| philwelch wrote:
| It can be both.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| If we step away from the traffic controllers nonsense for a
| moment, the actual problem sounded like a military pilot to
| me. It's my understanding that people who have a family
| line of pilots go into that funnel knowing a specific
| nepotism related result occurs such that when it comes time
| to become a commercial pilot you are probably from such a
| family.
|
| I have no idea if helicopter pilots work the same way or
| are starting to work the same way, but whenever I see a BS
| move like this I think that there's probably an opposite
| interpretation that doesn't fit what their demographic
| wants to hear.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Robust systems are designed to avoid single points of
| failure. Humans are fallible. So, for example, both the
| pilot and the air traffic controller are intended to be
| paying attention so that if one of them makes a mistake
| the other can pick it up. If the pilot is making an
| error, the air traffic controller gets on the radio to
| tell them they're getting too close to another aircraft,
| in time for them to course correct.
|
| If air traffic control is under-staffed, now the warning
| the pilot gets might come a minute later than it would
| have otherwise, and already be too late. Then you no
| longer have a robust system and it's only a matter of
| time before one of the pilot errors the system was
| designed to be able to catch in time instead results in a
| collision.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| There's obviously some number of mistakes one party can
| make in a single incident such that the other has a
| limited probability of preventing an accident. If flight
| control is the robustness, it would take flight control
| with a lot of free time to be reducing those mistakes in
| pilots by following up on all sorts of errors unrelated
| to an incident until a pilot rarely makes multiple
| overlapping mistakes.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're still going to try to reduce the errors by each
| party as much as you can. The point is that if they each
| do the right thing 99.9% of the time, the overlap allows
| you to prevent a problem 99.9999% of the time. Whereas if
| you compromise one of them so that it's 80% instead of
| 99.9%, the chance that something makes it through the net
| increases by a factor of 200.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| It's not entirely fair to choose this flight as a random
| sample, but assuming for a moment that it is.. The pilot
| has a 85% or lower, how many 9s on the controller fix
| that?
|
| If controllers were like traffic cops they would take
| time to raise or remove that 85% when they caught it and
| pay limited attention to current traffic to take actions
| to reduce future traffic risk. But they are not that as
| you just explained again.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| 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.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| 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.
| what wrote:
| > If the pilot is making an error, the air traffic
| controller gets on the radio to tell them they're getting
| too close to another aircraft, in time for them to course
| correct.
|
| They did.
|
| Pretty sure military aircraft just don't have to listen
| to them.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| They did after it was too late, because the crash
| happened. Unless the crash was intentional (and I'm not
| aware of any evidence of that), getting the warning
| sooner could have given the pilot more time to correct.
| ls612 wrote:
| The problem is it hasn't been resolved, there is a big lawsuit
| about it still working its way through the courts.
| techapple wrote:
| A thing I wonder about like the nature of government and power
| is why does it feel like going back and forth between
| ridiculous policies. Like I'm sure 10 years from now, we'll be
| uncovering crazy things the Trump administration did that were
| racist or sexist or whatever and it won't make any sense!
| You'll look at it and go why would a reasonable person have
| decided that approach! Talk about a footgun. And then maybe
| there's a New Democrat administration that creates a new
| catchphrase that replaces DEI and we get familiar excesses
| again.
| timewizard wrote:
| > be extra wary of stories like this being massaged.
|
| I'm wary of all stories. This is Hacker News. Why wouldn't
| "critical analysis" be the default?
| burnished wrote:
| Sometimes people share a tech thing they thought was
| interesting
| clutchdude wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Has this had a long-term impact on aviation safety and air
| traffic controller shortages? Likely yes.
|
| This was a terrible conclusion. Ask any ATC person what's up
| with staffing and "COVID training and hiring disruptions" will
| be in the first few sentences they say.
|
| The fact this article goes on and on without a single mention
| of the impact COVID has had gives me all the stock I need to
| place in it.
|
| Some folks may find it hard to believe, but the 1-2 year
| interruption in hiring pipelines can cause large ripples that
| take years-to-decades to resolve.
|
| Slapping a DEI strawman up and trying to tie it to a tragedy
| reflects on the changes some seek.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| > Likely yes.
|
| Love the in-depth analysis they use to answer that
| question...
| clutchdude wrote:
| That is the frustrating part - the article had it's lane
| and just had to stick in it.
|
| Instead, we get someone extrapolating and guessing when we
| have actual data from COVID on class delays/size
| reduction(as well as more controllers retiring earlier)
| coupled with lower training intensity while air traffic was
| depressed.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| This article is not talking about COVID, it's talking about
| the absurd changes to the hiring process that disadvantaged
| qualified candidates in favor of people who said science was
| their worst subject in high school (15 points). How could
| this _not_ have an impact on hiring?
| clutchdude wrote:
| 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 inputs
| into what is a current conversation rather than extrapolate
| your already asserted points from the article.
| diogocp wrote:
| 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 times bigger impact than
| COVID.
|
| Well, we do know _one_ thing that happened: this scandal.
|
| [1] https://www.natca.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/04/FY23-Staffi...
| clutchdude wrote:
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| In 2021, the Al Jezeera documentary on Boeing's airframes was
| commented in Yt as a DEI scandal.
|
| Post-reframing consists in telling people it wasn't introduced
| as this, which may be true for journalists but clearly
| understood by the audience as a DEI issue, then claiming the
| DEI issue is slapped upon an existing problem.
|
| Agressive DEI has been uniformly contested since it was
| introduced, by (practically) everyone who has ever lost a
| promotion on non-skills criteria. It's just that today, the
| good side has finally won.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Not yet. The SC has ruled it illegal for university
| admissions but it somehow still remains allowed for corporate
| hiring. Even then, just because the court has ruled on it
| doesn't mean it will actually stop. The DEI people are snakes
| and will continue to find more sneaky ways to implement their
| illegal racist quotas and more newspeak to describe it in a
| "legal" way.
| dmix wrote:
| It's also still deeply embedded in education. DEI might be
| less popular in the workforce but in primary and secondary
| education stuff like lowering standards, ignoring test
| failures, removing gifted classes, merging special needs
| classes in mainline, changing classroom conflict resolution
| to not remove disruptive kids from classrooms, etc are all
| still going strong and increasing in prevalence. That will
| have a ripple effect in the workforce for decades after the
| Overton window has shifted back.
|
| And in the US the federal government can't stop it as it's
| mostly defined in local and state gov (which is many times
| larger than the federal workforce). Dept of Education would
| only have limited influence there.
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| Athletes are the original DEI. And Trump (the president!)
| didn't have good grades.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| > Even then, just because the court has ruled on it doesn't
| mean it will actually stop.
|
| See California public universities still practicing
| affirmative action despite it being made illegal decades
| ago for a good example of this
| generationP wrote:
| Resolved? By whom?
| avn2109 wrote:
| > "... 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 minimum.
| codingrightnow wrote:
| "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.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > The diversity push could have been an attempt to
| encourage a wider range of people to consider the
| occupation.
|
| Except it was demonstrably of the opposite of this. The
| bigraphical questionnaire rejected 90% of applicants for no
| justifiable reason.
|
| In practice, diversity is much easier to achieve by
| reducing the opportunities of the undesirable demographics.
| This is one such example.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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 acknowledge
| that there is a real problem that people were responding to.
| davorak wrote:
| > 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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).
| davorak wrote:
| > 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
| answers were apparently handed out. I can not lump all
| this activities together and label it as one thing at
| least due to the line I drew above and likely other lines
| I would draw as digging in to more details.
|
| > 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).
|
| I think you are simplifying too much here. The way this
| reads is that everyone on the other side of the issue to
| you is either masks off and is like Ibram Kendi, or is
| masks on and hiding it how they are like Ibram Kendi.
|
| I do not buy it is that simple, the world is more complex
| than that with people that have a wide variety of
| motivations and goals.
| refurb wrote:
| > But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue.
|
| Did we read the same article? I didn't see this as a
| "reframing" but rather an investigative expose into the history
| and most importantly "why".
|
| And it's pretty clear that at the time the cheating scandal
| came out, the FAA wasn't interested in implicating themselves.
|
| "The FAA investigated, clearing the NBCFAE and Snow of doing
| anything wrong in an internal investigation."
| dqft wrote:
| Spot on for this guy.
| caycep wrote:
| 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
| iamleppert wrote:
| Instead of bickering over who gets a job that fundamentally
| should be automated by now, they should focus on developing
| technology that doesn't rely on people. Or at least uses
| automation for 95% of the job and delegates to a person only when
| rare exceptions arise. ATC is ripe for disruption from AI, and
| now that we have LLMs and speech models on par with human
| ability, its a short walk in the park to imagine a fully
| automated ATC model.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Sit in a tower for a day before talking about automation.
| Remember ten years ago when people said human-driven cars would
| soon be illegal? The number of fact-specific edge cases that
| happen every shift mean ATC is far far from automation.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > Remember ten years ago when people said human-driven cars
| would soon be illegal? The number of fact-specific edge cases
| that happen every shift mean ATC is far far from automation.
|
| This. Commercial jets have had full auto taxi, take off, fly,
| land capability for a long time at supported airports. A
| human is still in the loop for parts of it due to the
| potential for something to deviate from nominal in a novel
| way at almost any time.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A human is in the loop for all parts. Every essential step
| is done by humans (flap/gear control, throttle up for
| takeoff). The airplane doesn't make decisions, rather it
| does what the humans tell it to. Autopilot is not
| automation.
| JackFr wrote:
| > Sit in a tower for a day before talking about automation.
|
| Everything is easy when you don't know about it.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > a job that fundamentally should be automated by now, they
| should focus on developing technology that doesn't rely on
| people.
|
| Just to be clear: you think that air traffic control is fully
| automatable?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| You think that ATC could be automated with the tools we have
| today?! I knew I'd get some wild takes in the comments but this
| one is absolutely next level. And I'm an AI maximalist!!
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| Yeah my biggest concern with any kind of automation is
| handling and recognizing edge cases. There are already manual
| systems like flight levels and patterns for traffic
| management. But what happens if one plane starts deviating
| because of something unexpected? Then you have to respond to
| a specific situation and the reason for deviating matters
| quite a lot. Think about all the ways your car can break
| down.
| empath75 wrote:
| Everything is heavily automated right now up to and including
| autopilot landings. The people are in the loop to cover the
| gaps where automation doesn't exist or when it fails.
| Everything is so tightly scheduled at airports now that any
| kind of failure in automation would pretty rapidly lead to
| catastrophic outcomes if humans weren't constantly involved in
| decision making. Even if you just had humans on "stand by" it
| would take to long to get them up to speed on the context if
| things went sideways.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| 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.
| empath75 wrote:
| There's a lot of automation, but it's the same situation
| with "self driving" cars. Until you get to nearly 100%
| trustworthy full automation, you need people actively
| making decisions constantly, so automation is mostly in the
| form of assists rather than full automation.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| 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.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| 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.
| cratermoon wrote:
| We have an automated system to prevent mid-air collisions, it's
| called TCAS, Traffic collision avoidance system. For safety
| reasons, it is inhibited at 1000 feet AGL or below, to prevent
| dangerous descents into terrain.
|
| How would your mythical ATC automation take that situation into
| account, if it even thought about that edge case.
| Molitor5901 wrote:
| They are, this is supposedly part of the "Nexgen" air traffic
| system. I think eventually airlines will be forced into greater
| automation. When a possible collision scenario arises, the
| plane will take over and evade on it's own. Airplanes will
| increasingly become automated and pilots wait for emergencies.
| boohoo123 wrote:
| 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 isle.
| a12k wrote:
| So easy. Should we also remove college attended or
| extracurriculars to avoid flagging potential demographic
| details like attending an HBCU?
| malfist wrote:
| For every difficult and complex problem, there's a simple, easy
| and wrong solution.
|
| Demographics questions on job applications do not get shown to
| recruiters nor interviewers.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Demographics questions on job applications do not get shown
| to recruiters nor interviewers.
|
| But Recruiters can glean this information from names and
| other information on resumes. And yes, many do deliberately
| try to use this information to decide who to interview.
| Recruiters at one of me previous employers linked to US
| census data on the gender distribution of names in their
| onboarding docs. They also created spreadsheets of ethnically
| affiliated fraternities/sororities and ethnic names.
| some_random wrote:
| The E in DEI stands for Equity, not Equality. The explicit,
| stated goal is not to remove discrimination it's to
| discriminate in order to reach Equity.
| drawkward wrote:
| >There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring
| practices that no one seems to notice.
|
| Yes! Build a robust economy so that everyone can have dignified
| work that pays a living wage, rendering any kind of hiring
| preferences moot.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| This assumes that the hiring managers or whoever are honest
| people who are not racist or bigoted in any manner and only
| display incidental racism or subconscious bias. If I see a HBCU
| as an applicant's alma matter, it's almost certain that they
| are black.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Correct, and that's why hiding the fact that the candidate
| attended an HBCU would avert that kind of bias.
| AdamN wrote:
| So no colleges and universities on resumes?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You could share data on the college, like the median SAT
| score of admits or the admissions rate.
|
| And I'm not entirely sure that omitting colleges entirely
| would be such a bad idea. Colleges apply selective
| admission criteria all the time, for athletes and legacy
| admits. Skills based screening would probably work
| better.
| roughly wrote:
| Well, then you have to account for certain jobs and
| hobbies being coded, as well as word choices in the
| personal statement. Once you blank all that out, though,
| we should be good to go.
| healsdata wrote:
| Everything is easy until you account for the real world.
|
| A disabled person who has to request accommodations for the
| application process will immediately be outed for having a
| disability. The same applies for people who speak different
| languages.
|
| Beyond that, the application is only one place in which
| discrimination occurs.
|
| - It also happens during interviews which are much harder to
| anonymize. - It also happens in testing and requirements that,
| while not directly correlated to job performance, do serve to
| select specific candidates. - It also happens on the job, which
| can lead to a field of work not seeming like a safe option for
| some people. - It also happens in education, which can prevent
| capable people from becoming qualified.
|
| Lowering the bar is not the right answer (unless it is
| artificially high) but neither is pretending that an anonymous
| resume will fix everything.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| IT's not so simple. Eventually there will be an interview and
| the person scoring the interview may have some bias.
|
| And as someone else points out, some schools like HBCU have
| names that carry racial coding.
| theossuary wrote:
| This is literally one of the things DEI programs push to
| implement. I have a friend who helps make hiring decisions and
| this is one of the changes their DEI push included, as well as
| pulling from a larger pool.
|
| It just shows how much propaganda there is around DEI, you're
| saying we should get rid of DEI and replace it with the things
| DEI was trying to do. It really has become the new critical
| race theory.
| int_19h wrote:
| It really depends on what the outcome is. There has been pro-
| DEI pushback on blind interviews and auditions when it
| resulted in fewer minorities being represented. One
| particularly famous case is when GitHub shut down their
| conference on diversity grounds after the blind paper review
| process resulted in a speaker slate that was all male. For
| another example, here's a pitch against blind auditions for
| orchestras to "make them more diverse":
| https://archive.is/iH2uh
| Xelynega wrote:
| In both those examples, why are you not giving the benefit
| of the doubt to the failed attempts?
|
| If GitHub attempted to anonymize applications and resulted
| in a biased selection, can that not be a result of them
| failing to eliminate the bias they set out to?
|
| Same with the blind auditions for orchestras, if they found
| that they weren't actually eliminating bias with the stated
| methods, why is it bad that they're not doing it anymore?
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| The question is whether or not the results are biased.
| Maybe the best musicians tend to be male? It is hard to
| argue bias in a blind musical audition.
| int_19h wrote:
| If you don't know anything about the other person and are
| selecting blindly, there's no bias by definition, so that
| particular selection is not biased regardless of what it
| looks like.
|
| If the resulting distribution is not what you expected it
| to be, then there are two simple explanations: either
| your model was wrong, or the bias that causes the
| deviation is happening on an earlier stage in the
| process.
|
| At the same time, if going from non-blind to blind
| changes the result, it means that there _was_ bias that
| had been eliminated. The second article pretty much
| openly admits it and then demands that it be reinstated
| to produce the numbers that they would like to see.
| ndiddy wrote:
| The FAA were already not allowed to ask employees about their
| demographics. The article you're commenting on states that the
| actual problem was that the FAA added a new biographical
| questionnaire to the ATC hiring process, which had strangely
| weighted questions and a >90% fail rate. Applicants who failed
| the questionnaire were rejected with no chance to appeal.
| Employees at the FAA then leaked the correct answers to the
| questionnaire to student members of the National Black
| Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees to work around the fact
| that they couldn't directly ask applicants for their race.
| Here's a replica of the questionnaire if you're interested:
| https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| Agreed. However Progressives argue (wrongly in my opinion) that
| taking into account a person's race and gender identity is the
| only wait to guard against discrimination. They explicitly
| regard 'merit' based hiring as racist and discriminatory.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Who is this "progressive" that for some reason is only
| allowed to speak in the most general of statements and not
| make claims backed up with evidence?
|
| A lot of people seem to be arguing against caricatures of
| arguments either they or people theg trust have instilled in
| them, and not actual points being made by actual people...
| BenFranklin100 wrote:
| I read your post three times and I still can't parse it. If
| you're asking which Progressives are making the arguments I
| described, go see Ibram Kendi among others. I am not
| caricaturing their position. This is what they believe.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Blind hiring in practice that reduces diversity. [1]
|
| Draw from that what conclusions you may.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-
| tri...
| jwlake wrote:
| The real key is to stop reporting those characteristics of the
| workforce.
| sfteus wrote:
| My company's DEI program effectively does this. The main tenets
| are:
|
| - Cast a wide recruiting net to attract a diverse candidate
| pool
|
| - Don't collect demographic data on applications
|
| - Separate the recruiting / interview process from the hiring
| committee
|
| - The hiring committee only sees qualifications and interview
| results; all identifying info is stripped
|
| - Our guardrail is the assumption that our hiring process is
| blind, and our workforce demographics should closely mirror
| general population demographics as a result
|
| - If our demographics start to diverge, we re-eval our process
| to look for bias or see if we can do better at recruiting
|
| The separation allows candidates to request special
| accommodations from the interview team if needed, without that
| being a factor to the committee making the final decision.
|
| Overall, our workforce is much more skilled and diverse than
| anywhere else I've worked.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| notice how these solution requires a dedication to diversity
| throughout the process from candidate sourcing to
| interviewing and all the way through, and not some simple cut
| and paste answers.
|
| The road to a more inclusive solution is dedicated effort,
| with continuous re-assessment at every step. There is no
| magical answer.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > Our guardrail is the assumption that our hiring process is
| blind, and our workforce demographics should closely mirror
| general population demographics as a result
|
| > If our demographics start to diverge, we re-eval our
| process to look for bias or see if we can do better at
| recruiting
|
| These are not good assumptions. 80% of pediatricians are
| women. Why would a hospital expect to hire 50% male
| pediatricians when only 20% of pediatricians are men? If you
| saw a hospital that had 50% male pediatricians, that means
| they're hiring male pediatricians at 4x the rate of women.
| That's pretty strong evidence that female candidates aren't
| being given equal employment opportunity.
|
| A past company of mine had practices similar to yours. The
| way it achieved gender diversity representative of the
| general population in engineering roles (which were only ~20%
| women in the field) was by advancing women to interviews at
| rates much higher than men. The hiring committee didn't see
| candidates' demographics so this went unknown for quite some
| time. But the recruiters choosing which candidates to advance
| to interviewing did, and they used tools like census data on
| the gender distribution of names to ensure the desired
| distribution of candidates were interviewed. When the
| recruiters onboarding docs detailing all those demographic
| tools were leaked it caused a big kerfuffle, and demands for
| more transparency in the hiring pipeline.
|
| I'd be very interested in what the demographic distribution
| of your applicants are, and how they compare against the
| candidates advanced to interviews.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Yea when I have done hiring the vast majority of applicants
| were of specific races and demographics. It isn't a private
| companies' job to skew hiring outcomes away from the
| demographics of the incoming pool of qualified applicants.
| If you have 95% female applicants for a position I would
| expect that roughly 95% of hires are going to be female and
| vice versa.
|
| I think it is damaging when hiring outcomes are skewed as
| well as it undermines the credibility of those who got
| hired under easier conditions fabricated by the company.
|
| I too agree with the grandparent post that we should try to
| be scrubbing PII from applications as much as possible. I
| do code interviews at BIGCO and for some reason recruiting
| sends me the applicants resume which is totally irrelevant
| to the code interview and offers more opportunities for
| biases to slip in (i.e this person went to MIT vs this
| person went to no name community college).
| sfteus wrote:
| > If you have 95% female applicants for a position I
| would expect that roughly 95% of hires are going to be
| female and vice versa.
|
| I would disagree for the most part. As mentioned above,
| there are roles where you'll see gender bias that may not
| be addressable. In the OB/GYN example, I understand some
| women would only be comfortable with a doctor that is
| also a woman. That's not necessarily addressable by shoe-
| horning in male doctors. But again, that can be accounted
| for in DEI programs.
|
| It's also more understandable to non-remote jobs. Some
| areas have staggeringly different demographics that could
| only really be changed by relocating candidates, which
| isn't feasible for all business. Mentioning this
| specifically as my company is fully remote.
|
| Otherwise, in my opinion, a candidate pool that is 95%
| some demographic shows a severe deficiency in the ability
| to attract candidates.
| sfteus wrote:
| > These are not good assumptions. 80% of pediatricians are
| women. Why would a hospital expect to hire 50% male
| pediatricians when only 20% of pediatricians are men? If
| you saw a hospital that had 50% male pediatricians, that
| means they're hiring male pediatricians at 4x the rate of
| women. That's pretty strong evidence that female candidates
| aren't being given equal employment opportunity.
|
| We track these, but don't establish guardrails on that fine
| grained of data.
|
| In your example, it would be balanced by a likely over-
| representation in urology by male doctors. But when looking
| at doctors overall, the demographics tend to balance out,
| with the understanding that various factors may affect
| specific practices.
|
| To give you a more solid answer, in our data we see that
| men are a bit overrepresented in our platform engineering
| roles, while women are within our data science and ML
| roles. General backend/frontend roles are fairly balanced.
| Overall engineering metrics roughly fit out guardrails. We
| look at the same for management, leadership, sales, and
| customer support.
|
| I don't have direct data on the recruitment -> interview
| process on hand. I work on the interviewing side though,
| and can tell you anecdotally that I've run dozens of
| interviews and overall haven't noticed a discrepancy in the
| candidates I've seen. I can also say that of those dozens,
| I think I've only advanced 2 candidates to the hiring
| committee. So we seem to err on sending a candidate to
| interview vs trying to prematurely prune the pool down.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Hide the name and gender and attach a applicant ID. It 's as
| easy as that._
|
| Doing so doesn't hurt. In my college, exams and coursework were
| graded this way.
|
| Unfortunately with resumes it isn't so easy. If I tell you I
| attended Brigham Young University, my hobby is singing in a
| male voice choir, and I contributed IDE CD-RW drive support to
| the Linux kernel - you can probably take a guess at my
| demographics.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| They could replace the university name with things like the
| university's median SAT admissions score, and admissions
| rate.
|
| Previous work experience is relevant to the job, so it'd be
| hard to argue removing that information, and working on older
| technology does imply a minimum age. Though I guess
| theoretically one could be a retro computing enthusiaist.
| dataflow wrote:
| > 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?
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I'm fairly certain this was an example of overfitting and
| Freedman's Paradox, not deliberate cheating.
|
| Let's say you have a completely random data set. You generate a
| bunch of random variables x1 through xn and a random dependent
| variable y. Then you poke around and see whether any of the x
| variables look like they might predict y, so you pick those
| variables and try to build a model on them. What you end up with
| is a model where, according to the standard tests of statistical
| significance, some of the xs predict the y, even though all the
| data is completely random.
|
| This is a much more likely explanation for why the answer weights
| on the biographical assessment were so weird than some conspiracy
| between the contractors who developed the test, the FAA staff,
| and the black employee organization.
|
| They had a dataset that was very skewed because historically
| there have been very few black controllers, and so was very prone
| to overfitting. The FAA asked the contractor to use that dataset
| to build a test that would serve as a rough filter, screen in
| good candidates, and not show a disparate impact. The contractor
| delivered a test that fulfilled those criteria (at least in the
| technical sense that it passed statistical validation). Whether
| or not the test actually made any sense was not their department.
| daemonologist wrote:
| I agree that it seems likely that the weird questions and their
| weighting came from over-fitting as you describe. The cheating
| allegation though, from my reading, is that the "correct"
| answers were leaked and then disseminated by the leakee(s).
| (And that this was particularly impactful because it was
| unlikely that you would pass the overfit test otherwise.)
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| When I read the IG report and saw what the guy actually said
| (and that his list of secret buzzwords actually turned out to
| be a photocopy from a resume writing book) it was pretty
| clear that he was bullshitting and claiming that he had
| inside information about the process that he didn't actually
| have.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > I'm fairly certain this was an example of overfitting and
| Freedman's Paradox, not deliberate cheating.
|
| The answers to the biographical questionnaire - which screened
| out 90% of applicants - were leaked to ethnic affinity groups.
| If a select group of being being provided with the correct
| answers isn't cheating, I don't know what is.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| No, that's not what happened. The guy from the black affinity
| group CLAIMED that he knew the answers. But he's a completely
| unreliable source who was pretending to know things that he
| didn't actually know. He also claimed to have a list of magic
| buzzwords that would get your application moved to the top of
| the pile, but if you look at the list of magic buzzwords that
| he provided, it was just a list of dozens of generic action
| verbs like "make", "manage", "organize", "analyze", etc. from
| a resume writing book. I'm sure it's the same thing with the
| biographical assessment. He was just telling people what he
| THOUGHT were the right answers.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > As the hiring wave approached, some of Reilly's friends
| in the program encouraged her to join the National Black
| Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE), telling
| her it would help improve her chances of being hired. She
| signed up as the February wave started. 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:
|
| > "I know each of you are eager very eager to apply for
| this job vacancy announcement and trust after tonight you
| will be able to do so....there is some valuable pieces of
| information that I have taken a screen shot of and I am
| going to send that to you via email. Trust and believe it
| will be something you will appreciate to the utmost. Keep
| in mind we are trying to maximize your opportunities...I am
| going to send it out to each of you and as you progress
| through the stages _refer to those images so you will know
| which icons you should select_ ...I am about 99 point 99
| percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each
| question in order to get through the first phase."2
|
| > The biographical questionnaire Snow referred to as the
| "first phase" was an unsupervised questionnaire candidates
| were expected to take at home. You can take a replica copy
| here. Questions were chosen and weighted bizarrely, with
| candidates able to answer "A" to all but one question to
| get through.
|
| From the first article on The scandal:
| https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-hiring-
| scandal-...
|
| > After the 2014 biographical questionnaire was released,
| Snow took it a step further. As Fox Business reported
| (related in Rojas v. FAA), he sent voice-mail messages to
| NBCFAE applicants, advising them on the specific answers
| they needed to enter into the Biographical Assessment to
| avoid failing, stating that he was "about 99 point 99
| percent sure that it is exactly how you need to answer each
| question."
|
| You can take the bigraphical questionnaire and see the
| question weightings here: https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/f
| aa_biographical_assessment/
|
| I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that this was
| just "buzzwords".
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| I've read it. I've seen all the weightings. My point is
| that after reading the IG report, I think it's most
| likely that when he made the following statement he was
| exaggerating and claiming that he knew the right answers
| when he didn't:
|
| > I am going to send it out to each of you and as you
| progress through the stages refer to those images so you
| will know which icons you should select...I am about 99
| point 99 percent sure that it is exactly how you need to
| answer each question in order to get through the first
| phase
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Do you have the list of answers Snow told candidates to
| pick? It'd be simple to cross reference those with the
| biographical questionnaire weightings?
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| To my knowledge that was not recorded anywhere. However
| there are interviews with participants on the call: https
| ://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17Vi9dDtZvbwHDafrygRG..
| .
|
| One of the reasons why I think he was bullshitting was
| that according to the testimony, he said to answer the
| question about how many sports you played in high school
| honestly, but that wast the wrong information because
| that one of the questions where some answers would give
| you more points than others. The other reason is that
| it's just painfully obvious from the testimony that this
| guy was not reliable - he took a generic resume writing
| guide that he had been given years ago and passed it off
| as inside information.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| > he said to answer the question about how many sports
| you played in high school honestly, but that was one of
| the questions where some answers would give you more
| points than others.
|
| That's exactly what is alleged: Snow told applicants
| which answers were worth the most points. This is what
| Snow himself claimed, too.
|
| And the FAA's internal investigation did have witnesses
| say that they were instructed on how to respond to the
| Biographical Assessment:
|
| > One witness said during the call, participants told
| they were looking at questions on the BA test but did not
| know what to enter on the test. According to this
| witness, [redacted] responded with information that
| should be entered on the BA test.
|
| If the voicemails are recorded anywhere, that will put
| this question to rest.
| apical_dendrite wrote:
| Right, my point is that instead of providing the answer
| that would get the applicant the most points, he told
| them to answer honestly. That doesn't make sense if his
| goal was to cheat.
| adamsb6 wrote:
| 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?
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I 'm fairly certain this was an example of overfitting and
| Freedman's Paradox, not deliberate cheating._
|
| Buddy if someone tells you the answers to a multiple choice
| exam and you use them, then you've deliberately cheated. That's
| all there is to it.
| tim333 wrote:
| Have you looked at the info on the test here
| https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/?
| (copied from another post)
|
| To pass the test you have to click A on all 62 questions apart
| from question 16 where you have to click D to say your lowest
| grade in school was in history. The thing's a complete
| travesty.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Did you get a different question/answer than I did? For me it
| showed science as the only correct answer awarding 15 points.
| flak48 wrote:
| it's science for school and history for college
| Aloisius wrote:
| You don't have to do that to pass the test. The max score
| possible is 179. One can pass the test without answering
| either of the worst subject questions "correctly."
|
| Also answering answer A to 23 (>20 hours/week paid employment
| last year of college) would logically conflict with answering
| A to 56 (Did not attend college).
| gadders wrote:
| 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.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > It should never, ever be about hard quotas.
|
| And yet, it is.
|
| The success of a DEI program is the number of people who are in
| X category.
|
| A homogeneous company is a DEI failure, no?
| gadders wrote:
| Ish. Yes, if everyone in your company (of a significant size)
| is the same, then that is a fail.
|
| However, the solution is not to force people into roles they
| are unqualified for. It's to find the ways to make the role
| more attractive to different demographics.
|
| And it's not going to apply in all cases. Would you apply it
| to NBA teams?
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'll counter this with my experience.
|
| I was a technology consultant to the HR department at a large
| tech company. They were bringing in some new technologies for
| recruiting and hiring. Their main objective as to make sure
| they could post their job openings to affinity outlets
| frequented by candidates across various backgrounds, places
| of origin, and racial communities.
|
| It's akin to saying "I want to hire new college graduates, so
| I'll post a job opening to a job board targeting new college
| graduates".
|
| Beyond that I was not aware of any quotas that were built
| into their assessment funnels. On that premise alone, I think
| the DEI initiative was addressing a reasonable objective.
| saynay wrote:
| Honestly, quotas would probably have been better than what was
| done here. Inventing a test (or 'questionnaire' as it was
| called here) where the goal was to filter out almost everyone
| who did not have the answer key, then only giving that answer
| key to the preferred race is just such a terrible way to do it.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| "Such a terrible way to do it" is a huge understatement.
|
| It is so beyond egregious it should be criminal. And that's
| no hyperbole.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| its actually a personality test, that ideally should be
| designed to be well-suited to filter out personality types
| that tend to be successful at the job.
|
| The scandal was coaching people how to pass the personality
| test. That's just a waste. You end up getting people who are
| a bad fit for the job, and will ultimately not be successful
| long-term
|
| For instance, I will ace any aptitude test at 99.9%+
| percentile easily (I always do at any standardized test, SAT,
| GRE, MCAT etc). Yet I would be a terrible terrible fit for
| ATC. The level of detail-orientedness it needs day to day for
| me would be a challenge. I can do it for short periods of
| time of absolute concentration, but my god, there is no way I
| would last at the job long-term. Training me would have been
| a waste of scarce resources. But I know several people that
| such tasks energize them and may not score as high on the
| aptitude test, but would be a better fit for that job long-
| term
|
| If done well, including personality test could have been a
| good way to produce better outcomes, and increase the early
| part of the pipelines by opening it up to more people than
| just CTI grads.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| Personality tests being useful makes sense, but personality
| tests where candidates are sparse and the training/hiring
| bottleneck has already been passed by candidates is
| terrible.
|
| Also, I have a very hard time believing these "correct"
| answers are representative of the already hired candidates.
| Worst subject in school was science, worst in college was
| history, and participated in four or more high school
| sports, but no correlation on whether they believe it is
| important to be fast or accurate in their work? Applied to
| five or six jobs in the last three years? Is bothered "more
| than most" by criticism from others? [1] I almost find it
| easier to believe that they were blatantly playing into
| negative stereotypes of certain minority demographics than
| that this survey was fit to describe already hired ATCs.
|
| [1] https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assess
| ment/
| saynay wrote:
| The switchup of 'worst' subject in high school to college
| seems so striking to me. At best, I could see it coming
| from an over-fitting of data. At worst, it was a test
| designed intentionally to fail anyone without the answer
| key. Not even 'playing in to stereotypes', but 'what
| combination of answers did no one choose, so we can block
| everyone?'
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| "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.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| The "Women in Engineering" group where I worked was
| instrumental in retaining multiple good engineers who
| would've definitely left otherwise after some gendered issues
| (asked out by coworkers, asked whether they were an engineer
| in meetings, etc). I was a mentor for early career engineers
| and I had a woman talking about leaving but the woman in
| engineering group at work helped her immensely and she's a
| top performer.
|
| Systems affect different people differently (which is
| blindingly obvious but bears repeating) so if you want a
| meritocracy based on actual ability you need to do your best
| to nurture _all_ people with ability, which isn 't a one size
| fits all approach. I knew multiple people who absolutely
| kicked ass that benefitted from targeted programs (and from
| their success we've all benefited from these programs),
| there's just also a lot of dumb shit out there for DEI, too.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| this is what at the core of DEI. Correct!
|
| Far too many people believe in the myth of pure
| meritocracy. Instead, what most people really see as
| meritocracy is actually just something reinforces built-in
| un-meritocratic advantages.
|
| For real meritocracy, the best approach is to nurture all
| people with ability, not just device some "test" of
| meritocracy and demand that fidelity to that test result is
| the answer.
| cyberax wrote:
| Blind auditions in orchestras, efforts to get women into
| sciences are all great examples.
| dml2135 wrote:
| You expand your pipeline into places where you were not
| previously looking. Go recruit at a historically black
| college, or a Women Who Code convention. You don't need to
| lower standards.
|
| The talent is out there. If you're not even looking in the
| right places, that's the first place to start.
| SolarNet wrote:
| 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.
| matthew_stone wrote:
| Require diversity in the interview pool, not when making
| hiring decisions.
|
| e.g. in a male majority profession, for every two male
| applicants selected to interview, select at least one female
| applicant. But once the candidate pool is established, pick
| the best available candidate for the job.
| gr3ml1n wrote:
| How long does the checklist need to be? Can I check three
| boxes if I an interview a gay black jew or do I only get
| one?
| gadders wrote:
| Another example is to make your recruiting contextual. How
| would you rate two candidate - one that grew up dirt poor and
| when to the worst public schools but gets 90% on your test,
| vs one that went to the best private schools and got 95%?
|
| You can also do things to remove stereotypes about your
| industry - "I'm not going to work in industry X because it's
| all posh people."
| hitekker wrote:
| For 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.
| sashank_1509 wrote:
| Wow, how can anyone take that test and defend FAA hiring
| practices. This is dystopia level nonsense
| UberFly wrote:
| Unfortunately this dystopia level nonsense has infected a lot
| lately and I'm glad it's finally getting some sunshine
| applied to it.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I learned about the opportunity to apply for an Air Traffic
| Control Specialist (ATCS) job through:
|
| A. A PUBLIC NOTICE OR MEDIA ADVERTISEMENT +5 B. A FRIEND OR
| RELATIVE 0 C. COLLEGE RECRUITMENT +3 D. WORKING IN SOME OTHER
| CAPACITY FOR THE AGENCY +3 E. SOME OTHER WAY 0
|
| Wow ... I get points for this. No surprise, that this is
| going south. I m shocked.
| sethammons wrote:
| Congress stopped it 9 years ago.
| drivebyhooting wrote:
| HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
|
| How can an agency administer that travesty of a test? Heads
| should be rolling over this.
| tstrimple wrote:
| It turns out you can't be an ATC unless your worst subject is
| science. It's the only question which awards points.
| fwip wrote:
| I think you misread something, because that's not true.
| tstrimple wrote:
| "It's the only answer for that question which provides
| points*" Is what I meant.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/2hRa1eQ.png
| Aloisius wrote:
| It's the first question that provides points, not the
| only one.
| tstrimple wrote:
| It clearly states that if you choose anything other than
| science for that question, you get zero points. It's
| literally in the quiz and captured in a screen shot. How
| is this controversial or confusing at all?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Yes. You get 0 points for that _one_ question. There are
| 27 other questions which you can get points from.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/Zh8uS88
| tengwar2 wrote:
| Insufficient information to say whether this is literally
| true, but if you don't answer "science" you lose 15 points,
| which is at least a very serious blow to your chances of
| passing.
| kristjansson wrote:
| NB they still administered a cognitive test to candidates that
| passed (blegh) the biographical assessment
| varloid wrote:
| After lowering the standards so that 95% of people who took
| the test would pass.
| daveguy wrote:
| This is not the FAA's air traffic controller test. This is the
| biographical assessment. The air traffic controller test is
| called the ATSA (formerly AT-SAT) for Air Traffic Skills
| Assessment (Test).
|
| This gives examples of the test format and questions:
|
| https://pointsixtyfive.com/xenforo/threads/atsa-compilation....
| sporkland wrote:
| I look at stories like this and a key moment of failure that is
| obvious to anyone that has ever deployed code is don't make a
| change and roll it out to 100% of all devices/servers
| immediately. Feels like there is just some basic things missing
| from folks brains that gradual release and validation of the
| impacted cohort isn't a built in instinct for us.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| yeah, they should have absolutely piloted this approach, look
| at the results, re-avaluated or fixed things, try again, before
| making it the absolute new policy
| throw7 wrote:
| Exactly what do the liberals (the author) want to happen? He
| seems to still believe that "lowering the bar" is the right and
| good thing to do moving forward?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Complaints about controller shortages and 6-day weeks being the
| norm and whatnot go back into the 00s.
|
| Why the hell was anyone doing anything to restrict the hiring and
| onboarding pipeline in the first place?
|
| The alleged motivation barely even matters. Heck considering the
| attrition rate of the career path it would arguably be acceptable
| if they juiced their hiring pipeline with their preferred
| demographics. I've seen companies do this and be better off for
| it. But to do so at the cost of missing qualified applicants is
| egregious.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Do you honestly believe that hiring rate is determined by DEI
| departments and not budgets?
|
| Do you really, honestly believe that the FAA was using these
| practices to hire _less_ people and not just hire the people
| they want to hire in the limited positions?
|
| Why would they go to such absurd lengths when they could just
| say "we can't hire more people because we can't afford it"...
| khazhoux wrote:
| From what I'm seeing, this program started in 2014 and was killed
| in 2016.
|
| Seems like this is dredging up an old issue to boost today's
| culture-war narrative.
| throwaway260124 wrote:
| I don't think a test with R^2 of 0.27 should be used to
| completely reject candidates. It should have weighting
| proportional to its explanatory power.
|
| Claiming that such a test worked is in my opinion BS. It was
| clearly being overused.
| ramblenode wrote:
| The story is really worth a read. The writing speaks for itself:
|
| > The biographical questionnaire Snow referred to as the "first
| phase" was an unsupervised questionnaire candidates were expected
| to take at home. You can take a replica copy here. Questions were
| chosen and weighted bizarrely, with candidates able to answer "A"
| to all but one question to get through. Some of the most heavily
| weighted questions were "The high school subject in which I
| received my lowest grades was:" (correct answer: science, worth
| 15 points) and "The college subject in which I received my lowest
| grades was:" (correct answer: history, for another 15 points).
| armada651 wrote:
| Those two questions are cherry-picked to imply the
| questionnaire was specifically designed to only let people pass
| who preformed badly academically. However there are several
| other questions that specifically ask for the applicant's
| average grades and anything less than an A grade will not give
| you any points.
|
| The problem is that the test is completely arbitrary with no
| rhyme or reason to it, not that it was designed to select for
| candidates who preformed badly academically. Thus leading to
| the allegations it was designed specifically to only let people
| pass who were given the answers beforehand.
| TraceWoodgrains wrote:
| To clarify, I picked those two questions not to imply a focus
| on bad academic performance but because they are both a)
| absurd/arbitrary and b) the highest-weighted questions by
| far.
| Aloisius wrote:
| Is it absurd?
|
| The choices for both were Science, Math, English,
| History/Social Sciences and Physical Education, plus did
| not attend college for the second.
|
| Math is highly predictive of ATC performance. English is a
| key requirement due the communication-heavy role. Physical
| Education is linked to confidence which is a strong
| predictor of graduation rates.
|
| That leaves History/Social Sciences and Science as
| oddballs. If you did poorly in Science or History/Social
| Sciences in high school, that likely didn't change in
| college, so you would have gotten at least 15 points by
| answering it the same way for both questions.
|
| I'm not sure there was an expectation that someone would
| get them _both_ right. Rather having different answers get
| 15 points ensures people answering both the same way _didn
| 't_ which likely would make the test a bit too easy to
| pass.
|
| This test just looks like a big five personality test mixed
| with some socioeconomic and academic questions.
| varloid wrote:
| Do you think that makes someone 5 times more likely to be
| a good ATC than having served as an ATC in the military,
| which would get you 3 points?
|
| Or infinitely better than being an active ATC, which
| earned 0?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Is that the _only_ question that an active military ATC
| would very likely get points for?
|
| I don't think you can take questions in isolation. Active
| military ATC would likely pick up full or close to full
| points on several other questions like recent
| unemployment (#26), expressing views (#27), formal
| training (#30), formal suggestions (#36), knowledge of
| job (#46) and probably coursework (#54).
| mhalle wrote:
| Some important points that this article glosses over.
|
| The FAA Academy where all flight controllers are trained is way
| over-subscribed. Recruiting policies aside, I can find no
| evidence that the FAA wasn't training as many controllers as it
| could through its academy. This fact remained true through the
| Trump 1 administration into the Biden admin, except for COVID.
| The pandemic was understandably a huge disruption, as were
| government shutdowns.
|
| We can know this from the FAA Controller Staffing reports from
| 2019 (Trump 1 before the pandemic but after Obama) and 2024
| (Biden). The 2024 report has been scrubbed from the FAA website
| when I last checked, but is available through the wayback
| machine:
|
| 2019:
| https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/controller_staf...
|
| 2024:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241225184848/https://www.faa.g...
|
| There appears to be no urgency in Trump 1 about this issue in the
| report. Things changed in 2023 when an external safety report
| revealed the staffing problem and suggested improvements.
|
| https://www.faa.gov/NAS_safety_review_team_report.pdf
|
| As a result, hiring almost doubled between 2010 and 2024, with
| 1800 controllers hired in the last year. More importantly, the
| FAA followed the report recommendation to use CTI schools as
| additional academies:
|
| https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/10/amid-hiring-surge-...
|
| It seems like the Biden administration took real action to
| address a problem that had been unfortunately present and
| unacknowledged for many years.
|
| See a chatgpt analysis comparing the two reports here:
| https://chatgpt.com/share/679eb87f-c4fc-800a-a883-3b7f79e06d...
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| One of the reasons that these attempts to increase diversity are
| such a mess is because it is illegal to have a straightforward
| quota.
|
| If these agencies could just have a policy like "Group X is %Y of
| the population. This agency must hire at least %Y/2 from group
| X", there would be no need to have these sneaky roundabout
| methods of increasing equity.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > The FAA investigated, clearing the NBCFAE and Snow of doing
| anything wrong in an internal investigation
|
| Ah yes, we carefully investigated ourselves and we have not found
| anything wrong. Thank you for your concern.
|
| > Our organization, he said, "wasn't for Caucasians, it wasn't
| for, you know, the white male, it wasn't for an alien on Mars,"
| and he confirmed that he provided information "to minimize the
| competition."
|
| It's like we're talking about a talent show not air traffic
| controllers.
|
| I mean, shit, this just fuels Trump and his supporters' rhetoric
| and validates all the rambling and craziness involved around this
| topic.
|
| Who needs enemies when you got friends doing this kind of stuff
| and shooting everyone in the foot. It's like Biden pardoning his
| son after talking about corruption and nepotism.
| lordloki wrote:
| Or all the people that you assumed were racist are really just
| upset about these racist policies.
| macrocosmos wrote:
| You're upset that reality aligns with the rhetoric? Why not
| just accept that maybe there is something to the rhetoric?
| rdtsc wrote:
| > Why not just accept that maybe there is something to the
| rhetoric?
|
| Yeah, fair enough
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _America desperately needs more air traffic controllers_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42933840
| exabrial wrote:
| > Based upon your responses to the Biographical Assessment, we
| have determined that you are NOT eligible for this position."
|
| Wow.
| ein0p wrote:
| > In a moment of dark irony, the sort of diversity-focused work
| she's passionate about--not lowering the bar, but inspiring more
| people and providing them with mentorship and opportunity to
| reach it
|
| Discrimination by race, gender and sexual orientation (aka DEI,
| jokingly disabbreviated as "didn't earn it") always results in
| lowering the bar. No exceptions. Either the candidate earns a
| position fair and square, in which case you don't need "DEI", or
| you are discriminating against someone else more deserving, and
| therefore lowering the bar overall. What's ironic is this is
| setting minorities back decades. In 2000 nobody cared what color
| you were or whether you had a penis. In 2025 the assumption is
| that a minority is a "DEI hire" unless proven otherwise. And bah
| gawd there are real exemplars out there to support that
| narrative.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The one positive "DEI" thing you _can_ do without lowering the
| bar is to widen the net: look harder for qualified candidates
| in places where you didn 't look before.
| default-kramer wrote:
| > Either the candidate earns a position fair and square, in
| which case you don't need "DEI", or you are discriminating
| against someone else more deserving, and therefore lowering the
| bar overall.
|
| False dichotomy. It's possible that in some situations DEI
| could replace cronyism and produce better hires. I have no idea
| how often that actually happens, but I know that cronyism
| happens a lot.
| synergy20 wrote:
| i will prefer driving to taking flights for the coming years
|
| for international flight, i will avoid USA airlines absolutely.
| silexia wrote:
| "Diversity hiring goals" is the pretty new propaganda word for
| ugly old racism.
| vichle wrote:
| There's a very high amount of political topics lately, and it's
| very uninteresting to non-US readers. Please stop.
| mfkp wrote:
| Nobody is forcing you to read this or comment. Go find a local
| news website if you're so displeased with the US content.
| vichle wrote:
| Not every forum needs to be an arena for your polarized world
| views. This used to be a place where all types of scientific
| and tech related content was posted. Not so much right now,
| everyone is just throwing shit at each other but with nicer
| choice of words than on Twitter.
| tstrimple wrote:
| And this forum isn't specifically made for you. Ignore it
| and move on. Just like other people do for other subjects
| they aren't interested in. The ego to think that things
| that don't interest you specifically have no place here
| while plenty of others are engaging just fine.
| vichle wrote:
| 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 topics to a
| minimum - there are plenty of other forums where those
| discussions can and do happen. It's not like there's a
| tech twist to the political discussions here anyway, it's
| just poop flinging like everywhere else.
| timeon wrote:
| Sure not every needs it but this is US page so it is more
| likely to discuss US related things here.
|
| As someone who is not from English speaking country, I get
| that you may expect forum in English language to be neutral
| / international, but usually (as with any other language)
| it is not.
| DamnYuppie wrote:
| It is a US based website, mostly about US tech companies. You
| may find it uninteresting but it has large impacts on these
| companies so would not be out of place here.
| vichle wrote:
| I see absolutely zero comments in this thread about how it
| affects tech companies. Please elaborate.
| zombiwoof wrote:
| I really need a ChatGPT summary of this article
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Qualified applicants were discriminated against explicitly
| because of DEI initiatives.
| anitil wrote:
| Trace is on here, though not very active
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TraceWoodgrains)
| dml2135 wrote:
| DEI is simply a framework. Like Agile, it can be well implemented
| if the person implementing it understands the problems it is
| trying to address, along with its limitations.
|
| And just like Agile, it can be poorly implemented when the person
| implementing it does not understand its purpose, or hates the
| framework and cynically implements it under protest.
|
| In both cases, the poor implementations should not justify
| throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but so it goes.
| yeahwhatever10 wrote:
| Are people still using Agile?
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| Yes.
| sethammons wrote:
| Are people not?
| hjgjhyuhy wrote:
| America should help its poor and underprivileged groups through
| stuff like progressive taxation, better social service, and extra
| resources for schools in poor areas. It's not perfect, but kind
| of works. It helps people to achieve better educational outcomes
| already in their childhood.
|
| Discriminating against everyone else in school or work
| application processes is just wrong and insane way to handle
| things.
| mp05 wrote:
| Well as they say, it's about equality of opportunity, not
| equality of outcome. Te former I believe strongly, no doubt.
| They latter? EH
| kshahkshah wrote:
| > 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.
| soared wrote:
| 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 hosts adult job fairs, has family counseling, etc.
| kshahkshah wrote:
| Agree with all that in theory. I don't know of a good
| implementation of it.
| hyeonwho4 wrote:
| I agree that free healthy food for all kids is a great
| idea. Unfortunately, I have very little trust in US school
| administrators and school districts to provide healthy
| meals which nourish children instead of food industry
| espoused slop which sets them up with an unhealthy eating
| habits for life.
|
| Here's a comparison of school meals in Korea vs. the US.
| There are similar comparisons with Japan, France, and
| Germany. Somehow the US is uniquely unable to feed kids
| healthy food. I blame political corruption and food
| industry marketing.
|
| https://www.allkpop.com/buzz/2024/04/what-are-they-
| feeding-t...
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/how-
| french-s...
| macrocosmos wrote:
| I saw this posted on the aviation subreddit and after gaining a
| few dozen comments, it seems to have been deleted. Strange times
| since it is seems this is very relevant there. I'm glad an
| article like this can exist here.
| jmpman wrote:
| My brother in law is a pilot, and has colleagues who were
| impacted by this. What surprised me is that he blames Obama for
| this. I typically ignore his blame of Obama as some racist
| tirade, but this seems to point to Obama pushing these changes?
| electrondood wrote:
| It's ridiculous to me that we're back in the world of "politician
| blames bad thing on wokeness" > "everyone has to spend months
| discussing this as if it's a sane idea."
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| It's ridiculous to me that a journalist can provide clear
| evidence that dei initiatives were used to discriminate against
| people and you can dismiss it by calling it wokeness.
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