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

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

#391

Post by repolfx »

aiisjustanif wrote: post #352
hash872 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Worker protection isn't standardised. The countries with the lowest unemployment rates have relatively dynamic labour markets.

Try France: 8.7%, was 10% as recently as 2015. Italy: 10.2%

Of course, unemployment is much worse for young workers in these countries. If you can't fire anyone then hiring is risky, so jobs tend to end up taken by older workers who then "camp" in the jobs even if they suck. Reverse ageism at work!

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

#392

Post by fjsolwmv »

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…

It would be even more efficient if people stopped being racist/agist/sexist and hired based on merit and potential. Until then, we have laws.

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

#393

Post by fjsolwmv »

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.

If you've ever sat in a hiring meeting, you'd know it's straightforward discrimination, but it's positive discrimination in favor of young people . It goes like this:

"Old guy here is a low/mid level person after 20 years, so he clearly isn't a superstar. Young guy here is low/mid level person, so he has potential to be a superstar."

Hiring committees, smothered by the legal ass covering around race and sex discrimination, never even think twice about making this discriminatory argument. It's even officially enshrined in hiring plans as "expectation of trajectory", a rule that only applies to old people. And before you say "ok but that's a logical argument", it's exactly the same logically correct argument as the (illegal) "bases on my limited knowledge, a white/Chinese/male candidate I just met is more likely to be successful at this job than a black/Hispanic/female candidate".

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

#394

Post by fjsolwmv »

pmiller2 wrote: post #382
lotsofpulp wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money can easily move. Money chooses to be there due to wanting to be there, good weather, terrain, politics, etc. There is some due to historical effects, but more people than not consider CA coast weather to be pretty ideal, hence the higher cost of living.

Why move if you can entice people to move into your back yard with all that money and not have to go anywhere? And, weather doesn’t adequately explain the high CoL anywhere outside California or Hawaii. “It’s where the jobs are, so everyone wants to be there does,” and it also explains California. (Hawaii is special— it’s an archipelago, so, cost of shipping goods plus weather is really the best explanation, given th…

Because there is more money in SV. All else equal financially, as it was in 1960s, CA is better. Now all else is not equal, except that cost of living may have finally caught up so residents are paying what the weather is worth.

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

#395

Post by yowlingcat »

ajcodez wrote: post #24

Young people have more variable potential. If you hire a young person they might be 100x or 10x or 1x in a couple years. If you hire an old person you already know they aren’t 100x or 10x otherwise they would be above you in the org chart or retired. There’s nothing wrong with 1x, but preference for young people is common sense all else being equal. And it’s never equal in terms of salary expectations and extra effor…

If your business is a financial equivalent portfolio allocation of too many lottery tickets and not enough stably yielding bonds and securities, you're gonna have a bad time. Predictably, many businesses run with such a naive mentality fold.

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

#396

Post by fjsolwmv »

4ntonius8lock wrote: post #135
marcinzm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It wasn't that I hadn't earned it. It was because the old farts on the board wouldn't take me seriously. Except getting them to take you seriously is part of your job in upper management. Age matters but your view of them as old farts makes me suspect you did nothing to gain their favor in other ways. As someone else said, those ways have little to do with job based merit.

I find it suspect how as soon as I say young people get discriminated on, a bunch of people who I'd assume are older than in their 20s, come out and defend such discrimination. I'm not that young anymore. I called them old farts because that is what they were. They discriminated on me based on my age alone, so that makes them old farts in my book. I wouldn't have been considered for the director position without any…

You can't expect to be taken seriously in a discussion of age discrimination when you are using blatant discriminatory language. Imagine if in a race discrimination discussion you had said the equivalent "I hire respectable black people, but I don't hire--[the word I can't say or HN would ban me]"

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

#397

Post by fjsolwmv »

scarface74 wrote: post #213
steverb wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution to this has generally been to add a "1997 - 2000 Various Previous work history available upon request" at the bottom. And then just carry a copy or two of the full CV with you to the interview. If someone wants to see it, let them. Generally interviewers have just been curious.

Even though I think ageism is overblown in the software development industry if you are buzzword compliant, I don’t take any chances. I leave everything off before 2008, my year of graduation and I go completely clean shaven and bald in an interview. (I’m Black it’s not abnormal). Most non-Blacks have no idea how old I am without the obvious signs of gray hair or a receding hair line.

White men can shave bald too, and anyone can dye their hair. There's even a famous hair dye brand that specifically advertises its product for use in gaming age doiscrimination! The product (Just For Men) and ads are gender-discriminatory, of course!

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

#398

Post by Zenst »

ido wrote: post #323
Zenst wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dare say starting out today is easier than it was pre internet boom. Hard to say without a time machine, but from talking to juniors & students (I have a lot of friends who teach) it sounds harder to get that first job than it was when I was starting out (I'm 36). My completely unscientific gut feeling was that it was the easiest to get started in tech in the late 90s & right as the industry started recovering from t…

AT 36, you would of hit the internet explosions about spot on, prior to the PC days with mainframes and `corporate/government ` structure it was not easy at all. Late 90's was the internet boom time and there was a real sudden shortage in skills back then and it was easier.

I was taught programming in school (well, actually self taught from magazines like Byte, computer World and Unix World and a ZX81) in the early 80's, was an acoustic coupler modem that took 30 mins to get a stable line to a mainframe at some college our school had some airtime upon. Today, far more accessible, but back then, was hard on many levels.

Biggest hurdle was HR and one role I went for (was 20 then), had two interviews, HR and then the tech people. Litterly had HR peon say to me "That's a lot of money for somebody your age" and really was a very uncomfortable attitude. Blow the tech interview out of the water, got offered the job and more money than the HR peon bismershed for somebody my age and turned the job down flat solely due to the attitude of the HR peon and made that very clear. Took another job offer, for less money outer principle. Though turned out to be a better job. But had I not had the attitude from HR, I'd of taken that job.

Lot changed in that 15 year gap between mid-30's aged people and people in their 50's today. But then much has changed on many levels and I'd say for the better overall, albeit the age discrimination thing still exists, they just moved the goalposts.

But IT is still a young industry, compare to say accountants. But then accountant qualification from a decade ago, still worth it's value today, not many tech certs/qualifications that you can say that about as the industry changes and is still evolving. That is kinda the crux and what makes IT as an industry, hard to compare to many other industries as IT is just more dynamic.

That said - COBOL has remained pretty darn static. But I moved out of that area decades ago (before you the internet boom and the time you got into tech).

But tech is a constant learning curve, that won't change soon either. Hence any job in tech is not just the job, but a full time education on top of that to stay current.

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

#399

Post by Zenst »

RickSanchez2600 wrote: post #312
Zenst wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is one worth framing and adding to the CV. My personal favorite was time IBM said something could not be done, I knocked up some code 30 minutes later doing what they said could not be done. Took IBM a week (which entailed contacting outside consultants) to come back and say my proposal would solve the problem.

I really wished the response of "over qualified" was made illegal as we all know it is used as a way to say no for reasons that are not legal...like age discrimination etc or other forms of discrimination (note I'm autistic spectrum).

Oh well, I've grown to loath and borderline hate HR departments over the decades thru such experiences. Which have been predominantly staffed by females, not that I'm drawing any conclusion to that, but it has been solid observation over my entire working career and at the very least, curious. Maybe there needs to be a drive for sexual equality with HR departments :/

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

#400

Post by Zenst »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #371
ido wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dare say starting out today is easier than it was pre internet boom. Hard to say without a time machine, but from talking to juniors & students (I have a lot of friends who teach) it sounds harder to get that first job than it was when I was starting out (I'm 36). My completely unscientific gut feeling was that it was the easiest to get started in tech in the late 90s & right as the industry started recovering from t…

I used to get, can you start Monday? pretty often after an hour interview back in the day. Sure miss that, and considering I’m a much better dev now it’s a travesty.

Had that, also for contract work that in itself can be a deal breaker as one case I said I could start a few days later and they gave the contract to somebody else. But then contracting and perm work, you can appreciate and respect that aspect.
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