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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

#211

Post by bartread »

agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

Five of the six people on my team, including me, are over 30; four of us are over 40. I must admit that although devs with that level of experience are "expensive", they start to look a lot cheaper when you realise the additional value they add due to experience. Software development, as with many things in life, often follows the adage that you get what you pay for. (It should go without saying, but it's a sad inevitability that there will be exceptions.)

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

#212

Post by 52-6F-62 »

bmpafa wrote: post #204
always_good wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this limit is true for all developers Maybe sober, but that's not the limit once you factor in the rampant use of amphetamine.

This is probably a myth, but I've heard Kerouac wrote On the Road practically in a single sitting thanks to the peppy magic of Benzedrine, aka Bennies, a _widely_ available inhalant & pill form of amphetamine.

I think it was 3 weeks and a roll of teletype paper so that once he started he wouldn't have to stop to even change the paper.

edit: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/dec/02/jack-kerouac-r... the "scroll"

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

#213

Post by scarface74 »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #196
agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

> I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups Going "out of [your] way" to hire older devs sounds like age discrimination. AFAIK, age discrimination in this direction isn't illegal in America, but it seems odd that you would respond to an article decrying age-discrimination by proudly declaring that you discriminate too, in the opposite direction. Maybe you just meant that you…

You're right it's not illegal and all you have to do is say you want someone with at least 20 years of professional software development experience...

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

#214

Post by gowld »

agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

Why would you go out of your way?

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

#215

Post by gowld »

cm2012 wrote: post #208

This is really dumb if you understand how Facebook's advertising algorithm works. It's going to optimize job ads towards people who click job ads. Young people are more likely to be looking for jobs than older people, and thus click job ads more. [1] So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective, because they want to see these type of ads more by far. By the data, ol…

Comments may be offtopic, but I don't see what's "dumb" about it. The article is about discrimination, and you described how Facebook's algorithm learns to discriminate.

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

#216

Post by 52-6F-62 »

raarts wrote: post #189
m12k wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real value in recent grads (from a startup perspective) is that they're young and naive enough to work long hours based on 'team spirit' and the dream of 'making an impact' rather than silly old ideas like earning a real salary or a getting a big enough amount of equity to matter. And they usually don't have families to keep them from working long hours either. They'll drink whatever kool-aid the startup…

"Do you want to help disrupt ? Want to work with , and want to work 16 hours a day without or with little ownership? Join us, we are a young dynamic international team, free organic lunches, free Macbook, we're all bros here. Take our whiteboard interview and see if you're a cultural fit!"

There's so much of this around. Can't stand it.

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

#217

Post by 1123581321 »

tremendo wrote: post #203
1123581321 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sorry. The issue is that a job that pays fairly for the position doesn’t feel fair to someone who is settling until they get the job they really want. That kind of person really is likely to leave quickly. Whether it’s worth hiring someone who wants to leave immediately depends on how quickly the company can get new hires up to speed and how much effort they put into interviewing. Now, a company can define overqu…

I disagree, and feel as I mentioned that they candidate's history is more relevant than their age and a non-defined over-qualification. In any case, when that's a worry, bring it up as a concern during the hiring process, work it out with the candidate. Now I cannot deny it happens, as demonstrated by @WillPostForFood in this sub-thread, but that does not mean everybody, not even most candidates think along the same…

Overqualification is judged based on job history, though. Unfortunately, having a lot of experience is correlated with age.

I completely agree it should be discussed during the interview, but I don’t think that will always work out for the job candidate.

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

#218

Post by Moto7451 »

ryanmonroe wrote: post #196
agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

> I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups Going "out of [your] way" to hire older devs sounds like age discrimination. AFAIK, age discrimination in this direction isn't illegal in America, but it seems odd that you would respond to an article decrying age-discrimination by proudly declaring that you discriminate too, in the opposite direction. Maybe you just meant that you…

It's not age discrimination if you accept and do not otherwise discriminate against young/younger candidates. There's a lot that goes into recruiting. Optimizing your job descriptions, creating multiple job descriptions, and targeting your ad spend are all things that can affect the age, race, gender, education level, etc of the people you reach without being discriminatory.

In fact, you should do this to be inclusive. There are a lot of unconscious things hiring managers do that remove themselves from the running of highly qualified candidates.

Want to remove yourself from consideration from young talented female developers? Create a laundry list of "requirements" even though you consider them "nice to haves." Also add plenty of trigger words to make your business seem unattractive.

https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless... https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2016/12/14/...

Avoiding hurting yourself in the eyes of candidates you'd like to include is far from being discriminatory to other groups.

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

#219

Post by gowld »

bo1024 wrote: post #154

Many of the posts here focus on ageism but this is just one example of discriminatory algorithms/ML in action. Don't be surprised if the same headline reappears soon with gender or race substituted. There is currently an academic movement often called "fairness in machine learning" aiming to correct these kinds of behaviors in automated systems.

As the former-kids say, "Simpsons did it". We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination in ads.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing...

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

#220

Post by s73v3r_ »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #98
notacoward wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards. Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of the "disparate treatment" the lawsuit alleges?

I believe the lawsuit is talking about someone using Facebook tools or other means to specifically target subgroups of the population to be able to see a job ad. As in, older candidates would not have even been allowed to know about the job in the first place, regardless of what pipeline a candidate is placed in. So no, I don't think the properties of a pipeline after a candidate has applied would be related to the l…

"Someone even asked in the company's town hall Q&A why they would do this, and the CEO's response (most of us watched by web stream) was something like, "We are a technology company at heart, and every one of you is an innovator, and innovators love open spaces.""

Dammit, I absolutely hate when idiot executives spout platitudes like this without even asking the people they're talking about.

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