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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

#241

Post by macrael »

combatentropy wrote: post #66

It 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…

Older employees are significantly more expensive for your employer provided health insurance in the US. Not sure how that translates to bigger co's but it's significant for small firms.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#242

Post by emodendroket »

lovich wrote: post #161
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #120

Earlier 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…

What you won't do however, is work insane hours to get something done because management changed scope or requirements at the last second but kept the deadline. The flavor of agile development that most shops seem to devolve to is one where management gets the part that they can update requirements based on new information, but deadlines are the same and costs need to constantly be cut. My personal belief is that our…

Call me cynical, but I am always surprised when people sincerely appeal to "agile/scrum values" of team autonomy or whatever to contest management diktats because, like... isn't it totally predictable that that part will be ignored whenever it is inconvenient?

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#243

Post by tracker1 »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #206
racer-v wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume you wouldn't hire someone who expresses a strong distaste for your software stack, regardless of age (unless their job is specifically to replace it).

From experience, companies won't hire you if you express a strong distaste for their software stack. I learned this after I told the interviewer that I thought that PHP was a crap language, when interviewing for a PHP developer position.

I tend to feel the same wrt Java, not so much the language, but the tooling around the language feels like such a pain. I always hated PHP. I've worked with them both though.

I happen to like the one language to rule them all (JS).

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#244

Post by lurr »

sidlls wrote: post #232
lurr wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> very much better than many (most, possibly all) of the 20-something hipsters they're using to fart out garbage. how is this type of attitude not sufficient reason to not bother hiring someone? I immediately don't want to work with or for you.

From my comment: "I wouldn't hire me to work on a JavaScript stack.... They're just biases that haven't a good justification." I know this. And I wouldn't want to work with JS devs. At all. It's a win-win for all of us that I don't apply to those positions.

I wouldn't want to work with you on anything, as I strongly suspect your attitude extends well beyond javascript.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#245

Post by tfigment »

hackits wrote: post #224
leggomylibro wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To a business they see software/engineers as a expense. Anecdotally, this is one of the first things I try to gauge at a prospective employer. "Are their development teams seen as cost centers, or profit centers?" If the company works with technology a lot and doesn't see technology as being particularly important to its bottom line, that's usually a bad sign. Also, discussions with C-levels tend to be pretty one-di…

You're 100% right but also 100% wrong. Like I said before you're viewing it from the perspective of a developer but not from the perspective of a Business person. Instead of saying `Users cannot sing up if everything is broken` you need to see it from a Business perspective, and communicate it to them in the language they understand. For example, `From our quarterly earnings report we need to have 10,0000 new clients…

The corollary here that it is perfectly acceptable for business users to not understand significant parts of their own business operations. In fact, everybody should work around your shortcomings in understanding that "technical" stuff. As the guy with the MBA, you are the most important person in the room and everybody else is there to serve you.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#246

Post by emodendroket »

lorenzq wrote: post #143
racer-v wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a perception in computer programming that any experience outside of the specific language, library and toolkit being used on the project is irrelevant. Or worse, an impediment; "I don't want somebody with bad habits and instincts acquired from working on now-obsolete systems". Managers really believe a kid with 3 years JavaScript experience and 1 year of Vue is as good (or better) than a senior programmer wit…

If that older Unix or C++ programmer doesn't have a strong bias against Javascript, functional programming, new es6/es7 concepts, and web appliactions in general, then sure. I see many of these types of people even on HN with biases though. Age shouldn't be used as a catch all filter, but I can see how it might be faster to screen those who have been too content to stick to their tools without catching up to industry…

People who are early in their careers can be quite dogmatic too.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#247

Post by whatshisface »

ryandrake wrote: post #212
ryanmarsh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trac…

My universal advice to graduating CS students is, "no matter what your current code quality/dev speed balance is, your boss will think you're polishing too much."

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#248

Post by tracker1 »

busterarm wrote: post #203
raz32dust wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowledge in the software industry tends to get outdated much faster than in other industries. While there are timeless software engineering practices that are good and evergreen, about 70% of my knowledge today will be outdated in 5 years. This is not true of other industries. Sure, other professionals need to keep themselves updated as well. But the percentage of knowledge that a bridge architect needs to update is…

> about 70% of my knowledge today will be outdated in 5 years I really hope this isn't the case for you, and in general I don't really believe it to be true either. Most of what makes me successful as a developer today I knew 20 years ago, in a prior career. You have to differentiate between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. The former changes very little and the latter changes a lot. You're also best off retai…

Not to be offensive, but the front end is quite often far more work than the SQL that goes on in the back. I've worked strictly on the back, the front, and in between. I've also had to work in a number of platforms and languages.

In the end, keeping things as simple as possible is usually best. If that means using language features that someone might not be familiar with, it should still be more understandable in the end.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#249

Post by emodendroket »

lurr wrote: post #244
sidlls wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my comment: "I wouldn't hire me to work on a JavaScript stack.... They're just biases that haven't a good justification." I know this. And I wouldn't want to work with JS devs. At all. It's a win-win for all of us that I don't apply to those positions.

I wouldn't want to work with you on anything, as I strongly suspect your attitude extends well beyond javascript.

You think having preferences, and being aware of them, and avoiding environments not in line with them, makes him a bad prospective co-worker?
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