The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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.

> 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".

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.

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.

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!

>conscious outreach to increase diversity of applicants

Which involved doingwhat exactly?

In our case, the recruitment team started by only headhunting target candidates. Once we exhausted that pool, they would headhunt any candidate.

Just for clarity, this was for a publicly posted job position, so non-target candidates were able to, and did, put in applications. They were assessed the same way target candidates were.

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

Do you try to get an approximation of society with that selective net you're casting? Of the field? Or is it more according to own preference with something like an equal amount of the subsections you can think of?