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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

#591

Post by jcadam »

vonmoltke wrote: post #584
lemmings19 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Me too (also DoD contracting). Cleaned up a module full of amateurish over-complicated code resulting in a negative LOC count on the boss's spreadsheet. Oh, I heard about it.

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

#592

Post by brlewis »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #524
sidlls wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Also, that the product is 10% better/more stable/whatever frequently does not translate into even a 10% increase in sales. So it's not worth it (from the business' perspective) to invest in that quality. Here is the core of the problem, and it's more of an incompatibility of goals than errors of one of the parties. Businesses want to make money. They usually don't give a flying fuck about what their product is or d…

The value the product actually provides to users is the viral coefficient. Lots of companies value growth. Find one.

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

#593

Post by twobyfour »

totalZero wrote: post #574
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…

I can imagine two independent arguments that Facebook might use. 1. It is the responsibility of the advertiser to ensure that the advertisement is legal. Facebook is certainly not the employer, nor is it registered or defined as an employment agency, so by the language of the law [1] it does not meet the definition of an applicable party. 2. If the advertisement itself did not _indicate_ any preference based on age,…

I assume, though, that Facebook prohibits other forms of illegal advertising: for instance, advertising of prostitution services in most locations; advertising of the sale of heroin or methamphetamine; advertising of the services of hit men.

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

#595

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

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…

What I think you're missing is how easy it is to coast in this field. It certianly sounds like you're a smart capable person with the good fortune to largely work with other smart capable people. That's great; it's not normal. At least coming from the financial sector (which employees huge numbers of people with the title "software developer") there's a pularity of people who stop improving somewhere around year one then coast on office politics and inter-firm job hopping. These are the people I think the new wave of companies/teams are looking to avoid. After 10+ years, your jobs, if you're good, ought to be coming from network references rather than facebook adds anyway.

Experience is necessary but not sufficient for a top quality dev and top quality is neither necessary nor sufficient to make successful software. The cult of experience in other engineering disciplines is the reason those salaries are so low compared to ours (despite the fact that the work, schooling, and certification are orders of magnitude more involved). Let's not bring that to software please.

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

#596

Post by lostcolony »

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…

Honestly, just evaluating a person's relevant experience vs salary requirements would end up looking like age discrimination.

If all I care about is degree + ~7 years experience in relevant technologies + generally solid head on the person's shoulders, and I have one person with those, asking X, and another person with those, as well as another 13 years unrelated experience asking tens of thousands more, why would I pick the latter? If I don't think the benefit of that extra unrelated experience (we do cloud based distributed systems, that experience is in windows desktop apps and drivers, say) offsets that cost, why would I hire him at his expected salary?

Note that I'm not saying there isn't a bias in this industry, just that it may appear magnified due to such considerations. I know where I work we ignore age, but we often dismiss resumes with "that person is far too expensive for what this position entails" when it comes to junior - senior devs. Leads, architects, technical managers, it's all considered worthwhile, but below that you're an individual contributor in a very particular niche (albeit one that allows you to learn the other parts of the system, and other projects).

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

#597

Post by brlewis »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #295
tracker1 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been building web applications for over two decades... I love most of the newer tooling over anything I had even a decade ago. Though I do prefer React+* over Angular. I've kept up, some things I love, somethings I frankly use sparingly... that said, I'm definitely biased. I'm more likely to ride on the bleeding edge (Node 8, Webpack 3, Babel 7) than most. I am afraid though, in under a decade it will be an uphi…

There is only so far you can go competing with teenagers in node/js space - pick a different tech stack for the future.

On the contrary, there is only so far younger people can go competing in the node/js space with people who have gone through SICP. Higher order functions are everywhere.

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

#598

Post by probablybroken »

lmm wrote: post #486
emodendroket wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's possible but it's a lot less common IME.

My observation is that earlier on in people's careers they tend to be more certain about the limited experiences they have had due to a lack of contradiction.. Of course, if you keep repeating the same limited experiences this will only be reinforced ;)

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

#599

Post by mbrameld »

smugworth wrote: post #590
BjoernKW wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess. My partner is currently starting a mushroom farm. She hopes one day it will be big enough to make use of a very large facility. Right now it isn't, though. Do you find the same humor in her real estate broker guiding her towards smaller properties initially even though if her business successfully grows the broker will make part of their living helping her move into a bigger location?

Makes perfect sense to me.

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

#600

Post by ptero »

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…

> It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me?

It may or may not from the business point. But the point of the article I think is to debate whether this is legal or not, which is orthogonal to a purely business decision.

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