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Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

propublica.org

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Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#141

Post by seanmcdirmid »

deepnotderp wrote: post #94
eloff wrote: post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

If all/most employers exclude workers based on demographics, then smart employers will realize that they can find great employees in those demographics. A good portion of Quant trading is based off a similar principle. If I can model priors and variance better than my competitors, I can make money.

It isn’t that simple. In my local talent market, big FAANGs + Microsoft-style companies have been aggressively recruiting female SWEs, creating even starker imbalances in smaller tech companies + startups. It doesn’t seem unreasonable for those companies to completely give up on finding women to hire, because that supply is limited (at least until the educational pipeline catches up).

And it kind of makes sense: it will take a few more years for supply in the industry to actually increase (especially for senior talent), while companies like Google are under the spotlight now and no one really cares about that 10 developer payroll company that Google poached talent from. (Not to mention employment laws work different for companies of different sizes)

To put it in trading terms, if your bigger competitors are sucking up all the supply of X, then you simply don’t worry about buying X if you can get by with Y anyways.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#142

Post by jldugger »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138
dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It’s not cost efficient” isn’t a valid reason to discriminate against people, if you ask me. Moreover, it's not, in general, a legal reason in the US to discriminate where a protected class is involved, including, in employment, age over 40 or gender.

What if the bias was learned by a neural network or other algorithm (eg historical insurance costs, page rank, ...)? Does that somehow make it legal if they make an inference about a protected class and stop advertising to them?

It does not.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#143

Post by megaremote »

joncrane wrote: post #61
eloff wrote: post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

My Aunt wrote computer code into her 60s. This was up until at most 10 years ago. She has a degree in math and went back to school after being a SAHM and got a degree in computer science from a community college, and banged out code for about 15 years. She coded circles around (and out-adulted) her younger colleagues.

> She coded circles around (and out-adulted) her younger colleagues.

How would you ever know this?

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#144

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

undefined3840 wrote: post #80

The dirty secret of hiring is that employers are always thinking about cost, but how many employees out there think of themselves as a cost to a bottom line? Not many. The most exploitable tech workers are young, single, males on H1-b visas. They will take a low salary and essentially be enslaved to their job because getting fired means getting kicked out of the country. Old workers and women are more “expensive” bec…

Older workers will still demand to be paid more than younger workers, since they have more experience.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#145

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138
dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It’s not cost efficient” isn’t a valid reason to discriminate against people, if you ask me. Moreover, it's not, in general, a legal reason in the US to discriminate where a protected class is involved, including, in employment, age over 40 or gender.

What if the bias was learned by a neural network or other algorithm (eg historical insurance costs, page rank, ...)? Does that somehow make it legal if they make an inference about a protected class and stop advertising to them?

That kind of thing is why the doctrine of disparate impact was developed. There are a lot of messy edge cases (everything has some correlation with one or another protected class), but if I end up never advertising to men the fact that I'm using a neural network won't protect me.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#146

Post by underwater »

foobar1962 wrote: post #100

Posting a job on social media -- and not dedicated job sites -- is already reducing the number of people likely to see the listing. A lot of people don't use social media. I did a digital marketing course and have met a few digital marketers. When asked if they use social media themselves, most if not all answer "oh GOD no."

You can choose whether to use social media or not. You can't choose your gender.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#147

Post by spamizbad »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #76
zaroth wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so are you allowed to place employment ads in Cosmo? Is it Ok just because it’s overwhelming likely to be women who see it, versus algorithmically targeting women?

Can someone tell me, does Cosmopolitan magazine run job ads?

It doesn't.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#148

Post by fzeroracer »

jlawson wrote: post #97
dangus wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Officer, you’re just using the legal definition of speeding!”

You seem to think the law is the be-all end-all definition of perfect moral reasoning. The law is not God's word. It's open to criticism, and we're criticizing it. If you want to participate in the discussion, great. But, "It's illegal because the law says you're not allowed to do it," is not a meaningful contribution.

The discussion point was already made above, in that we make certain things illegal because even though it may make economic sense, it results in massive damage to things such as the environment, vulnerable populations and so forth. The poster chose to respond by saying it was a perfectly valid reason to discriminate, which goes against the law for the already stated reasons.

There was no additional criticism offered here. No one has made the point that 'it's the law therefore it's good', and you're massively misrepresenting the arguments here.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#149

Post by mysterydip »

WomanCanCode wrote: post #137

When I was younger (unmarried and no kids), I could work 11 hours in the office as a software developer. And that translate to 55 hours a week minimum. But now I just work 9.5 hours a day. I would love to work 8 hours, but based on my experience you really need to work as much as you can get so you can have a “good” daily stand-up report. I wish I could have a better work and life balance … but when you are a softwar…

To me that's a good thing and a reason to work less in the office. Your brain is still working on the problem while you're out doing other things. I've had multiple occasions where I didn't find the solution to an issue while staring at the screen, but rather that evening or the next morning while at home.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#150

Post by scarface74 »

wesammikhail wrote: post #29
mav3rick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you don't control if a man or an old person can buy the magazine or not.

Serious question: How is that relevant though? Here is how I think about it: If my intention is to discriminate against men and publish an ad in a female magazine, sure, I cant control if a man buys and sees the ad or not. But discrimination was my intention to begin with regardless of how effective my efforts were. Besides, those efforts will be pretty effective. Instead of magazine advertising being 100% effective…

There is no need for slippery slopes or hypotheticals. All physical advertising platforms have policies against discrimination for job ads and rentals. Newspapers have had stricter requirements for those two areas for years and there are specific laws governing them. Just because it is “on the internet” doesn’t change anything.

Yes you can advertise jobs in Ebony or Cosmopolitan. There is nothing stopping a non Black or man from picking up those magazines.

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