What's the likelihood of multiple ads targeting multiple groups, probably with different photos? Did they investigate that, or just draw conclusions from one 25-36 y.o.'s Facebook account?
Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
621–630 of 808 posts
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> Executives (VP and above)
Aren't you being overly restrictive in scope here? Many executives are MBAs, but most MBAs are not executives.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#623A lot of managers are threatened by experienced people because experienced people are a lot less shy about pointing out bullshit. People with 5 or less years of experience are much less likely to have a backbone. They're still getting over the school conditioning to complete whatever BS assignment needed to get the grade. Many managers would prefer to have an apparently smoothly running operation than have honest fee…
Experienced people don't necessarily point out bullshit though. Often times, we just keep quiet and watch the train wreck :)
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#624Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've experienced "no methodology; just people kind of describing what they want and you make it up as you go along" and Scrum and I prefer the former, but I suppose it's possible that someone out there is doing Agile in a way that is better than the one I learned in a bunch of excruciatingly boring training sessions from consultants. e: Actually I did Kanban too and that was OK, but that is a lot closer to the "no me…
Kanban is very much Agile. Scrum can be implemented in a variously heavy to lightweight way, though FWIW I found having leftover time at the end of a sprint that could only be used for non-business-facing work (e.g. improving the build system, refactoring of code that wasn't immediately being worked on) to be very valuable.
I guess the cynic in me finds it predictable that most Agile shops (at least IME) would be doing Scrum and not something like Kanban, even though it largely works against the supposed core values of Agile.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having preferences is one thing, but being judgmental/presumptuous towards people working in that realm & using slang with a clear derogatory bent to describe them for something that does not inherently relate to morals is another. It’s a sign of a bad attitude.
It's a sign of a very healthy attitude to be open about your opinions and not trying to be "nice" all the time. This is a very american thing, to be constantly positive and nice when you really shouldn't, and in my experience, it's a very detrimental thing to morale and productivity because of how obviously fake it is.
What you are saying is very different than the person’s comments I was referring to.
One can be blunt without displaying a trashy attitude, and it doesn’t take that much effort. Most people tell me that I am the most blunt person they know in that I will give some of the most honest observations whether they are uncomfortable or not. I also have a reputation of being one of the nicest people many people know, never needing to put down one group of people to appease another, probably one of the biggest engineering productivity killers one can create (negative politics, cliques, etc.). Engineers often will vent to me (coworkers, teammates, people from various programming communities, etc.), and I lend a sympathetic ear to all, which in turn builds trust, comraderie, and helps use my knowledge & experiences to help guide responses & resolutions to situations generating stress to a healthy outcome for all.
It shouldn’t take much effort to treat each person with respect & humanity - if it does, one should look inwards at maybe something being wrong with oneself than to other people, and work on culling out the toxic attitude.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#626Earlier 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…
>> less experienced devs will (on the average) cause more bugs and worse code structure - in the long run this causes a ton of extra work.
In the last five years or so, I've done contract work at several large corporations. In every single one, they didn't care about defects or code structure. They just wanted to ship an application in a very short period of time.
When I asked about the same thing you pointed out, the response was the same, "We don't care about defects once it's released, and we don't care what the code looks like. It needs to work well for our end users, nothing else. Besides, in 6 months, we're going to redesign and rebuild it anyways."
It just seems nobody cares about long term maintenance, and likewise, they don't care much about the code or the amount of defects that code is generating. Pretty maddening when you think about it. Nobody cares about quality anymore.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Executives (VP and above) Aren't you being overly restrictive in scope here? Many executives are MBAs, but most MBAs are not executives.
True; but stalling out in middle management is never the reason people get an MBA.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language, disabilities, etc etc. I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems," rather than the…
> I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language, disabilities, etc etc. Well, yeah. Only it's not "implications", it's the reality of tech hiring. The hiring practices of many tech companies have been called racist, sexist and age-discri…
In theory, if the tech hiring was purely about skillsets, one could adjust the interview process to focus only on that. I know some orchestras have shifted to "blind auditions" to eliminate bias, for instance, and it has helped out some groups previously left out of orchestras due to bias (female musicians notably). I think it would be possible to shift a technology-oriented hiring process towards those lines if one was most concerned about getting the best people for the job.
In practice, to be honest, a lot of the stories I hear about age bias seem to come from the SV "startup culture" scene and a few of the other "new technology" type companies. In some ways, I almost think it's their loss. Passing over a fair bit of good talent just to get that, er, "culture fit" they want doesn't seem very optimal to me.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#629Earlier 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…
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…
> When I'm so disgusted by my own profession, no wonder I ended up burned out.
Ha ha, maybe this is why they don't want older engineers. They're wise, cynical, bitter, skeptical and not likely to suffer bullshit management.
Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads
#630The 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…
You could use arguments easily on the same moral parallels are those to exclude particular races, sexes, etc. I’m not calling you out - I think you’re correct actually, in the observation. But some biases are more politically and culturally palatable than others, even when there isn’t a whole lot of daylight between them.