New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#111

Post by neilv » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:46 PM UTC

xd wrote: post #90

outlace wrote: post #74

If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory. But the law suit…

"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)" You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?

Because "developers get dumb by 30" is an HN meme that just won't go away. So every new batch of impressionable 20 year-olds hears it, at the same time VCs and big corps are telling them "you're so smart, now just submit to this series of hazing rituals."

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#112

Post by rdiddly » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

heisenbit wrote: post #97

rdiddly wrote: post #43

The ironic thing of course is that it's hard to imagine what actual advantage a practice of age discrimination might provide. All real and true criteria for a job can be tested for directly; there's no need to make age a dubiously-accurate proxy for any of those. It literally makes no sense. From the COMPANY'S point of view.

> All real and true criteria for a job can be tested for directly; Analytical skills can be tested. It gets much harder on the creative skill and interaction skill side. Software is mostly about people communicating and making decisions. These standardized tests are only good to get accurate results in an area not so relevant later.

Sorry, I didn't mean to focus too literally on the idea of "testing." I'm using the term broadly to include things like pair-programming or job interviews (and other things, obviously), which are examples of "tests" that try to tease out some of the things you're talking about.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#113

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #108

Odd that in an article about age based discrimination, they don't mention that there is also age based discrimination against young people, for example, getting into C level positions in the non-tech world. When I used to be employed by other people, I specifically remember being told "we can't really promote you to director, you are too young". I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't th…

> I wasn't inexperienced (I started working full time at 16). It wasn't that I hadn't earned it.

Above middle management, political calculus dominates meritocratic concerns (in the short term). This is true in any organisation because we’re primates. You won’t “earn” your way into senior management and you won’t help your case by informally complaining.

If you want a promotion you need leverage. Relationships with (potential) shareholders and creditors, a credible threat to decamp (and cause damage), et cetera. If you can’t threaten to leave you have no leverage. If your leaving wouldn’t cause the Board and senior management pain, you have no leverage. (If you have no leverage, that’s fine—get it.)

Speaking as someone who spent a lot of their career being young (and impatient).

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#114

Post by throwayscid3 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:48 PM UTC

I'm 47 and have run my own companies, exited some of them with handsome returns, enjoyed many cool start-up projects, worked for some fortune-50 companies, have an IQ that is through the roof, but despite everything, since around 7 years am unable to get a job. Mostly I'm "overqualified" or "just too old" ... never mind I am still hands-on and happy to just get paid whatever the Junior gets, but nobody is interested. Since I've hit the end of 30ies I've become invisible.

This has costed me my marriage, the relationship with my kids who don't talk to me. That lead to a decline in my mental health and physical health. Lack of connections costed me a lot of friends too. I quit all social media because that too radicalized me a lot (nothing else to do when you're sitting on your arse).

For some parts of 2018 and most of 2019 I was homeless. In the past 6 months tried to kill myself twice. Once with heroin (never took it before), second time with Fentanyl. Making sure nobody would find me I went into the woods on a several day hike and shot enough to kill a horse, but both times I woke up with a massive hangover 2 days later. I can assure you it wasn't a cry for fucking help. Everything was done right and I am not supposed to be here, yet for some reason I still fucking am.

When I still had the energy to open up to people after they asked why I'm falling apart nobody listened. Everyone focused on me losing my family so they told me I should get "help", others told me I should just lower my expectation when it comes to jobs. How much lower can you go? Junior jobs are pointless because they don't want to talk to people my age but people who they can "shape" to their ideology.

But seriously fuck them, and fuck their ignorance. They dare to ask "what is the problem" yet when they hear they are so incapable of helping that their best and only suggestion is to "seek professional help". Yes why not outsource the problem to a professional because sure as fuck I have no time to bother with your problems (which compared to my non-problems sound pretty fucking real).

Nobody even considers that my problem isn't drugs, or being suicidal, or becoming estranged, and that my problem is simply that I don't get a job. I never thought I would end up at this point because everything went well for me. Well at least until I got "old". Guess we all gotta go at some stage. I had a great time so maybe I shouldn't complain. It's probably better to leave when you're still ahead (I made the mistake of still being here).

throwaway for obvious reasons.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#115

Post by bradleyjg » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

superfrank wrote: post #71

xfitm3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as our sector matures its more about emotional intelligence, and less about technical aptitude. I can’t help but think leetcode is a echo chamber. I personally disagree with this approach, I’ve met a few folks who think the CLI is useless and can be learned in a few days. But they score really well in algorithms. With today’s data privacy concerns and tough European regulations I don’t think this attitude is…

I get why companies want to use Leetcode for evaluation. It basically quantifies an applicant down to a number which makes hiring easier and more scalable. There's a lot less room for bias if every candidate can be boiled down to pass or fail by a single test. That being said, I was on the hiring committee at my last job and personally, I found the best way to hire engineers is to just chat with them about previous p…

In addition to being hard to scale and subject to bias, it's hard to know, even for you, if it was actually a good system or not. The best you can hope for is to have decent confidence it had a low false positive rate.

Short of industry wide collaboration with some kind of longitudinal study, getting an idea of what does and doesn't work in terms of false negatives is nearly impossible.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#116

Post by tyingq » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

rdiddly wrote: post #110

tyingq wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The perceived benefit is avoiding someone with reasonable salary and work hour expectations.

Yeah but you can do that by means of "salary and work hour discrimination," see what I'm saying? Those are things you can state outright, legally. Just make it clear that those are parameters of the job, and if they accept the job, they accept the job. I dunno maybe I've gone completely batshit crazy up in here.

No, you're right, they are just doing it the quick/lazy way. Older workers are also less liable to drink all the other corporate koolaid that might be harder to test for.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#117

Post by maxheadroom » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:51 PM UTC

cycrutchfield wrote: post #56

RandomOpinion wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> older devs had to go into management to keep their career trajectory ... FAANG companies seem to have figured it out for people they've already hired. The FAANG companies and other technology platform companies have separate technical and management career tracks. Only those who want to be managers become managers.

In theory, yes. In practice, no. At a certain point, a lot of engineers plateau in terms of technical ability and are unable to continue to level up. For many, they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.

>...they feel compelled to switch tracks to management to continue to make progress, regardless of whether they have any innate ability or desire to excel at management.

Can confirm: Once you "plateau" in a division, the only options are lateralling to a technology you don't know (with the same expectations exacted upon you) or simply going management and that assumes that there's room in management.

Given how frequently "organisational shifts/changes" occur, that could leave you out in the cold, just as well.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#118

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #82

At a previous job an older coworker dyed his hair dark to get the job. He let it go back to gray afterwards.

I wonder what they thought of that.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#119

Post by sokoloff » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

pleasecalllater wrote: post #34

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

> I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40.

This is a hard requirement to meet because as you go up the hierarchy of positions, the first level leader initially knows more than the junior contributors, but that pretty rapidly flips. Maybe the second level of leadership still knows more than the first, but almost never after that. How could someone be an expert practitioner in all the varied disciplines that they likely oversee? It skews towards general tech leadership quite quickly.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#120

Post by rabidrat » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

drchewbacca wrote: post #50

One thing I'm a bit confused about is why doesn't salary bidding fix this? For example if a 25 yr old coder is $X per year surely, even if you have terrible age discrimination, there must be some salary level, say $0.75*X where having the older worker is preferable? Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market? Is it that people value youth so much they will pay a 3x mark…

A common objection is that they will leave as soon as they can find a 'better' (higher-paying) job. So not worth it to invest in them.

This sucks, but it definitely explains a lot of discrimination at the higher-end of the scale. The OP has a 71-year-old who couldn't find work. It must be very difficult for an employer to agree to hire this person, get them trained up on their specific business processes, only for them to have a serious health issue (and/or die) inside of a year. I get that this can happen to anyone, but the likelihood is of course greater the older you get. Maybe employers could take out some kind of insurance on their employees, with the cost based on the actuarial tables and taken out of the employees' salaries (kind of what you suggest).