Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:50 AM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #259

nefitty wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds like you are hiring faceless nameless cogs in a machine.

Most coding and other jobs these days are cogs in the machine. The amount of jobs where one can have individual impact is next to negligible.

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

#262

Post by NeedMoreTea » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #219

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have decided as nations and societies that some forms of economic discrimination are too damaging to permit. The details vary, but typically the things we can't easily change: race, nationality, age etc. Such discrimination is generally outlawed. Someone lacking relevant market skills or education etc can go out and fix that.

> The details vary, but typically the things we can't easily change: race, nationality, age etc. Such discrimination is generally outlawed. Also generally perpretrated, by the same body that bans it. A great beauty about human beings is that they have a natural tendency to find what is best for them and their communities in spite of legalities that attempt to distort reality. In any case, what you are ascribing as un…

Thankfully for society, countries manage to make common sense exceptions to those laws in a very limited number of circumstances.

Movies and TV tend to be among the worst for discrimination as a result.

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

#263

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

flukus wrote: post #195

formercoder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Is it biased in a bad way? Probably in several ways, along with a gender bias in your network there's probably a high likelihood that there's a racial bias, a class/wealth bias and an age bias. Your network probably has a strong contingent of people you went college with, people with a shared interested in your sports (which can be a proxy for class and race) and people with a similar background.

There's an awful lot of "yes but I..." going on in this thread, finishing with people not seeing their own bias, or not giving enough information to prove they don't have bias in their recommendations.

Let me start by inverting something that Uncle Bob has been saying for years: If you have less than 5 years experience, then 50% of the developers out there are 'older' from your perspective. Are half of your recommendations for people over 28?

Let's see how mine would stack up. If I had to recommend 10 people right now:

If I'm honest, about 6 of mine will be for people over the age of 28. That should be 5. So my recommendations are biased against young devs, which I hated when I was 26. If you asked me to be fair I could come up with 1 or 2 more young developers, but unbidden it would probably be 3-4.

2 or 3 would be female. If you only consider recent grads, that's low. But there's a hole in the older generation, so 25% is probably spot on, even though I think it kinda sucks.

2 should be black, hispanic or asian. I hit that number sort of. Because I could recommend 3 Indian developers and one East Asian from recent jobs. I have to my knowledge only ever worked with two black developers, one of whom was good, and also understandably frustrated that he is a statistic. I have seen him exactly once in 10 years.

I would wager that my numbers are better than most of the people who are getting rustled here (if you know your numbers are fine, you're likely not getting drawn into the conversation), but they're still biased. My recommendations don't make things better. They don't make them much worse, but they still tug the needle toward the unfair end of the gauge.

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

#264

Post by eropple » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:55 AM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #242

kjs3 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I've been given advantage for decades/centuries. We're giving an advantage to the disadvantaged so they have a chance to catch up for years/months. I'm being discriminated against!". Got it.

People today have not been given such advantages. Example: let's say I'm a poor white guy from Appalachia. Will you really tell me I have been given advatages for centuries? When you hire normally, you can somewhat absolve yourself of concern for personal situation; you judge based on emperical information as presented by the candidate. When you play God and take it upon yourself to be the judge, you are morally resp…

> Example: let's say I'm a poor white guy from Appalachia. Will you really tell me I have been given advatages for centuries?

Yes. That you happen to be poor, in that situation, does not obviate the cultural and sociodynamic power, in this country, from being white. And it's those advantages that just--for example--mean that if you are walking on a dark street in a city at night, a cop is orders of magnitude less likely to stop you and ask "hey, boy, what are you doing out so late?". That you might be poor, of course, is a reason why you are not as culturally or sociodynamically powerful as a middle-class or a rich white man, or maybe even a rich--gasp!--black man. But that white skin is an implicit handicap in your (and, as it happens, my) favor, even if other accidents of birth or providence happen to stack up on the other side. And it is downright immoral not to acknowledge it.

"Play god"--hogwash and worse words. Acknowledge structural imbalances. Poverty is one. Racism in a country that makes racists powerful is another, and it's bigger, and it's multiplicative with the aforementioned poverty in the first place.

And while we're being real about this, it is also worth noting that the historical fear of being "lesser than the black man" is one of the sadder causes of poor whites aligning with rich whites against the poor whites' economic and social interests--that is, the racial fear and resentment helps keep them poor. "Racial unity of poor whites with their economic exploiters" is a pretty good one-line summary of the post-Colonial American South in general, now that I think about it.

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

#265

Post by flukus » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #237

DoreenMichele wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get more women into the profession if they choose not to apply. And they can't apply if they never see your ad because of practices like the ones described in the article under discussion.

I've never got a job in response to an ad either. Have you? Do you personally know anyone who has? Another issue, with workplace politics and edicts being what they are, wouldn't white men be a better category of applicants to exclude via such targeting? I'm pretty sure this is happening as we speak. I don't view this as a problem, though, for the reason alluded to above: approximately nobody in tech lands jobs in re…

Do you mean ads in general or posting to public job listings? Because all my jobs have come from the later and it's been the primary hiring pipeline everywhere I've worked. Can't say I've seen a lot of hiring from general advertising channels but if they're paying for the ads then they're presumably hiring from that channel.

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

#266

Post by blub » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #260

erichocean wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could outright ban advertising everywhere, for any reason, full stop.

Then expect to see a massive increase in product placement within written content and TV shows, as well as whole series which are subtly sponsored. At least with traditional advertising they are direct about it. Marketing budgets have to be used somewhere...

Step two would be banning product placement. ;)

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

#267

Post by cwkoss » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

jackvalentine wrote: post #241

dschuetz wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. That's not as easy as you think. Most companies believe that without ads they'd lose to competition.

So their only differentiator is they advertise and their competitors don’t?

sounds like brands that society would he healthier without

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

#268

Post by keiferski » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #266

keiferski wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then expect to see a massive increase in product placement within written content and TV shows, as well as whole series which are subtly sponsored. At least with traditional advertising they are direct about it. Marketing budgets have to be used somewhere...

Step two would be banning product placement. ;)

Practically impossible. Entire shows will then be written and created around a product line or brand.

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

#269

Post by eropple » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:58 AM UTC

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…

> I think both alternatives suck in different ways, but as a business I'd probably choose ROI over fair.

Understandable. And probably even common. That's why society should be adding disincentives--and that the people running most businesses do not suffer clawing panic attacks at the disincentivizing retribution appropriate for this behavior is indicative that we do not make businesses fear bad behavior nearly enough in this country. Nor, really, do we nearly often enough puncture the fictive-person boundary to reach the decision-makers themselves.

I say this a lot around here and it never stops being true: society lets the corporation exist. There's a grant of power and a grant of trust inherent in a corporate charter and the advantages therein. Every member and executive of a corporation should fear the everloving daylights out of betraying that public trust. And yet at this point we almost take for granted that betraying the public trust is what corporations do.

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

#270

Post by hinkley » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 6:05 AM UTC

hysan wrote: post #162

nefitty wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appl…

You know what's super weird?

My company selects for people who can pass white board interviews. Which are not only terrible in their own right but also not the way anybody I know codes.

And despite that, most of the people I work with are actually below average at explaining things with drawings or whiteboards. And since that average in our industry is already "pretty awful" that's saying something.

So not only are we looking for the wrong thing, but we haven't even proven our own people can do the thing we thought we were looking at. I'm starting to think a lottery system would be better. We know we have algorithms that do better with random sampling. Maybe hiring is one of them.