Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads • Hacker News Board

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

#421

Post by mch82 » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 6:51 AM UTC

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…

This will be changing as software is responsible for the control of an increasing number of physical systems (cars, medical, aircraft, etc.)

Edit: Unless we elect people who take away legal protections in place to regulate safety critical software

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

#422

Post by BurningFrog » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 6:51 AM UTC

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…

I think you're right, and I also think the age discrimination issue is overblown.

Take this article. It says that some companies ("dozens") place some ads targeted at younger audiences.

NOTHING indicates that it's a major trend or that they do this a lot. The article is written because of a legal issue. But if you only read the comments you get an impression of the streets filling up with discarded old ultracompetent programmers.

I don't have the whole picture either of course, but a long life in the industry gives me the impression that it actually mostly does work just the way you think it should.

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

#423

Post by watwut » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 6:53 AM UTC

lotyrin wrote: post #358

user5994461 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you got the lesson. Please stop working over the week ends for free. You are devaluing yourself and you are devaluing all the developers who don't want to ruin their week end at work.

I obviously didn't bring to the demonstration that I had volunteered the time, it suited my point to make it seem like it was something easy I could do as an aside... Problem is, they don't care about $ either, they care about what makes them look good, what makes their boss look good, what the sales guys are bugging them about, and it's features and visual polish and never quality or performance. I had to break it d…

> I've done clandestine work over weekends to speed up an application

> I obviously didn't bring to the demonstration that I had volunteered the time, it suited my point to make it seem like it was something easy I could do as an aside

I understand the impulse, but in long term this leads to inflated estimates from management - and tech side has only themselves to blame. When we pretend things take shorter then they really do, dont be surprised when they learn to expect our lie to become truth.

Long term here can be as short as three months.

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

#424

Post by godzillabrennus » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:02 AM UTC

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…

You can pay less in a salary on average to young people.

They don’t challenge you.

They don’t tend to need expensive healthcare benefits.

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

#425

Post by godzilla82 » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:07 AM UTC

eric_b wrote: post #288

ryandrake wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree with you, and this is a hard lesson to learn. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Software should really only be measured by the value it provides. If a terribly buggy piece of poorly written code still saves hundreds of man hours a week, it's a win. (Unit tests be damned) If that big ball of mud that's using 20 year old technology still prints a billion dollars a year - that's a win. (Microservic…

I have a feeling you dont have much experience on working on other peoples code. You have just bundled all kinds of issues into a bucket of "buggy piece of poorly written code". Some of these are outright security vulnerabilities and some make you wonder how was the bug not found so far. Sometimes fixing these issues require a heavy rewrite which cannot be justified as a bug-fix. And how do you justify playing with your customers data by "slapdash jquery-and-duct-tape" techniques.

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

#426

Post by ehnto » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:09 AM UTC

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…

I had the fortune to work at an agency that cared a whole lot, and tended to take on clients who had learned hard lessons from bad code written for the platform we worked in.

Code quality matters and has tangible consequences in that niche, and it was awesome to work in that environment.

I haven't worked anywhere like that previously, and I think the key factors that brought code quality to the forefront were:

* Bugs cost sales

* Poor code caused friction for features a significant amount (reduced ROI)

* Small teams and an insanely tight customer relationship to those teams. The client needed to have a stakeholder in our team or as close to that as possible.

But most importantly it was just the company culture from top to bottom. The director cared, he made the project managers care, and we already cared because it's more fun to write good code.

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

#427

Post by ryanmarsh » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:12 AM UTC

outworlder wrote: post #418

hackits wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've nailed it on the head but haven't realized why you've nailed it on the head. `Why? These things have real consequences.` To a business they see software/engineers as a expense. The whole focus as a business is to provide a service that people are will to pay more than it costs to provide said service. Everything else doesn't matter, what does matter for a business is $$$$$ and making sure business does…

> Get out of your cube and go and meet CEO's and CIO Oh right. Good luck even ATTEMPTING to arrange a meeting with a Fortune company's CEO. "Who from what department again?". Worse yet if it not even your company's CEO. Maybe, if you are lucky, you can get to skip a level or too. Software engineers are usually very far removed from the top leadership.

I routinely talk to CIO’s. They’re often the ones who hire me.

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

#428

Post by TomK32 » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:12 AM UTC

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…

Not many 20-something have the mental strength to insist on the dealine moving if such big change requests come in late. As a contractor you'd insist on the client to pay that extra work and time.

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

#429

Post by watwut » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:14 AM UTC

exelius wrote: post #129

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…

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…

> You can do the code reviews to make sure they don't do stupid shit.

This does not work. Your code monkeys will get demotivated fast and wont be able to learn anyway. The one architect guy will because increasingly out of touch and his code review will become pointless red tape fast.

> The thought is that a team of greyhairs never ships anything, and a team of youngsters ships garbage. But it's better to ship garbage than nothing, hence the bias.

Why would greyhairs never ships anything? I dont get it. My experience was that young people need more supervision to not get demotivated and to actually finish it. (on average)

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

#430

Post by toomanybeersies » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:14 AM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #373

toomanybeersies wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honestly that doesn’t seem a bad decision. You will be eating PHP day in day out. It would be a bad choice for the company if they had candidates who otherwise don’t care that much about PHP’s problems, and a disservice to you if you could otherwise find equivalent jobs in a language you like better. Working in a PHP shop, nobody would care to shit on PHP during an interview. We know the shortcommings, it just doesn’…

I'm definitely not criticising them for their decision. I honestly probably wouldn't've liked working with PHP all day long, especially since the job would've been working with quite a lot of legacy code.