Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 808 posts

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

#501

Post by doktrin »

hackits wrote: post #176
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…

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 and talk to them about their problems and what their goals are.

Implied in this statement is that the parent has a myopic perspective on the business world. Based on my read of his comment, I don't think that's fair - and moreover would question whether or not your perspective is as unique as you apparently think it is.

In other words, I think you're patting yourself on the back a little much for figuring out how to chew before swallowing.

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

#502

Post by raducu »

maltalex wrote: post #481

The discussion here is interesting, but I haven't seen any psychological and sociological aspects of hiring mentioned yet. Not all hiring decisions are rational. First, there's a culture thing - when a company is composed out of 20 year olds, it's natural for them to prefer working with other young people who they can relate to. That 40 year old job applicant, the one with the kids and the years of experience in comp…

It could be just my experience, but homogeneous teams have higher churn rates.

What happens 6 months after 9 out of 10 juniors you hired want to become team leads? Or they dissagree on the technology stack?

The advantages of younger people are numerous however: you can pay them less, make them work longer hours, make silly promises they will believe (think Elon Musk fooling his employees he's going to Mars).

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

#503

Post by omginternets »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #67

I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the…

> The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market.

If you're being oblique to avoid libel, it's worth noting that libel law doesn't care about whether nor not you name an entity. It cares about whether or not you've identified an entity.

Google has been identified.

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

#504

Post by chrisper »

omginternets wrote: post #503
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #67

I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the…

> The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. If you're being oblique to avoid libel, it's worth noting that libel law doesn't care about whether nor not you name an entity. It cares about whether or not you've identified an entity. Google has been identified.

For all we know it could be Bing!

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

#505

Post by TeMPOraL »

vsc wrote: post #457
CodeMage wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I call the Mediocre Mercenary Mentality, this idea that "as long as we can make money off of it, it's good enough". This mentality is the reason why sometimes -- but not always! -- my phone won't play music in my car until I restart the _car_. This mentality is why game development companies get away with charging full price for unfinished, bug-ridden games with crippled features and missing content. Thi…

You have been able to put to words the feeling that I have had for such a long time. Thanks. I don't know if the world is getting a shittier place. But it surely is getting less reliable.

> I don't know if the world is getting a shittier place. But it surely is getting less reliable.

It is, because everything is being optimized into literal minimum viable products. That's how competitive markets work - whatever aspect of your product or business you can cut out to save money and thus get ahead of your competitors, you will cut out, and then your competitors will cut it out too, in order not to get outcompeted by you. This race-to-the-bottom phenomenon is fundamental to how competition works, and the result is that products gradually lose quality.

It's the reason why your grandfather's washing machine probably works 'till this day, while you have to fix your new one every year, and will probably replace it in five years. "Building to last" is a good example of a quality that the market economy optimized out over time across pretty much all products in all sectors.

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

#506

Post by profalseidol »

tmh79 wrote: post #15

I'm astonished that facebook is successfully able to pull the "we're a platform, its not our fault people are using it illegally" excuse here. There is a huge difference between allowing people to freely post content on places like FB, twitter, or Reddit, and selling access the attention of people that fit specific characteristics. How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting decades of…

Well Uber is finally being treated as a taxi company in the EU.

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

#507

Post by dorgo »

synotna wrote: post #437
joe_the_user wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the "software should really only be measured by the value it provides" attitucde is kind of the key problem we're facing in a whole lot fields. Because it's not really the value overall the software provides that's being talked about but the instantaneous, immediately visible payoff to a single consumer that software, the people or that consumables are getting judged by. If the software is going to result in tro…

It's up to regulation - self or government imposed - to factor externalities in, change society and/or change the law

Somehow I never consider to solve a problem by delegating it to government or society. My first thought is always: there must be a technical solution for this. Even government and society are going to be solved by technology: crypto/blockchain or something which will evolve out of it.

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

#508

Post by TeMPOraL »

joe_the_user wrote: post #407
Terr_ wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software should really only be measured by the value it provides. The problem is when the "negative value" is externalized leading to false evaluations. "Oops, so sorry we leaked all your social security numbers. Our bad."

Yes, the "software should really only be measured by the value it provides" attitucde is kind of the key problem we're facing in a whole lot fields. Because it's not really the value overall the software provides that's being talked about but the instantaneous, immediately visible payoff to a single consumer that software, the people or that consumables are getting judged by. If the software is going to result in tro…

Also the externalities that are never mentioned: bloat and poor performance unnecessarily takes up user's resources, frustrating them and preventing them from doing other things on their machine simultaneously, and also unnecessarily wasting electricity. Multiply that by the number of users of the software, and suddenly all that talk about "optimizing for developer time" starts to sound like "I'll save $100 for myself by inflicting $100k in externalities".

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

#509

Post by watwut »

sidlls wrote: post #228
oceanghost wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we just be honest? Us older folks won't build things we know doesn't work against synthetic deadlines, then work overtime to fix what we knew wasn't going to work in the first place, while taking the blame politically. Engineering has in my lifetime become "unwinnable." I'm either not "a team player" or "being negative" for planning for reasonable failure scenarios. Then politically I still take the heat when the…

Engineers aren't blameless, here. In fact they're at least as much the problem as "bad employers". Constantly seeking to use the latest shiny tech toy whether it's appropriate or not (e.g. "Big Data" tools to run stuff on a few GB of data) is a thing, especially in the Bay Area. It leads to a bunch of people with a small amount of shallow experience in a large number of soon-to-be-deprecated technologies. Few want to…

Ok, but his specific complaint was that planning for reasonable failure scenarios makes you labeled not "a team player" or "being negative". And I have seen this happen, it is true problem. Someone else refactoring badly does not cancel that systemic problem out.

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

#510

Post by romanovcode »

chrisper wrote: post #504
omginternets wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. If you're being oblique to avoid libel, it's worth noting that libel law doesn't care about whether nor not you name an entity. It cares about whether or not you've identified an entity. Google has been identified.

For all we know it could be Bing!

Yandex
Post reply on HN