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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

#581

Post by taejo »

77pt77 wrote: post #532
metaobject wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And make sure to record it so that at the end of your yearly review cycle, and before the raises are decided, you can remind your upper management of your notable accomplishments.

Either it's easily perceived as bringing value or it won't have any effect. If you have to remind people of it, it's as good as not existing in the first place.

I disagree. A year is a long time, and a valuable, difficult achievement in February may raise your prestige for a while, but by December that's faded to background levels. I even forget my own achievements from nine months ago, never mind those of a dozen other people on my team.

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

#582

Post by geekamongus »

gdilla wrote: post #571
scarface74 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hasn't Twitter racked up 2.5B in losses and yet to turn a profit (though reportedly close to doing it for the first time ever). 2.5B in losses for a platform you could build and scale for what, $10M now. Very questionably successful - some people got rich so yes, i suppose?

It's now the platform for official communications from the US Government's Executive Branch, so you can expect it to worsen based on red tape alone.

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

#583

Post by scarface74 »

gdilla wrote: post #571
scarface74 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hasn't Twitter racked up 2.5B in losses and yet to turn a profit (though reportedly close to doing it for the first time ever). 2.5B in losses for a platform you could build and scale for what, $10M now. Very questionably successful - some people got rich so yes, i suppose?

That's why I added (questionable).

I've made the mistake at one company of thinking that my job was to architect solid software that was sustainable for the long term.

What they really wanted was to have software that was "good enough" and had all of the checkbox features to be attractive to potential acquirers so the investors would stop breathing down their necks.

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

#584

Post by vonmoltke »

lemmings19 wrote: post #458
bdcravens wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I've only ever heard one person ever mention KLOC's, and they were in their 60's nearly a decade ago. They were explaining how people were using it as a measurement of work done in the 80's, and what a terrible idea it was to measure throughput that way. You're the second person. When was the last time you encountered anyone using KLOC's (per 1k lines of code) as a measurement of work done? Are they working on mainfr…

> You're the second person. When was the last time you encountered anyone using KLOC's (per 1k lines of code) as a measurement of work done? Are they working on mainframe codebases?

The DOD and their "experts" love measuring software projects this way. They even take the cost/LOC ratio as a measure of value. I was once semi-seriously chastised for committing a change with net negative LOC because it broke the formula and implied negative value.

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

#585

Post by jcadam »

gdilla wrote: post #571
scarface74 wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hasn't Twitter racked up 2.5B in losses and yet to turn a profit (though reportedly close to doing it for the first time ever). 2.5B in losses for a platform you could build and scale for what, $10M now. Very questionably successful - some people got rich so yes, i suppose?

That has little to do with their architecture, methinks.

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

#586

Post by mabbo »

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…

Say it again, but replace the age ranges with races or genders. Your argument makes just as much sense, but it's more apparent why it's wrong.

Company culture is not a valid reason for illegal discrimination.

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

#587

Post by user_rob »

I think its great!: In the high tech software company I am at there seems to be a disproportionate number of people over 60 - and we are are leaders in our industry both in profit and tech. Very pleased that our competitors won't be poaching our best people!

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

#588

Post by 77pt77 »

taejo wrote: post #581
77pt77 wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either it's easily perceived as bringing value or it won't have any effect. If you have to remind people of it, it's as good as not existing in the first place.

I disagree. A year is a long time, and a valuable, difficult achievement in February may raise your prestige for a while, but by December that's faded to background levels. I even forget my own achievements from nine months ago, never mind those of a dozen other people on my team.

The question is always:

> What can you do for me or have done for me recently?

Services provided so far in the past that need to be reminded are at best irrelevant and it can actually hurt you to bring them up.

I'm not saying that it is nice, only that humans behave individually and (even more collectively) according to this.

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

#589

Post by jcadam »

technion wrote: post #515
itronitron wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Defense contracting. It's all about billing hours against a contract. As long as I'm doing that, I'm making the company money.

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

#590

Post by smugworth »

BjoernKW wrote: post #550
majjam wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain why using microservoces is over engineering? Is it because it’s a relatively new approach? Im getting involved in a new project that is using microservices and a new framework...

Because like any design pattern microservices should be used to address a specific problem. Martin Fowler describes that particular design pattern here in great detail: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html Microservices however unfortunately have become a fashionable cure-all that's applied indiscriminately to software projects of all sizes, ages and purposes. Hardly anyone seems to be asking anymore…

I think the strategy of "monolith first" isn't a poor one, but it is a little humorous to see someone who makes part of their living helping companies break apart their monoliths advocate it.
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