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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

#661

Post by user5994461 »

Hannan wrote: post #410
user5994461 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the distribution is extreme on both sides. Either you accumulated assets from early on and you're golden, or you're still struggling with rent and no pension in sight.

It seems like there's way more on the low side than the high side, at least looking at Table 1 (below) from this PDF from the GAO: https://www.gao.gov/assets/680/670153.pdf Edit: below, the table contents Households age 55-64 with Households age 55-64 no retirement savings with retirement savings Percent of house- 41% 59% holds age 55-64 Median net worth $21,000 $337,000 Median non-retirement $1,000 $25,000 financial…

So, that's 25% of people having no rent to pay.

Then an additional 50% who have a home but still a mortgage to pay. The statistics don't say when mortgages will end, so we can't do any meaningful analysis on the majority.

There are more people on the low side, not WAY MORE contrary to your statement.

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

#662

Post by kelukelugames »

kridsdale wrote: post #638
JetSetWilly wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My thought was Microsoft. There are a ton of those from back in the day still there.

I suspect Microsoft. I've heard more than one young white person complain they don't want to work with "old" people. I don't think this is a tech thing as much as an American society thing. We are too biased against older age groups.

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

#663

Post by Balgair »

user5994461 wrote: post #656
Balgair wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, what? Like, cashflow at 50 with 3 kids is important. Yeah, you've saved for retirement at ~65ish, but you have 2 kids in college with one on the way up, plus a mortgage, plus just regular life stuff. That's not an unreasonable scenario at all. Like, do you live in a first world nation? Honestly, the paradigm changes a lot in the 3rd world and your confusion would be more appropriate in Chad or something. (In Chad…

I live in a first world nation. College education is free, allegedly. If you have kids before your thirties, they will all be +25 when you are 55. They most likely finished college, they probably left the family home.

In the US college is NOT free, and that's 330 million people living here.

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

#664

Post by rcthompson »

rcthompson wrote: post #81
avar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can create multiple Facebook profiles of various ages and look at job advertisements, which is both cheaper than subscribing to a bunch of newspapers, and less of a hassle than having to get up at 6 am (in the days before people could easily record the radio).

Age isn't the only filtering criterion, though. Do I need to create a fake account for every combination of age, gender, read, socioeconomic status, etc. if I want to look at all the job ads?

(Oops, "read" was supposed to say "race".)

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

#665

Post by cr0sh »

ryandrake wrote: post #212
ryanmarsh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If billions of computers become vulnerable to malicious actors and a few hundred or thousand people suffer dramatic personal damages, well that's a nice and quiet problem which will be quickly forgotten in the 24-hour news cycle. This. I do development coaching and training. I’m totally burned out because my job doesn’t matter. These companies don’t care. They hire me to “increase code quality” but that ends up being…

The topic of your rant is something that it took me forever to accept as a software engineer. Nobody cares about quality. Your method is refactored to be super-fast and have no branches? Nobody cares. Elegant, re-usable architecture? Nobody cares. You've optimized an inner loop in assembly and increased speed by 30%? Nobody cares. Made it to zero compiler warnings? Nobody cares. No known crashers left in the bug trac…

> The sooner you accept this, the less likely you'll burn out.

I learned this at my first software engineer (though we didn't call it such) job back when I was 18; closing in on 45 years of age, and I'm still here at it, and don't see that changing soon. I have thought about management, but I really don't have such experience, and I'm not a real people person anyhow - plus I like to code.

Another thing I have learned - at least here in the United States: Not only do they not care about quality, they usually don't have any loyalty to you as an employee. They'll let you go without any warning at all, and if you're lucky, you'll get some severance pay.

So save your money, build a savings account with FU cash in it (6 months to a year of salary - or more), and don't be afraid to drop an employer like a hot potato if things aren't working out, or a better offer is in the works.

And above all else, don't let your skills stagnate.

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

#666

Post by wils1245 »

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,…

The tide of public opinion seems to have turned against argument 1. I don't follow law close enough to really know if legal decisions have also been turning against it.

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

#667

Post by CodeMage »

heedlessly2 wrote: post #636
CodeMage wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>This mentality is why I feel ashamed every time a receptionist apologizes for the wait why would you feel ashamed for waiting a little longer? that's an odd thing to be insecure about

I'm not ashamed for waiting longer. I'm ashamed for the same reason I would expect doctors to feel ashamed about Andrew Wakefield.

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

#668

Post by wils1245 »

ec109685 wrote: post #280
mabbo wrote: post #93

> “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work,” said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president. No, that's... that's literally the opposite of 'helping people of all ages find work'.

Perhaps there are advertisements that work better for some age groups than others? So by targeting, they can deliver the right ad to the right user.

Age is unquestionably a useful attribute to use in targeting advertising. But in certain cases we've decided to impose rules that make advertising suboptimal in the interests of building a more fair society.

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

#669

Post by cr0sh »

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…

I'm on the last few pages of this book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Do_You_Care_What_Other_Pe...

...where he talks about his role and questions regarding the Challenger shuttle disaster; I don't know if things have changed much since then at NASA, but I suspect they haven't, given Columbia and such.

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

#670

Post by notyourday »

TsomArp wrote: post #609
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…

I am not sure it is cheaper in the end. You might pay a lower hourly rate, but because of bad work, rework, miscommunication, delay on communications you will pay more in the end. That has been my experience with, for example Chinese and Indian development teams abroad. There is a reason why agile prefers collocated teams.

It is not about cost. It is about cashflow. Revenue is not a king. Profit is not a king. Cashflow is a king.
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