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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

#611

Post by exelius »

doktrin wrote: post #573
exelius wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naw, the MBA jobs are all about personal brand and networking. When you make the rules, they tend to benefit you.

> MBA jobs are all about personal brand and networking No disagreement there. Just in my experience those jobs are either the first or second to go when things get tough - often because there's an MBA somewhere near the top who recognizes how replaceable all the rest are.

Yeah, but these jobs also often have contracts with severance packages. Executives (VP and above) are typically hired under fixed contracts that make it very expensive to get rid of them. You can demand these things if you have specialized knowledge, credentials, and relationships.

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

#612

Post by ScoutOrgo »

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…

So your competitive advantage is doing the exact same thing these companies are doing, except with a different demographic?

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

#613

Post by dspillett »

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…

> his keenly developed taste made him more likely to choose something that would be more maintainable long term.

But the same taste, and knowledge born of experience that there is little as long-lived as a temporary solution, might make him put his foot down and try to prevent management enforcing a short-cut that will generate technical debt. This can make older, more experienced, people seem more difficult to work with.

They may also be more likely to have family commitments or have developed hobbies that require commitment (when I was marathon training last year, sticking to my plan meant arranging extra work around that rather then the other way around) so are less inclined to do overtime because bad planning elsewhere has caused a "crunch". This isn't a case of expecting more money for doing it, it is simply not wanting to do it no matter the incentive because we don't want to compromise on the things that make life feel worthwhile (younger people are easier to convince that they'll have time for that later!).

None of this is fair to judge on, of course. It does not impact their ability to do the job well in the contracted time unless things are badly managed around them. But they are still considerations some people make when hiring.

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

#614

Post by pc86 »

Daycrawler wrote: post #537
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…

Software isn't like architecture or carpentry. First, software engineering and programming are fields with way more skill diversity, which is a nice way of saying that there are a lot of relatively incompetent people in the industry. The assumption that people with experience are more skilled isn't generally true. I've seen people hired for the role of CTO in small startups who were explicitly chosen for their age be…

The CTO role is about 40-49% technical at the absolute most. The primary point of the CTO is to build the team below them. This requires a lot of "soft skills" that 99% of graduates don't have.

My point is that it's likely the CTO is not the most technically adept person in the company, and that's to be expected.

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

#615

Post by emodendroket »

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.

I've found that sometimes people have done one thing their entire careers and, therefore, think that's the only solution to everything. And I think that's more likely when your entire career is a couple years long.

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

#616

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

Terr_ wrote: post #327
eric_b wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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."

Even on a larger scale, the world hasn't burnt down with all the private information that's been stolen lately, has it? Have there even been any significant consequences?

Is it possible that the value assigned to keeping that information secret was, in the end, actually appropriate?

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

#617

Post by le-mark »

caseymarquis wrote: post #607
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 second this. You can internally build your monolith in a way that makes a transition to microservices easy. Avoid global state and build single concern processes which have their dependencies passed to them on creation.

Also note that it is very, very difficult for anyone, inexperienced or experienced, to build a monolith that can later be pulled apart. You're two suggestions are a great start. You have to really design with the major blocks of functionality in mind, and carefully manage dependencies between these blocks AND third party dependencies. So many monoliths are balls of mud, that can't be pulled apart with any reasonable effort. The code may not be spaghetti, but the dependencies and interdependencies are.

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

#618

Post by le-mark »

nostrademons wrote: post #544
asmosoinio wrote: post #440

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. 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…

In most companies upper management can change their mind faster than junior developers can write bugs, thus invalidating all the buggy code already written.

Literally laughed out loud. So many times, I've sat on requirements or even projects waiting for the inevitable "change of priorities" making the projects no longer relevant. "Forget X, Y is the new priority", it's very reliable in big dumb corporations.

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

#619

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jdmichal wrote: post #325
hackits wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 100% right but also 100% wrong. Like I said before you're viewing it from the perspective of a developer but not from the perspective of a Business person. Instead of saying `Users cannot sing up if everything is broken` you need to see it from a Business perspective, and communicate it to them in the language they understand. For example, `From our quarterly earnings report we need to have 10,0000 new clients…

Honestly, this is pretty straight-forward stuff, and I'm surprised you're getting any argument. If a technologist cannot explain how a proposed implementation is going to provide value to the business, that project is probably better off left alone. Prettier code and better tests don't provide value. But fewer customer-facing P1/P2 tickets provides value. That prettier code and better tests leads to fewer tickets is…

>Honestly, this is pretty straight-forward stuff, and I'm surprised you're getting any argument.

I'm not. Our industry is full of academics who've been told "this is the right way to do it, everything else is stupid" for the entirety of their education. They're academics, trained by other academics, ignoring the broader reality of why we do these things at all.

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

#620

Post by Larrikin »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #616
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."

Even on a larger scale, the world hasn't burnt down with all the private information that's been stolen lately, has it? Have there even been any significant consequences? Is it possible that the value assigned to keeping that information secret was, in the end, actually appropriate?

It's a waste of the information stolen to use it while people are still on high alert.
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