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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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739 points firebaze | 4 comments | 05 Feb 25 05:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.6s | 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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flocciput ◴[05 Feb 25 16:56 UTC] No.42951421[source]▶
> 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.

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1. thaumasiotes ◴[05 Feb 25 20:18 UTC] No.42954519[source]▶
> 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.

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2. ◴[05 Feb 25 21:02 UTC] No.42955076[source]▶
3. ◴[05 Feb 25 21:14 UTC] No.42955242[source]▶
4. tzs ◴[06 Feb 25 19:14 UTC] No.42965510[source]▶
> 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?