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Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

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Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#331

Post by seanmcdirmid »

combatentropy wrote: post #66

It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me? I have heard that companies like recent grads because they are (1) more malleable and (2) can be paid less. But neither of those reasons seem to me strong enough. I'm talking completely about the company's own interests. Let's address the first reason: malleability. A recent grad presumably will adopt the co…

Tech is especially bad, but other fields don’t necessarily reward gray beards. Many industries have career path pyramids that get much narrower as they go up and no tolerance for not advancing. The military officer corps for one....

Anyways, yes, that grey haired architect probably knows what they are doing, but how many architects didn’t survive to that point?

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#332

Post by emodendroket »

dreamfactored wrote: post #311
emodendroket wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more like a cult, where it's supposed to solve all your problems and any problem you identify with it just proves you aren't doing it right.

I've been lucky enough to be on projects where it's done well (not scrum) and would never go back after working that way.

I've experienced "no methodology; just people kind of describing what they want and you make it up as you go along" and Scrum and I prefer the former, but I suppose it's possible that someone out there is doing Agile in a way that is better than the one I learned in a bunch of excruciatingly boring training sessions from consultants.

e: Actually I did Kanban too and that was OK, but that is a lot closer to the "no methodology" thing and anyway doesn't involve you making decisions like "oh, can't start working on that, because the sprint is almost over."

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#333

Post by jjeaff »

tmh79 wrote: post #45
Karunamon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would happen in the physical world with, say, a classified ad in a newspaper? It's on the poster of the ad to follow the law, not the paper, is it not?

If the newspaper was somehow able to be physically manifested by or perceived only by white people, or people under 30, or in some way that excluded people of a protected class from ever seeing it if they knew about it and wanted to, then the newspaper should definitely be liable, as should the advertiser. The material difference between newspapers and facebook is that anyone is allowed to buy a newspaper, but someon…

You can set your age to whatever you want on Facebook.

Seems no different than advertising a job in young skewing magazines vs targeting older demos.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#334

Post by ImSkeptical »

pcwalton wrote: post #251
ImSkeptical wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really understood this. Some restaurants, or clothing stores, have wait staff that are all women. In a massage place you can pick the gender of your masseuse - so surely a massage place that was already well staffed with one gender would be justified in gender discrimination. If I'm hiring a baby sitter for my daughter, I'm not going to hire a male person, and I'm sure there are many similar examples. I ge…

The article talks about Verizon, Amazon, Goldman, Target, and Facebook, none of which are known for massage therapy or babysitting.

I intended my comment to be on the topic of the thread I replied to, and not the subject of the article. I meant that I don't really understand when you can and can't discriminate based on things.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#335

Post by megaman22 »

tracker1 wrote: post #234
javajosh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! Over time I've become more and more aware (and proud) of the things I left out. As a young programmer, I would be far more proud of the things I included. The shipped project is one branch of an extremely large tree of possibilities which a younger, less experienced programmer would have taken a very long time to explore and discard (which I know for certain because I was that programmer).

It's weird how that works... I try to avoid unneeded complexity as much as possible for as long as possible... and when I do need complexity, I try to make it as easy to use as possible, so that it's less in your face on reuse. I'm consistently amazed at how much of a pain in the ass things tend to get when people try to build solutions in their early 20's, vs 30's and now in my 40's. Not to mention how much my viewp…

I rewrote a 900 line class today by writing one generic function that encapsulated a pile of common logic that the monstrosity had copied and pasted with slight changes over, and over, and over, and over, ad nauseum, and wound up with less than 100 lines of code. What a glorious day.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#336

Post by Consultant32452 »

combatentropy wrote: post #66

It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me? I have heard that companies like recent grads because they are (1) more malleable and (2) can be paid less. But neither of those reasons seem to me strong enough. I'm talking completely about the company's own interests. Let's address the first reason: malleability. A recent grad presumably will adopt the co…

>It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more experience. Can someone explain it to me?

It's worth considering that, statistically, the discrimination might be justified. Of course the only way to know for sure is to get rid of age discrimination laws and see what happens to the market. Companies bias "incorrectly" at their own peril, to be outcompeted by companies without said bias.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#337

Post by wyager »

QuackingJimbo wrote: post #256
ryandrake wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic of your rant is something that it took me forever to accept as a software engineer. Nobody cares about quality. Your method is refactored to be super-fast and have no branches? Nobody cares. Elegant, re-usable architecture? Nobody cares. You've optimized an inner loop in assembly and increased speed by 30%? Nobody cares. Made it to zero compiler warnings? Nobody cares. No known crashers left in the bug trac…

> There are a few places where this is not true Where?

Shops that use strongly-typed functional languages are, in my experience, a good bet. They usually made that choice because they have an unusually compelling need to write correct code. Aerospace also has a few sub-industries where correctness is priority #1 (like commercial autopilot software).

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#338

Post by mc32 »

mulmen wrote: post #321
mc32 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand they tend to allow "illegal" prostitution ads... so it's not like they pursue illegal postings in general -or postings which allow the violation of the law. And I generally agree. The authorities should be going after the perpetrators, not the neutral platform.

Is the platform neutral if this is illegal discrimination and they include the ability to do that illegal discrimination in their value proposition?

Both (Craigslist prostitution ads and age specific jobs ads on Facebook) are publishing something which is illegal.

The party which should be pursued is the one posting the post which goes contrary to law.

I'm ok if FB or CL proactively root out those posts, but I'm not so sure I see it as their responsibility to do. It's good oversight but still I feel the people who should be punished are the agents of the wrongdoing.

So, no, I don't see them as an accessory to the crime.

That said, the companies/individuals doing the actual discrimination and or illegal solicitation should face the consequences of their actions. In this case, I'm not condoning companies discriminating on the basis of age.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#339

Post by thedatamonger »

At least there is cubeworld. That guy won't release it till it's perfect :) ... Seriously thou, there should be someone who's job it is is to put these things into perspective to the suits. bad design does cost money. engineers aren't MBA's (usually) and are bad at speaking their language (usually). And the "we're young therefore we know everything about technology" stereotype needs to go. The world is complicated, it can't be boiled down to buzzwords or stereotypes.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#340

Post by phil248 »

myf01d wrote: post #290

if you're 35 yo in tech industry and not owning a small business, you're almost done unless you have good connections. That's how tech works, nobody just wants to admit that. tech workers are the diggers of their own graves.

I hear this a lot, but I don't see it. A lot of people move in to management roles, but others just keep writing code.

I also don't see why "owning a small business" is a virtue in and of itself. Owning a profitable company that doesn't consume my every waking hour would be great. But that's the exception.

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