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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

#351

Post by Camillo »

danans wrote: post #287
alasdair_ wrote: post #82

Does this mean that using Facebook to target tech company ads at women or an unrepresented minority group, or LGBT people would also be illegal, even if the goal is to reach out to these people to increase the diversity of the workplace?

No, because those are examples of protected classes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

Under US anti-discrimination laws, _any_ group identified by one of those characteristics is a protected group, with the notable exception of age. For example, laws against sexual discrimination protect men as well as women.

In practice, it is unlikely to be enforced for some groups.

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

#352

Post by mulmen »

jjeaff wrote: post #330
mulmen wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you can do that. What is not allowed is discriminating against employment seekers over the age of 40 . I believe this means it is actually ok to discriminate against employment seekers under the age of 40 and also to discriminate against people over the age of 40 for purposes other than employment, including selling diapers. In this case "ok" means "not made illegal by this law". What's important here though…

So would it also be illegal to advertise your job positions in teen Vogue but NOT in AARP magazine? It doesn't seem much different in this case. Bit methods target young people.

No of course not. Anyone can buy either magazine. Those two examples are completely different.

In the magazine case you are taking out an advertisement with no ability to discriminate. In the Facebook case there is a specific setting based on age to show job ads. Job seekers over the age of 40 are protected so this is discrimination against a protected class. The problem is not that young people were targeted, the problem is that those over 40 were not.

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

#353

Post by mulmen »

mc32 wrote: post #338
mulmen wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wrongdoi…

Facebook has a setting where you can enter the age of a person for a job posting and they even have a special site for job ads. It's not comparable. Craigslist does not market a platform that explicitly says "target prostitution ads at people who are looking for prostitutes". What Facebook is doing is far more explicit and they are clearly aware of what is happening because they built functionality to do it specifically.

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

#354

Post by randomdata »

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…

The ultimate goal of advertising is to target the people most likely to take an interest in what you are offering. What if it is simply that, statistically speaking, younger people are more likely to be looking for work or willing to change jobs?

I certainly don't have data in front of me, but it seems like a reasonable assumption in my mind. The youngest people just starting their careers are highly likely to be looking for work, naturally. Slightly older people often start looking to change jobs to move into higher paying roles. And by the time someone is moving beyond 40 they have reached the top of their career mobility and are happy to stay put at their current employer, plus an increasing unwillingness to uproot their family to move to a new town for a different job. There are always exceptions, of course.

If, for argument's sake, we assume this is true, I can completely understand why they would only want to target those under 40. Statistically, the ads shown to anyone else are just a plain waste of money.

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

#355

Post by notyourday »

emodendroket wrote: post #242
lovich wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you won't do however, is work insane hours to get something done because management changed scope or requirements at the last second but kept the deadline. The flavor of agile development that most shops seem to devolve to is one where management gets the part that they can update requirements based on new information, but deadlines are the same and costs need to constantly be cut. My personal belief is that our…

Call me cynical, but I am always surprised when people sincerely appeal to "agile/scrum values" of team autonomy or whatever to contest management diktats because, like... isn't it totally predictable that that part will be ignored whenever it is inconvenient?

Agile is cargo cult. Customers are not agile to your fuckups. Competitors are not agile to your "scope creep". You know what is the current most agile company in software? Microsoft. You know why? Because no matter how much it fucked up its business is so huge and so vast that it did not matter. It makes money. But even Microsoft is starting to feel the need to deliver as otherwise it is going to become IBM or Xerox.

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

#356

Post by QAPereo »

sidlls wrote: post #216
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…

Here's my take: in the world of software products speed of delivery trumps quality almost every time. Customers seem to be happy with a flaky, feature-lite products and pay for it . They'll pay to have something that kinda-sorta works now and pay to improve it on an extended basis in the B2B space. Development companies recognize this and structure themselves accordingly.

Customers are unhappy, but ignorant of the causes of their unhappiness.

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

#357

Post by notyourday »

rglullis wrote: post #167
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the greyhairs. I won't work the insane hours, but I'll still get more done. How? By knowing what to write and how to write it, so I don't have to fumble around trying things for nearly as long. By not writing the bugs that the 20-somethings write, which means I don't have to take the time to try to fix them. By not creating the shoddy designs that other create, which then have to be fixed. By having an ide…

I totally agree that measuring productivity by the amount of working hours is ridiculous. However, it is important to realize that you are not competing with the 20-somethings or the ones that are fresh out of college. You are competing with the ones that have already a good amount of experience (let's say 7-10 years) but are still in the beginning of their careers. If they are minimally talented, they will probably…

> I totally agree that measuring productivity by the amount of working hours is ridiculous.

The alternative is P&L and boy grey beards don't want P&L based measurements

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

#358

Post by lotyrin »

user5994461 wrote: post #283
lotyrin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still doesn't work. I've done clandestine work over weekends to speed up an application, then as part of shipping it also add a split test with half the audience having a delay similar to what was in place before I fixed the problem and brought that to the table with the "business" guys, and everyone nodded their head "wow" but every sprint after that was just full of new features.

I hope you got the lesson. Please stop working over the week ends for free. You are devaluing yourself and you are devaluing all the developers who don't want to ruin their week end at work.

I obviously didn't bring to the demonstration that I had volunteered the time, it suited my point to make it seem like it was something easy I could do as an aside... Problem is, they don't care about $ either, they care about what makes them look good, what makes their boss look good, what the sales guys are bugging them about, and it's features and visual polish and never quality or performance.

I had to break it down to one of them "Listen, we've seen that the site being faster gets us X% more conversions, if the site was down, or if the site was ugly X% of the time and cost us those conversions, you'd be breathing down my neck to fix it, why is this any different...?" reply after a few seconds of thought "You're right, but you'll never convince Leadership"

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

#359

Post by notyourday »

btilly wrote: post #190
exelius wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not attacking you here (and in fact I agree with you), but from a manager's perspective, I need one guy like you to design it in an architecture modeling tool and 8 young code monkeys to do all the boring work of building and testing it. You can do the code reviews to make sure they don't do stupid shit. The thought is that a team of greyhairs never ships anything, and a team of youngsters ships garbage. But it's…

I STRONGLY disagree. My experience is that programmers who become "architects" and are only responsible for design and code review tend to go downhill in their skills. It SEEMS like an efficient way to use experienced people, but it is actually an anti-pattern. Their tendency is to develop ideas that sound good but don't work well in practice, and there is no direct way to correct the mistake. (Any time it doesn't wo…

1. All of you are overhead.

2. Customer is the profit.

3. Now how do I get (2) to be higher than (1) before we run out of money?

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

#360

Post by Balgair »

user5994461 wrote: post #308
nhebb wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people in their 50's don't need to work. I must travel in lowly circles.

I suppose the distribution is extreme on both sides. Either you accumulated assets from early on and you're golden, or you're still struggling with rent and no pension in sight.

Um, what?

Like, cashflow at 50 with 3 kids is important.

Yeah, you've saved for retirement at ~65ish, but you have 2 kids in college with one on the way up, plus a mortgage, plus just regular life stuff. That's not an unreasonable scenario at all.

Like, do you live in a first world nation? Honestly, the paradigm changes a lot in the 3rd world and your confusion would be more appropriate in Chad or something.

(In Chad, average age of first birth is 18, so you'd reasonably be a grand parent by 50, plus cost of living is very low)

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