How did they publish an ad with incorrect grammar? "Here, your more than a number..." It should be you're
Because it was written by their social media team - a hired 20-25yo and not a 40-60yo.
Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
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Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a race to the bottom. You could pay more for better work that gets done more slowly (fewer hours as people have families, etc,) or you could pay less for worse work that gets done more quickly. Well, iOS11 needs to ship on its annual schedule, non-negotiable. And the SVP will really complain if I ask for more money this quarter. So, cheap it is. If a bridge falls down, it's really obvious and people die. If bill…
If billions of computers become vulnerable to malicious actors and a few hundred or thousand people suffer dramatic personal damages, well that's a nice and quiet problem which will be quickly forgotten in the 24-hour news cycle. This. I do development coaching and training. I’m totally burned out because my job doesn’t matter. These companies don’t care. They hire me to “increase code quality” but that ends up being…
The topic of your rant is something that it took me forever to accept as a software engineer. Nobody cares about quality.
Your method is refactored to be super-fast and have no branches? Nobody cares.
Elegant, re-usable architecture? Nobody cares.
You've optimized an inner loop in assembly and increased speed by 30%? Nobody cares.
Made it to zero compiler warnings? Nobody cares.
No known crashers left in the bug tracker? Nobody cares.
Fixed that bug that's been in the code for two years? Nobody cares.
Patched a security hole that could allow a crazy bad attack? Nobody cares.
The vast majority of software shops out there care only that something--anything--ships as fast as remotely possible, and as long as it does not kill the customer, it's a success. Nobody in leadership gives a single fuck about anything else. There are a few places where this is not true, and good software people tend to collect there, but it's true for the vast majority of places where you will work. The sooner you accept this, the less likely you'll burn out.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#213Are there tells of race, sex discrimination?
Facebook was already in trouble for allowing people to place ads to whites only for housing - that is against the law in the USA. And after being informed of it - despites thousands of software engineers - Facebook was not capable or not willing to change it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-disc...
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
But curiously, not illegal to discriminate against people under 40 on the basis of age (at least, under the same Federal statute)[0]. If these job ads were targeted at the 40+ demographic only, they would be totally ok. It's even been to the Supreme Court[1]: > In the 2004 decision General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline, the U.S. Supreme Court settled a conflict among the lower courts over the viability of so-c…
I wonder if this one-way protection exists because otherwise it would be legally tenuous to post job ads seeking a minimum number of years of experience (e.g. 10+ years in professional Python development), which basically by definition discriminate against the very young.
I'd imagine it's because older people wield more political power. Also more at risk.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm one of the greyhairs. I won't work the insane hours, but I'll still get more done. How? By knowing what to write and how to write it, so I don't have to fumble around trying things for nearly as long. By not writing the bugs that the 20-somethings write, which means I don't have to take the time to try to fix them. By not creating the shoddy designs that other create, which then have to be fixed. By having an ide…
I'm not attacking you here (and in fact I agree with you), but from a manager's perspective, I need one guy like you to design it in an architecture modeling tool and 8 young code monkeys to do all the boring work of building and testing it. You can do the code reviews to make sure they don't do stupid shit. The thought is that a team of greyhairs never ships anything, and a team of youngsters ships garbage. But it's…
> But it's better to ship garbage than nothing
Yup, this is the software industry boiled down to the basics.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#216It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me? I have heard that companies like recent grads because they are (1) more malleable and (2) can be paid less. But neither of those reasons seem to me strong enough. I'm talking completely about the company's own interests. Let's address the first reason: malleability. A recent grad presumably will adopt the co…
Here's my take: in the world of software products speed of delivery trumps quality almost every time. Customers seem to be happy with a flaky, feature-lite products and pay for it. They'll pay to have something that kinda-sorta works now and pay to improve it on an extended basis in the B2B space. Development companies recognize this and structure themselves accordingly.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#217I guess I have two takes on this:
1) Does this mean my local strip club will now have to hire 90 year olds? 2) Ignoring that joke for now - if pro-publica released this information we now have information that harm has been caused. And actually couldn't this be an indication that possibly billions of dollars of damage has been done... what's next?
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm
Is there any case law regarding this when it comes to physical publications? Because that case law could come into play in deciding the Facebook case. Hypothetical example: a local employer puts up a job flyer at a college campus, but does not put the flyer up at the senior center across town. I could see a court ruling this illegal, if the employer did this specifically to try to attract younger workers.
Some college students are senior citizens.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#219I want to believe these companies don't know it's illegal to discriminate based on age. Because the alternative is that they're intentionally discriminating -- and thinking they won't get caught, because the ads are only appearing on Facebook. But any government agency that's investigating this can obviously just to ask Facebook for the company's ad buys, and there's an irrefutable paper trail. (It can't be that hard…
Not that I like these laws anyway. they were really designed for manual labor and the like.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#220I want to believe these companies don't know it's illegal to discriminate based on age. Because the alternative is that they're intentionally discriminating -- and thinking they won't get caught, because the ads are only appearing on Facebook. But any government agency that's investigating this can obviously just to ask Facebook for the company's ad buys, and there's an irrefutable paper trail. (It can't be that hard…
Genuine question: is it explicitly illegal to discriminate in your outreach for job applications? Surely similar behavior happens all the time without as much outcry, like recruiting at college career fairs.