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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

I've seen worse tests. It's stupid, but it's weird how aggressive people seem about it now compared to this topic getting lots of attention in the industry over decades now. Even this year WSJ mentions astrology, numerology, graphology in business https://archive.is/ZvJKX

So why is this specific case something that seems to get people out with pitchforks? There are thousands of other cases and they should've been all laughed at until nobody proposes a personality test again. It's all bad and the attention on this one case makes me doubt people genuinely care about profiling and broken hiring in general. (Rather than joining the dei-bad bandwagon)

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Because the arbitrary scoring makes it clear that it was just corruption, designed for the answers to be given to some people ahead of time, so that you could hire them instead of other people, backed by (artificial) data.

People don't like corruption. Which is good, because corruption is bad.

Because, unlike most professions, ATC is immediately, personally responsible for making decisions for which a slight mistake could instantly claim the lives of hundreds of people.

We've not heard of anyone not qualified getting a job, only not hiring enough people. This has been an issue for many many years now. On the other hand there's lots of other professions with their own profiled hiring issues that claim lives over extended periods of time. So yeah, it still smells like an artificially popular topic. Especially since many changes have already been made this year but we're still seeing the same gripes reposted - but https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/us-transportati... hasn't been posted even once.

They hired more people who then failed the academy and the FAA only has budget for a fixed number of seats. This resulted in a shortage of trainees making it to towers.

And the test doesn't test for that well. I passed and honestly shouldn't. Few of the questions about if I'd be a good ATC mattered much.

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