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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

#711

Post by tracker1 »

megaman22 wrote: post #341
sheeshkebab wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When JS stops reimplementing Unix tools or stuff from the Bell ATT labs from before you were born, I'd start getting worried. The fundamentals are important, when you get into anything more complex than slapping crud apps together. Witness the monstrosities birthed by JS "programmers" that have never slung pointers, or been acquainted with tree operations, or think MVC was birthed with Web 2.0.

LOL... of course you can build crap in any platform/language. On the flip side, look at what Walmart and Netflix have accomplished with JS, which is a far cry from the monstrosities bemoaned. It's not all simple, because it's a relatively easy and flexible language to start with.

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

#712

Post by tracker1 »

echolot wrote: post #635
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…

It sounds like you'd burn out in any profession. Perfect is the enemy of the good. If you're holding your work, and that of others', to a perfectionist's standard, then you're just causing yourself unnecessary stress and anxiety. Most of those bugs and failures you listed are really inconsequential in their contexts. Car won't play your phone's music? Use the radio. Game has bugs? Play another game until it's patched…

> Ashamed that someone else's system doesn't work? I can't help you there. That's some deep psychological issue.

Personally I get angry in those situations... the larger the company, typically the more safeguard crap in place that's supposed to prevent those issues, the more pissed off I get. But that's just me. I get angry when I see evidence of poor/buggy quality in business software the more visible it is.

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

#713

Post by losteverything »

So i place a classified ad in Chinese Daily News but not one in the Daily News.

Am i discriminating against non chinese workers?

Im not a FB fan but this isn't discrimination if i, as the buyer of the ad, don't want my ad to go to any group. Do i want to place my ad for a day care help to any FB member that may have a criminal record or keeps track of megans law?

We just have too much information now.

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

#714

Post by dreamfactored »

emodendroket wrote: post #624
lmm wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep Kanban is the way to go, focus on flow, small batch sizes, reducing waste of wait times and handovers. Look at cumulative flow and rightsize stories instead of fretting over estimation, points, burndown, and all that mini waterfall that scrum seems to entail. Takes most of the drama and hysteria out of delivery.

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

#715

Post by fshaun »

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…

Good point about incompatible goals. One way out is to align the value as perceived by users with the value as perceived by engineers. If users aren't willing to pay for reliability/security/etc. then it's rational for management to devalue those properties.

I'm not optimistic that this will happen. Anecdotally, I expound to acquaintances the risks of unprotected PII or questionably-secured home security apps, but convenience seems to outweigh such concerns.

Regulation is one approach to solve asymmetric information transactions. I don't see how that could be applied in general to software quality, but it could target the cases that have severe or widespread effects.

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

#716

Post by dreamfactored »

marcosdumay wrote: post #697
dreamfactored wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Are their development teams seen as cost centers, or profit centers?" It's not a matter of opinion, but what the term means. They are cost centers unless they are closing sales (or being billed for about 3x what they cost, which is still way less than sales people will generate, being closer to 10x+ cost). Best thing any employee can do is find out how their company actually makes money and understand how they alig…

> one of the most important things for most businesses is remaining runway Remaining runway is a measure that only exist for companies in the red. For most business it doesn't even exist.

How long you can continue operations if sales drops off a cliff is a very important number for every company I've worked at, from startups to big multinationals. Maybe it's less of a consideration for Amazon and Apple but I wouldn't even bet on it there.

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

#717

Post by dreamfactored »

scrpn wrote: post #674
dreamfactored wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Are their development teams seen as cost centers, or profit centers?" It's not a matter of opinion, but what the term means. They are cost centers unless they are closing sales (or being billed for about 3x what they cost, which is still way less than sales people will generate, being closer to 10x+ cost). Best thing any employee can do is find out how their company actually makes money and understand how they alig…

How can a software developer fight against this salary limitation?

Become a highly sought after specialist for a product offering (e.g. self-driving cars, blockchain, fintech), or get ownership (startup), or go customer facing (particularly if commission involved), or go into technical management on CTO route.

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

#718

Post by patricklynch »

losteverything wrote: post #713

So i place a classified ad in Chinese Daily News but not one in the Daily News. Am i discriminating against non chinese workers? Im not a FB fan but this isn't discrimination if i, as the buyer of the ad, don't want my ad to go to any group. Do i want to place my ad for a day care help to any FB member that may have a criminal record or keeps track of megans law? We just have too much information now.

No, because the fact that I'm neither Chinese nor likely to read Chinese Daily News doesn't actually prevent me from seeing your ad.

If you posted "Help Wanted" flyers in the middle of a college campus for a part-time cashier job, some 52 year old could--in theory--be walking by the quad on his way to a Frisbee golf game.

It's when you explicitly add in logic to filter out a protected class that you may be in trouble.

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

#719

Post by flukus »

woolvalley wrote: post #446
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…

I have this saying that most software is tent software. Nothing wrong with tents, music festivals are built on tents for example. They are cheap, quick to put up and put down and can do a lot! You just have realize that most software buildings are tents, and there are a few buildings that you can use out there.

Tents are usually temporary though, software rarely is.

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

#720

Post by JustSomeNobody »

heedlessly2 wrote: post #648
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…

a 24 year old from a top CS college with 3 years of solid javascript experience will be better than a 40 year old with 15+ years of C#.net experience for today's job market

If you live on the web, maybe this is your perspective. There's a whole 'nother world out there than just the web.
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