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Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

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Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#51

Post by seattle_spring »

forgottenpass wrote: post #42
seattle_spring wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exa…

I don't think I get your point. Are you implying that trashtalking hip design trends is grounds for age discrimination? Or that older employees give an amount of pushback on design decisions that makes them literally unhirable? I can trashtalk the design on everything I've directly worked on more accurately and damningly than things I read about online that seem like bad ideas. And I do. Do you think because I find f…

The fact that everyone who's offended by the post is claiming that React is a "hip design trend" kind of reinforces the point, doesn't it?

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#52

Post by notacoward »

As a 53-year-old Facebook employee, I find the part about Facebook doing this for their own hiring a bit odd. To the extent that anyone has ever reacted to my age with anything other than mild surprise, people generally seem quite glad to see something besides another fresh 20-something face and to hear the voice of long experience.

Then again, I didn't come in via a Facebook ad. Maybe companies use different methods to search for candidates of different ages or experience levels because our own job-seeking habits are different. I was already a principal before the web even existed, let alone Facebook or LinkedIn. Even then I didn't look at generic ads anywhere to find a new job. I used headhunters, and then purely personal contacts. I'm sure many of my contemporaries are the same. If such broadcast ads are basically a waste of money seeking that kind of employee, and other methods are being tried, is that really "disparate treatment" in any meaningful sense?

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#53

Post by teaspoons »

seattle_spring wrote: post #14
afpx wrote: post #2

Excellent news! Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. So much for the claims that there is a shortage in tech. So crazy.

I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exa…

You _are_ saying they're that person

Yes older coders have weathered more fashions and succumbed to many themselves so in some respects they do know better

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#54

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

danschumann wrote: post #45

I sometimes wonder how much the fear of something is actually an additional problem to the thing itself. NOTE: I am not denying agism exists, I'm wondering about the additional problem of fear of agism. The fear that someone might be agist, might make you look at them judgmentally/suspiciously. If you look at your interviewer judgmentally/suspiciously they likely won't hire you, and they probably feel pretty suspicio…

While this might be interesting academically, I think if ageism is a problem that might generically scare candidates, then that too is the ageists fault for creating that culture of policy, and not a candidate's fault for sincerely being worried about something that is actually worth worrying about.

We could say something similar about racism. "How much of a factor the fear of racism is, compared to racism itself..."

It seems silly to really spend any time on this type of second-order extra effect when there are real, harmful, huge first-order effects (namely, actual racism and actual ageism) demonstrably happening.

We should focus on the big, up-front, obvious monster standing right in front of us, instead of asking, how much of our problem is caused by the monster in front of us as opposed to a hypothetical monster in the closet, and letting it distract us (or worse, trying to flip things around and blame candidates for being too sensitive or try to sympathetically justify what ageist businesses are doing to their long-time employees or to older job candidates).

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#55

Post by MaxBarraclough »

wmeredith wrote: post #41
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #9

I know almost nothing about the law here, but I imagine intent could be a big part of it. I'm surprised the Bloomberg article seems to make no mention of it. I was also surprised to see this: > Goldman wrote that, “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.” Why would it ever be accept…

What if they were targeting older workers as part of a diversity program?

Again, I'm not all that knowledgeable of the law, but I believe the intent of it is to oppose ageism in either direction.

Shouldn't it be?

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#56

Post by zimpenfish »

ashelmire wrote: post #49
p0nce wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Readers: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.

Age discrimination in tech is dumb. I've got a dev 30 years my senior sitting across from me and I guarantee he will code circles around 90% of the devs on HN, and 100% of the new grads getting jobs at big tech (and will until he dies). He's got a huge amount of knowledge in programming, our domain (NLP), he's fast, thorough, and thoughtful. Honestly I don't get the obsession with recent grads. They are basically use…

> Honestly I don't get the obsession with recent grads. They are basically useless for years.

But cheap and compliant.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#57

Post by ams6110 »

ashelmire wrote: post #49
p0nce wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Readers: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.

Age discrimination in tech is dumb. I've got a dev 30 years my senior sitting across from me and I guarantee he will code circles around 90% of the devs on HN, and 100% of the new grads getting jobs at big tech (and will until he dies). He's got a huge amount of knowledge in programming, our domain (NLP), he's fast, thorough, and thoughtful. Honestly I don't get the obsession with recent grads. They are basically use…

> Honestly I don't get the obsession with recent grads.

They will work more hours for less money. This is nothing new. My first job out of university in the early 1990s was for one of the "big" consulting firms. 50-60 hour work weeks were the norm. I made decent money (they paid overtime) especially for a first job, but I wouldn't do it at my age now with a family and kids.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#58

Post by [deleted] »

teaspoons wrote: post #53
seattle_spring wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exa…

You _are_ saying they're that person Yes older coders have weathered more fashions and succumbed to many themselves so in some respects they do know better

[deleted]

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#60

Post by Ickerday »

seattle_spring wrote: post #14
afpx wrote: post #2

Excellent news! Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. So much for the claims that there is a shortage in tech. So crazy.

I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exa…

This is such a big hyperbole that I'm just gonna call bullshit on this.
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