Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blaming the victim just for the sake of being contrarian is an even stronger one.
A victim of being told to consider their weaknesses?
That's not at all what the post said.
Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
241–250 of 362 posts
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#242Age 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…
The GP said "older devs" but what they are talking about isn't age, they are talking about skills and experience level.
Everything is discrimination - if you're seeking to hire a software engineer you're probably going to discriminate against people who don't know how to code, people with low IQs, people who can't get along with the team, etc.
The question becomes, is the discrimination legal and/or ethical and based on actual business needs? If the GP noticed they can get a seasoned developer for only slightly above the price of a jr developer (who sees themselves as "senior") , that doesn't really seem like immoral discrimination to me, especially if they are more than willing to also hire jr engineers at jr engineer prices. Most places cant, for business reasons, survive alone solely on senior engineers.
(Interestingly enough, in the US, discrimination based on age because "old people are stupid" is illegal whereas discrimination on age based on "young people are stupid" is not.)
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
In some industries it means, "You've got a ton of experience, and know this stuff inside and out. But we don't want to pay for someone who knows what they're doing." As you stated, they're looking for inexperienced drones.
Sometimes all you need are inexperienced drones. If you just need a developer to help write the next software as a service CRUD web app and you have experienced developers already, a drone with three years of experience may be good enough.
You must be new, three years is senior, practically architect-level!
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#244Excellent 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 a programmer in my late 50s. While age discrimination is real, and I certainly have my share of "not a culture fit" and "overqualified" rejections over the past 10 years, if you're getting rejected over 90% of the time then I strongly suspect the problem isn't age discrimination. It's much more likely that your skills are out of date or you've gained some bad interviewing habits that you should examine. If people…
> It's much more likely that your skills are out of date or you've gained some bad interviewing habits that you should examine.
Do you have any suggestions on how one could find out if we have bad interviewing habits? I'm sure I have them, though I don't know what they are.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the group has settled on using React, the last thing they want is someone constantly trying to convert them to Angular. Older developers have seen enough technology fads come and go that they are much less likely to do this than a young, excitable one.
Older devs, after seeing enough technology fads, are much more sensitive to bullshit. Which makes them a bit sarcastic WRT any new fad. Not a desirable trait from the employer's perspective :)
Sarcasm in general is not a desirable trait. You can explain the pros and cons of different technology choices without being sarcastic.
A green developer who wants to rewrite everything is $LANGUAGE is just as bad as the self-important greybeard rolling his eyes and scoffing at anything that isn't $OTHER_LANGUAGE.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. Outside of extremely rare triage situations, this limit is true for all developers, regardless of age or quality of output. Beyond about the 6 hour mark, people can force themselves to sit in a chair and hit keys on a keyboard like the Swedish chef from the muppets, but it's pure management denial to believe those hours count as "…
I have recently started working remotely and dealing with my own productivity as opposed to have some expectations of work hours has been an interesting challenge. Since I log my own hours I became full aware of this 6 hours "ceiling" in the long term, for a few days I could work for many more hours, but that would have a big price to pay in future productivity. In the beginning I felt bad, as if I was not able to pr…
Don't ever yield to the temptation of working more remotely because you save on commuting time etc. and can be in the flow for longer. Once you do that 4-5 years, you are likely to be long-term burned out. Balance your brain by doing completely different things in your real life, don't work past 8 hours.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, come on. Because an age filter is applied uniformly doesn't mean it isn't disparate treatment for people of different ages.
"Come on" yourself. Neither I nor the GP was talking about uniform application of a filter. We were talking about uniform application of a post-hiring process . Even if one could argue that it results in disparate outcomes - which you have yet to do - that's not the same as disparate treatment.
Well, the very sentence you quoted characterizes the process as a screen, in the sense of a filter. Later the post uses the actual word filter a couple times, so I know that's what the post was talking about. And, of course, a post-hiring process can function as a filter.
Also, the term disparate treatment is yours -- a vague term which I merely used in the same sense you did. You used it to describe what the lawsuit alleges, which is directly about outcomes (whether or not a person is hired). If you're going to draw a semantic distinction between outcomes and treatment now, that's fine, but that just means your earlier terminology was imprecise and we were still discussing outcomes the whole time.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#248Age 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…
Going out of your way to recruit and have older applicants apply is not discrimination as long as you treat all applicants equally once they apply.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of reasons I’ve seen for ageism in startups are cost and “not a culture fit”. Cost I understand, but I believe more experienced people end up being cheaper in the long run when you account for speed, correctness, and long term maintainability. The culture piece stems from the “would I get a beer with this person” and will he/she work as “hard” as a younger candidate with less responsibilities. Startups need to s…
Some of reasons I’ve seen for ageism in startups are cost and “not a culture fit”. Cost I understand, but I believe more experienced people end up being cheaper in the long run when you account for speed, correctness, and long term maintainability. The culture piece stems from the “would I get a beer with this person” and will he/she work as “hard” as a younger candidate with less responsibilities. Most SV companies…
> discrimination based on age is just as illegal
Only if you discriminate against old people, it is legal to openly discriminate against the young.
I guess I'm biased because I'm young but it's a little non-sensical since young people are the ones with student debt and record-high housing costs to pay for while 50-year-olds have decades of savings and stock market and real-estate appreciation to fall back on if they find themselves unemployed.
Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims
#250Age 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…
Age discrimination applies for workers/applicants >= 40.