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

#351

Post by pmiller2 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

brandall10 wrote: post #66

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…

Love your attitude. I'm of the opinion that grinding through leetcode/hacker rank type exercises does improve your coding skills so I have no issue brushing up every time I'm on the market. To that end, I'm 43 and last on the market a few months back, accepted an offer within a week of looking, had 3 pending final/onsites (including Amazon Seattle) and at least another half dozen in earlier stages that I shut down. I…

Oh, I agree that Leetcode can improve certain coding skills. But, are they the ones that matter for doing most software engineering jobs? The ability to write down algorithms on a whiteboard from memory alone is not a skill I’ve ever seen anyone use at any workplace outside of an interview room.

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

#352

Post by aiisjustanif » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:13 AM UTC

hash872 wrote: post #63

jedberg wrote: post #32

I think part of the problem is "protected classes". I learned the other day that if you're over 40 you're a protected class for engineering in California. If you're a protected class and you have a job, that's great! It will help you a lot. But the unintended consequence is that companies are more reluctant to hire someone in a protected class, because if they are legitimately bad at their job, they are harder to get…

Was completely with you until the last paragraph. As the poster above me says, the more you regulate hiring, the more reluctant companies are to do so. You can look at the entire continent of Europe for a 500 million person example of this- sclerotic uber-regulated hiring markets with intense bureaucratic rules around who can be hired or fired, who can be laid off, under what circumstances, etc. The end result of thi…

Unemployment rates:

Ireland: 5.4% UK: 3.8% Germany: 3.1% Portugal: 6.3% Poland: 3.5% Czech: 1.9% Sweden: 6.2% Finland: 6.7%

That about ~230mil people. Mate what are you talking about.

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

#353

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:20 AM UTC

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.

[deleted]

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

#354

Post by aiisjustanif » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:21 AM UTC

tmwprkej wrote: post #68

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…

> "you know, here I have dozens of resumes of people 10 years younger than you, who have lots of experience in managing team So they are 23 year olds write lots of managing experience? Sometimes I just dislike this industry with its title inflation. I am 33 having been a recruiter for a short stint, I can tell you most of them just checkbox candidates because they have no idea what they are hiring. As they say, no on…

> As they say, no one ever got fired buying an ibm.

No one ever got fired going Big Blue...

I know a director or two lol.

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

#355

Post by pmiller2 » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

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 to mention PWC was one of the companies named in the article as a potential perpetrator of age discrimination.

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

#356

Post by aiisjustanif » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:30 AM UTC

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #250

jhayward wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that what you believe to be age discrimination may not be that at all, rather a judgement of suitability based on temperament and how relationships are handled. A certain equanimity and humility often is attributed to age and the acquisition of wisdom. Perhaps this is what was referred to, rather than an actual judgement based on age. People frequently do not confront behavior directly, rather using euphe…

Bob, the CEO, turned out to be a good friend of mine. Next time we have some beers, I'll tell him that his perspective was false and he was trying to protect my feelings (despite being a very brash guy who is known for being upfront) - I'll tell him how jhayward, nickpsecurity, JumpCrisscross and marcinzm and others told me his leadership secrets. Well, let's leave the world of theory, which I'll let the ass-u-me cro…

Fine, young person here. I personally rather the person in a higher up managing position to have a lot of experience because it's such a vast scope of departments and functions you are usually responsible for in a large company. Having experience in multiple roles and area helps a shit ton from being blindsided.

If this is a small company with less responsibilities, then I would consider this a problem and more so ageist, because less complexity and moving parts doesn't require more experience.

But I agree with the others a little bit as well, you seem to lacking a little EQ.

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

#357

Post by jeffFrom18F » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:30 AM UTC

geggam wrote: post #281

oblio wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me, but at $200k you're making $100k net so about $8k per month. With rent at $2.3k, you should be able to save enough to buy something at some point, no? Or at least you could rent something more expensive, closer to work?

He said BART so he is in SF bay area. If he is only paying 2300 rent he is living in a small apt even 60 minutes out. The cost of everything in the bay makes you wonder where money goes. Lunch is a minimum of 25 bucks, bottle of cheap beer 10.

Lunch/beer are certainly above nat'l average, but they do not cost that much in the bay area. It's mostly the housing (Childcare also up there).

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

#358

Post by onion2k » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:32 AM UTC

drivingmenuts wrote: post #11

Ancalagon wrote: post #4

I just don't understand the bias. I'm too young to have experienced age discrimination like this yet, but its obvious at least to me that the best developers and hell, leaders, that I've worked with were all a part of older generations. Is it a shortcoming in pay for all these people? I feel like being out of work for 3 years would definitely lower whatever standard of pay I had prior to becoming unemployed. I just d…

Older workers = more experience = higher pay. Younger workers = less experience = lower pay. Older workers also cost more in insurance premiums, have more "life events" that pull them away from work and are potentially harder to sell on corporate environment.

Older workers = more experience = higher pay.

You missed a step.

Older workers = more experience = more responsibility = higher pay.

Without that extra responsibility there's no reason to pay someone more simply because they're older. The pay should be based on what the job is, not the age or 'experience' of the person doing it.

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

#359

Post by hinkley » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:32 AM UTC

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…

Engineering manager was afraid a more experienced dev could call him out on his bullshit. Not being willing to manage someone older than you is likely a sign of cowardice.

The first and second really good developers I worked with were around 35 and 45 when I met them.

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

#360

Post by jswizzy » Sun, Jun 09, 2019, 6:35 AM 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…

I know this is just personnel experience so don't take it for much but I had to share an office with a 70 year old "programmer" who made three times my salary. I know this because my supervisor got drunk on a business trip and told me the day after he fired the guy. He was constantly asking everyone how to do the simplest of tasks and complaining about being under payed and discriminated against because of his age and was extremely condescending to anyone who tried to help him. He never finished any assignment even after a year and a half. The led developer who has been coding for 15 years took over his last project and had to throw out all the code because it was basically just copied and pasted from stackover flow. I don't think this guy ever really knew how to code well and had got into the industry in a time where programmers where rare. Honestly, for what I've seen all the over 40 crowd in the industry moves into management positions.