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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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739 points firebaze | 3 comments | 05 Feb 25 05:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.432s | source
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scott_w ◴[05 Feb 25 06:46 UTC] No.42944787[source]▶
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.

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thaumasiotes ◴[05 Feb 25 06:57 UTC] No.42944872[source]▶
> 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".

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scott_w ◴[05 Feb 25 07:03 UTC] No.42944916[source]▶
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.
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1. ars ◴[05 Feb 25 07:24 UTC] No.42945078[source]▶
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.

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2. scott_w ◴[05 Feb 25 07:50 UTC] No.42945317[source]▶
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.

3. int_19h ◴[05 Feb 25 23:12 UTC] No.42956711[source]▶
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).