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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

#311

Post by RickSanchez2600 »

epc wrote: post #25

Am 52. Served as IBM’s “corporate webmaster” in the 1990s (sort of like being CTO but without the cool executive hat). Corporate Webmaster was responsible for all technical operations of IBM’s corporate sites (from systems administration to application development), as well as theoretically responsible for all IBM web sites. As well as serve as the single point of contact inside IBM for anything “internet”. Have been…

MY next door neighbor worked for IBM in OS/2. when IBM stopped supporting OS/2 they laid him off. He blamed Microsoft for it and refused to run Windows. I got him a copy of OpenSUSE from my computer because he refused to use Windows. He went to Linux, and had worked on the IBM Mainframes as well before. He had trouble getting hired because he was in his 60s. He recently died and had called himself a Windows Bigot because he refused to use or support Windows.

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

#312

Post by RickSanchez2600 »

Zenst wrote: post #227
luckydata wrote: post #180

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.

As a 50+ chap, I had an instance of a top company, referred by friend, whole team up for it and to not even get an interview as I got `filtered` by HR and the recruitment process. Turns out they rejected me as I was `overqualified`. Equally in my early years pre PC mainstream days, there was an age bias towards older people. With many personal experiences upon that in that time/culture - including, believe it or not…

A friend of mine is in his 50s he got tired of being overqualified for jobs. So he sent in applications for CEO of Microsoft etc and got the overqualified letters back. It is ridiculous if you ask me, and he is only overqualified because of his age.

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

#313

Post by scarface74 »

ineedasername wrote: post #307
scarface74 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One of the most valuable skills is recognizing an XY Problem and digging deeper.

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

#314

Post by RickSanchez2600 »

A friend of mine specialized in OSX USB drivers and did contract work for OEMS who make products for the Apple Macintosh. He used to work for Apple in the 1990s and did work on Mac System 7.5.4 with the team.

He recently killed himself, because he could not find clients and work due to ageism etc. He got sick as well and for a while was homeless. Once he got grey hair they didn't want to hire him anymore. He was 55.

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

#315

Post by mykowebhn »

b3b0p wrote: post #301
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 reas…

I feel for you. If you'd like we can chat offline. You can reach me at mycoweb2000-comm at yahoo dot com.

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

#316

Post by intended »

devonkim wrote: post #190
povertyworld wrote: post #92

This is why I gave up on ever having a "real job". This thread inspired me to take a look at a job board and the first thing I saw was a mobile developer job listed as "entry level". Scrolling down, the requirements are 5 years minimum mobile development experience. This is entry level now? Five years experience? By the time I have five years experience working at some kind of theoretical pre-entry level job and fina…

There’s some cruel irony of you bringing up accounting for more stability when another poster in these comments said his father was laid off from an accounting job in his 40s and never found another job again. Modern work is brutal in the developed world and our institutions both government and market are failing at utilizing the wealth of human experience and knowledge available primarily for the sake of institution…

Not accounting, he said finance. Usually accountants get hired, while finance types are the ones capable of making retirement savings.

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

#317

Post by matz1 »

scarface74 wrote: post #299
mykowebhn wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is curious to me, and it's not just in your comment that I've seen this. But why is there this assumption that if someone studies Leetcode and algorithms then it means that they can't do anything else? Why is there this all or nothing mentality? If someone studies Leetcode and algorithms, wouldn't one assume they know other things as well in the software engineering realm? I have plenty of friends in the Bay Are…

How much time have they spent using the standard frameworks that most companies use everyday? Could they even model a standard relational schema? Do they know anything about automated testing? If they were told a web page was slow would they know enough architecturally to know how to find the bottleneck and no the solution for solving it? No the answer is not based on finding the o(n) complexity of reversing a binary…

>No the answer is not based on finding the o(n) complexity of reversing a binary tree.

Of course not, the main purpose of the leetcode is to ace the interview.

Doesn't mean they do not know any of those questions you mentioned above.

I, for example, did all you mentioned above and also practicing leetcode.

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

#318

Post by paulkon »

sokoloff wrote: post #172
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…

The assumption that there exists some price at which the older worker is preferable is assuming that all software workers have a positive contribution and the only task is to value and compensate it roughly in proportion. My experience suggests that a fair chunk of the population of software developers are incapable of sustainably creating positive business value overall (even if they were paid nothing). If that mode…

So you're saying that older workers being in the position of looking for a job are signaling that they're a scratched off lottery ticket for which the expected value of a jackpot is zero?

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

#319

Post by fishingisfun »

cortesoft wrote: post #203
pmiller2 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What region do you live in, and how do you think your bottom line compares to what you’d see in a comparable role in the Bay Area? I’m not really architect / principal level just yet (probably 3-5 years of continuous improvement from that I would say), but I feel like I’m just barely getting ahead as a senior making $200k paying $2300/month in rent with no hope to buy and about a 40-60 minute commute (de…

Man, 200k is about 8k a month after taxes... with only 2300 in rent, you should be able to save a ton... how do you feel you aren't getting ahead?

should be more than 8k

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

#320

Post by jxramos »

povertyworld wrote: post #92

This is why I gave up on ever having a "real job". This thread inspired me to take a look at a job board and the first thing I saw was a mobile developer job listed as "entry level". Scrolling down, the requirements are 5 years minimum mobile development experience. This is entry level now? Five years experience? By the time I have five years experience working at some kind of theoretical pre-entry level job and fina…

I think the I internal consistentcy of these job board postings is a function of the recruitment actors of a company properly filling out the webforms for the roles they post. I get the sense that they leave default values or reuse templates that carry over copy/paste errors.
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