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

nytimes.com

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

#301

Post by b3b0p »

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

I'm not 48, I'm younger, but in my 30's. I only started the LeetCode study grind about a year or so go, but not consistently. I just got back from my onsite at a Big-N and pretty much bombed it. I gut nervous and forgot the easiest of questions. I lost my confidence. My mind went blank, my hands, nerves shaking. Couldn't write complete code or even sentences I think at times. It was bad. I was intimidated for no reason.

I am having very difficult time getting the offers (duh, when performing like this). Did you always get to receiving offers? I seem to always get the, we decided to go with another candidate... line after my onsite.

I've only had 2 company's fly me out so far and the only companies that I have gotten offers at don't do LeetCode. It's extremely frustrating or maybe I'm just not prepared well enough yet and need to be more consistent with my study and practice (and don't pay as much either) or maybe I'm just not smart enough. I feel stuck.

Will it ever end or am I stuck grinding for the rest of my career (life)? Will I ever be able just breathe and relax again? I'm not on the West coast, but interviewing on the West Coast. I'll rent out my condo or keep it around as a home away from home if I ever get an opportunity.

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

#302

Post by outlace »

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?

Not a contradiction. Surgery is a skill honed by repetition and experience over many years. A cognitive task like mathematical theorem proving can be mastered by a bright teenager in much, much less time.

I suspect as you age your Bayesian priors become stronger and stronger so all new data only mildly updates your priors. Young people have very weak priors, so new data can easily affect their thinking.

Anecdotally, my mom has had a smart phone for more than 5 years but she still has just memorized certain functions she knows how to do like texting and placing a call. Ask her to do anything else and she throws up her hands. My 2 year old daughter, while not able to text or place calls, has a much more intuitive grasp of how the phone works and has been able to learn a lot of functionality on her own.

Or another example is that I've noticed from my (albeit limited) experience that all the surgeons I've worked with who used robotic surgical systems were younger (30s-40s). Anecdotally but I think there's a pattern there. Younger people tend to be more open to learning something radically new.

So while virtually all skills benefit from repetition and experience, some skills require more cognitive flexibility (ability to forget what you already know and start fresh) and demand frequent learning and re-learning.

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

#303

Post by vageli »

w-ll wrote: post #200
vageli wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm going to rock your world: almost nobody uses the keyword scanners in the ATSs. Sending a resume is mostly a waste of time, if you find a job you like just speak to someone that works at that company, preferably the hiring manager, and your likelihood of at least getting an interview goes up by about two orders of magnitude. Happy to teach you other tricks if you care for it. How are you supposed to find out the…

Look at their company/about page, then go to LinkedIn. Also most email address are fairly predictable.

This might work in smaller companies, but for enterprises I have a hard time seeing this working.

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

#304

Post by dragonwriter »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #295
jtr1 wrote: post #256

A few years ago I worked at a ~50 person startup, where an informal poll revealed everyone on the engineering team to be in an age range of ~24-30. One day we interviewed an insanely qualified dude in his mid-50s. He’d worked with technologicies up and down our stack, their competitors, and their predecessors, and could speak at length to their relative strengths and weaknesses. Tons of open source contributions, men…

Let's say the CTO said "I'm concerned the candidate won't fit in because he's not into video games or partying with coworkers or working on the weekends, all the things that help us bond and keep a cohesive team". While not directly mentioning his age, such criteria would still make it very unlikely that the older candidate would be hired. Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; le…

> Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; let's ignore legal considerations since those are incredibly vague and convoluted)?

It's straightforward (disparate impact) age discrimination from a legal perspective. The law in this area isn't that vague and convoluted.

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

#305

Post by docker_up »

RickJWagner wrote: post #277
docker_up wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost 50 myself. I've been coding for 25+ years, and am looking for a new job myself. I have one at a well-known company but I want to make more hay while the sun shines. I currently have a week of onsites booked with the Big N, and I'm in study mode. Because I'm still technical and hands-on and never became a manager, I haven't had any trouble getting contacted constantly for new jobs.

What's the 'Big N'?

That's a term used on Reddit /r/cscareerquestions, it's basically FAANG

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

#306

Post by tbyehl »

adventured wrote: post #98
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…

> Is it that older workers are much more expensive and are bidding themselves out the market? On one cost issue. Let's say you're in a city other than SEA, LA, SF, NYC and Boston. A 55 year old on a good insurance plan will often cost you anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 more per year in healthcare benefits versus a 20-25 year old. The cost of a 45 year old employee further increases with time due to that (over 10 yea…

I'm not sure that's how employer-based group health plans work, but regardless, the gaping flaw in this theory is that a typical Recruiter and Hiring Manager wouldn't have the first clue about their employer's cost of benefits.

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

#307

Post by ineedasername »

scarface74 wrote: post #275
wwweston wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like studying. Like, my list of things to learn more about in CS/software engineering/Math alone is probably longer than I'm going to get to before retirement... which, if I'm lucky, will consist in no small part of studying things and working on personal projects. I don't understand people who say they don't want to be immortal, they'd get bored. I can sortof imagine my psyche eventually crushing itself und…

I can guarantee you that someone knowing leetCode and algorithms would be absolutely useless where I work. Most developers are doing CRUD apps or at most apps where the complexity is in the business rules and process.

>Business rules & process:

Absolutely. Unless you're working on a greenfield project or refactoring code for extreme performance, understanding the operational side of the business will get you more points towards the mythical 10x programmer status than algorithms.

I can't count the times I've seen scope creep and deadline slippage because the developer didn't really understand the need & use case and built something other than what was required.

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

#308

Post by paulkon »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #271
jtr1 wrote: post #256

A few years ago I worked at a ~50 person startup, where an informal poll revealed everyone on the engineering team to be in an age range of ~24-30. One day we interviewed an insanely qualified dude in his mid-50s. He’d worked with technologicies up and down our stack, their competitors, and their predecessors, and could speak at length to their relative strengths and weaknesses. Tons of open source contributions, men…

If I were the CTO in that situation, I would seriously have considered firing the engineering manager on the spot. Blatant discrimination is a serious fuck up. Period.

Yeah at least make it subtle... /s

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

#309

Post by mooreds »

dragonwriter wrote: post #304
_cs2017_ wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say the CTO said "I'm concerned the candidate won't fit in because he's not into video games or partying with coworkers or working on the weekends, all the things that help us bond and keep a cohesive team". While not directly mentioning his age, such criteria would still make it very unlikely that the older candidate would be hired. Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; le…

> Would you consider this to be age discrimination (from a moral perspective; let's ignore legal considerations since those are incredibly vague and convoluted)? It's straightforward (disparate impact) age discrimination from a legal perspective. The law in this area isn't that vague and convoluted.

From the original article:

> The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit did not agree. In a ruling this year supporting CareFusion, it stated that recruiting practices that have the effect of screening out older applicants — what is known in legal terms as having a “disparate impact” — did not violate the law.

I am not a lawyer, but it appears to me that the law is convoluted enough for the 7th court of appeals to offer an alternate decision.

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

#310

Post by novok »

freyr wrote: post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

Go look at larger, older companies. Many guys in microsoft and apple who have worked there for 20 years.
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