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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

#511

Post by jules »

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…

Perhaps the extra experience is not worth 50% more? I'd be wary about calling an entire industry irrational when they're spending their own money.

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

#512

Post by wnkrshm »

mankypro wrote: post #23

Laugh while you can monkey boys. That generation built the infrastructure you rely on daily. Way to pay it forward. Suddenly, they too will turn around and realize that they're above 40 and not in the preferred demo. It all comes around in the end. Sometimes the SDN boys need a salty old dog to ask if anyone has actually looked at the back of GigE interface to see if theres a cable actually plugged into it :)

It's interesting especially with the background that the workforce will be composed of more older rather than younger people in the coming years.

Also, is your first sentence a Buckaroo Banzai quote?

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

#513

Post by mrisoli »

com2kid wrote: post #189
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).

> 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). I'm not sure if I'd want to hire someone who is unable to point out valid criticisms of the technology stack I'm using. People need to be aware of the limitations of their tools. I spent years in pure C, both complaining about it and singing its praises. Ri…

> I'm not sure if I'd want to hire someone who is unable to point out valid criticisms of the technology stack I'm using.

I only interviewed a few of candidates for developer roles a couple of times and this was one of the questions I asked, managed to get some interesting, constructive responses as well as some well-crafted bullshit.

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

#514

Post by JetSetWilly »

wadkar wrote: post #391
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…

> as she said, "the type of people on the other side of the table from us are different than they used to be, and they don't want to be dealing with a bunch of 65-year-old white guys. So those aren't the type of people we're looking for." That's pretty much a direct quote. Not to defend the quote, but I wonder how else would you characterize “non-diversity” in this context? Specifically, if their current workforce co…

I highly doubt that this mysterious "company with a large proportion of the search engine market" is filled with 65yo white males.

In fact it would actually make them significantly more diverse if they were to hire some 65yo white males.

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

#515

Post by technion »

itronitron wrote: post #400
leggomylibro wrote: post #76

Earlier 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…

In my experience, worse work typically gets done a lot more slowly than good work.

These discussions tend to assume in-house development though.

I've spent far too much time around organisations where "more time with bums on seats" = "direct correlation to billing more", which = "better work" if you ask the right people. That leads to an unfortunately different scenario.

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

#516

Post by scarface74 »

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'm in my mid 40s and active professional developer who goes back and forth between being a team lead, an architect, and a developer depending on what interest me at the moment.

I've found with older developers they fall in two camps - old set in their ways, didn't keep up with technology and its harder to teach them modern best practices. The other type are the ones who have learned a lot from their experience and are aggressive learners. I don't think older developers are ever "malleable" we are always stuck in our ways. Our ways just may be "this is the way I've always done it" or "I love technology and learn for the sake of learning" or "I learn aggressively to stay competitive".

As far as being 10x better, the other side of the coin is that it doesn't matter if you're 10x better if your skill set is more than the company needs.

If all your company needs is another CRUD app and you've gained expertise in AI, they aren't going to pay you more based on you being better.

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

#517

Post by tzahola »

adrianN wrote: post #392
user5994461 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second advice. If you want to pretend that quality matters, move to aerospace, finance, or any critical systems. Third advice. It's not enough to fix bug, everyone MUST know that you fixed that weird bug that customers were complaining about for years and noone could understand the cause.

> If you want to pretend that quality matters, move to aerospace, finance, or any critical systems. The important word here is pretend . If the system is safety critical you'd think that quality matters. It doesn't. What matters is following the process laid out in ISO 26262 or whatever standard applies to your field. Whether or not that improves quality is not important (it does, but only a little). The important pa…

Exactly. A prime example of this is the “quality” software at financial companies.

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

#518

Post by scarface74 »

asmosoinio wrote: post #440
leggomylibro wrote: post #76

Earlier 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…

> 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. But in my experience, this is not true AT ALL. More experienced people might work less hours, but will produce the actual end results much quicker - both in hours and in calendar time. Especially when considering that l…

And twitter became a successful (questionable) company with buggy code and the infamous "fail whale". You don't need good code, you sometimes just need shippable code to get by until the company executes on their exit strategy.

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

#519

Post by fsloth »

bdcravens wrote: post #435
itronitron wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, worse work typically gets done a lot more slowly than good work.

I don't think they mean slow development. Rather, overall rate - all other things equal, someone who insists on no more than a 40 hour week will accomplish less than someone willing to work 60-80 based on whatever metric you use (KLOC, story points, etc)

There is no universal metric to gauge productivity of software engineers.

The added value a software engineer produces with his work in a single unit of time has a huge variance. Furthermore, it can range from negative to positive.

I.e, it does not matter how long one works. The only thing long work hours of a software engineer communicate is that they work long hours.

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

#520

Post by rplnt »

Maybe they have the same ad with a different picture for older people? Or have researched that it's only worth targeting this group - from the CTR point of view? There are so many legit possibilities where it would be absolutely OK to target job ad by age.
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