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

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

#161

Post by klyrs »

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…

By all accounts, chattel slavery was extremely cost effective. Is that all that matters?

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

#162

Post by hysan »

nefitty wrote: post #79
DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

This is a great idea. What about a service that allows proctored skills tests for applicants? Like Sitepoint but with some additional verification layers. Hiring managers would then pick a tech stack or set of skills they need, and matches would bubble up based on applicants in the area with the relevant skills. The "culture fit" question could be another egg to crack. Who knows if interviews are the best way to figu…

Any process that attempts to “solve” the technical skills verification problem will not work unless it replaces the technical portion of the on-site interview. Otherwise, companies can still reject based on technical assessments in which case you’ve solved nothing. You’ve simply changed the shape of the hiring funnel.

Also, looking beyond the immediate need, companies would also need to understand that this only applies to very specific positions. You shouldn’t apply this to entry level, nor should you apply this to positions where the employee is expected to adapt quickly to changing tech stacks. What this leaves you with is contracting. You hire experts with a very specific skillset that you need that is verified by an agency. For everything else, there is still not a good generic solution.

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

#163

Post by qtplatypus »

eloff wrote: post #40
dangus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s not cost efficient” isn’t a valid reason to discriminate against people, if you ask me. An analogy to your justification: the most cost efficient thing to do with hazardous chemicals is to dump them down the drain.

Women software engineers are a much smaller percentage of women than male software engineers are of men. That's pretty obvious to anyone who's ever worked in software.

However that is in part because employers have been historically hesitant to employ them (and clearly if they are not advising to women then the will not be getting employment) this creates a self supporting feedback loop.

Part of employment law is to break this loop.

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

#164

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

> there are ways to find you based on that and it won't matter what your gender or age is.

For the higher paying specialized jobs, it’s called a network. But networking is even more biased than formal recruiting approaches.

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

#165

Post by aheilbut »

nefitty wrote: post #79
DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

This is a great idea. What about a service that allows proctored skills tests for applicants? Like Sitepoint but with some additional verification layers. Hiring managers would then pick a tech stack or set of skills they need, and matches would bubble up based on applicants in the area with the relevant skills. The "culture fit" question could be another egg to crack. Who knows if interviews are the best way to figu…

like college?

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

#166

Post by big_chungus »

kjs3 wrote: post #156
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not, though. When I buy a page in Cosmo or something, I'm doing that with the intent and result that mostly women will see it. If targeted ads were illegal, it's hard to see how any publication with non-representative demographics could sell ads at all.

Are you actually equating placing ads for makeup or intimates with placing ads for a job? You are the very definition of the problem .

Not really, because it's a question of principle: is it okay to target to a specific demographic, or not; and does that vary based on whether we are discussing a legally-protected class? The significance of what is being advertised doesn't exactly change the definition of right and wrong. If we're being honest, cosmo is probably as accurate a filtering mechanism for white, middle-aged, middle-class women as facebook could be.

The issue seems to be when people _exclude_ certain groups, rather than when people _target_ specific ones; i.e. I can filter for middle-aged white guys for testosterone-boosting pills, but most would balk at filtering _out_ blacks, young people, etc. for rental ads. The question is, is there an ethical difference, and why? I think all of us can agree that a cosmo ad for women is fine, and tossing out a black guy's resume is not; the question is where is that line, and why? These sorts of technologies are bringing us closer to either side, so it's relevant to figure out where it is.

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

#167

Post by seanmcdirmid »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #145
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So then are algorithmic approaches to advertising for employment off limits? Facebook and google then really shouldn’t go near this kind of work since their tech is legally inappropriate.

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

#168

Post by formercoder »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #164
DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

> there are ways to find you based on that and it won't matter what your gender or age is. For the higher paying specialized jobs, it’s called a network. But networking is even more biased than formal recruiting approaches.

Is it biased in a bad way? It’s really hard to measure someone’s ability to do a job, especially for a more senior role. Therefore, I feel comfortable hiring people recommended to me by others that I trust.

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

#169

Post by marcosdumay »

dangus wrote: post #47
eloff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Women software engineers are a much smaller percentage of women than male software engineers are of men. That's pretty obvious to anyone who's ever worked in software.

The wording was unclear to me at first because it wasn’t explicit. Anyway, I completely changed my comment to more closely go along with the point I want to be making. Regardless, besides being unfair the idea that the policy is economically justified doesn’t seem to be immediately intuitive to me. It seems like you should advertise on subject matter for that kind of thing, e.g. people who watch EEVBlog would get an…

The wonders of target advertising. It's probably not possible to target the readers of CS and EE content, but targeting young men is easy.
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