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Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

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Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#351

Post by dvtrn »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #133
dvtrn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Overqualified" has got to be the softest insult you can throw at a job seeker. It ostensibly says "we aren't secure in ourselves as employers to challenge our workers to produce great work, nor do we value original thought, so we'd rather hire drones that don't rattle the cage".

I guess you could hire an overqualified employee as a favor, because he really seems to need the job. He will be happy for a few months until he finds something better. It's up to you.

Every employee will be happy until they find something better, no? I mean I guess sure one could make a valid rebuttal that "overqualified" people are probably working on less borrowed time, if we take the metaphor all the way to the end of the line, right?

But I guess where I'm finding myself endlessly perplexed is the default assumption you're describing (and I'll gladly offer a concession to), versus the alternative of overqualified employees being seen as potential force multipliers for increasing productivity by allowing them to use their additional qualifications via some kind of tract towards management or specialized role? Even if it's on a small team?

Bob is overqualified for X, yet exceptional at Y. X+Y just happens to be a thing the team could possibly benefit from, helping the company as a whole. Maybe we should think about hiring Bob and grooming him to take ownership of X+Y and stewarding the rest of the team, helping them learn and become masters of X+Y in due time.

Does that make sense?

Hopefully the phrasing isn't too god awful there, coffee hasn't hit the lower brain yet :P

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#352

Post by rhizome »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #260
agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

It is really ironic that an industry focused on engineering can act in such an irrational manner. Long hours in the office chair is only a measurement of management’s failure to pay attention to the metrics that matter. Strongly preferring less experienced devs because they can work longer (which they need to, partially to compensate for their lack of experience), is both tragic and comical. It’s likely the pay is lo…

You ever play the video game "World of Goo?" That's my image of what shortsighted engineering can get you.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A_JfkzPwww

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#353

Post by ASalazarMX »

dvtrn wrote: post #351
ASalazarMX wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you could hire an overqualified employee as a favor, because he really seems to need the job. He will be happy for a few months until he finds something better. It's up to you.

Every employee will be happy until they find something better, no? I mean I guess sure one could make a valid rebuttal that "overqualified" people are probably working on less borrowed time, if we take the metaphor all the way to the end of the line, right? But I guess where I'm finding myself endlessly perplexed is the default assumption you're describing (and I'll gladly offer a concession to), versus the alternati…

I had the luck of being overqualified for my first job, straight out of college. I did X (CAD), but I chose my career because I wanted to be a developer. I did Y (sysadmin) because I showed my employer that I could do more. For half a year I did X+Y for the salary of X because I was young, optimistic and eager to please... until they hired a real sysadmin because surely he could do Y better than someone who does X and Y on the side.

From this I learned that being overqualified is a risky proposition. Even if your team appreciates the added value, your company might have other plans. I believe it's better to tighten your belt and wait for a more suitable opportunity than risk hurting your career growth.

BTW, your phrasing is perfectly fine. Try to read mine.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#354

Post by wonton2 »

eksemplar wrote: post #307
agrippanux wrote: post #156

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last…

I prefer hiring people in their 30ies. It’s the perfect mix of being old enough to be practical and patient and young enough to still be cheap. The cheap bit comes from being in the Danish public sector where seniority gives automatic pay increases that you can’t legally turn down, so there is that. I do wonder why people wouldn’t hire older programmers or engineers though. A lot of them are still extremely nerdy abo…

I think in Scandinavia it is different because we actually have laws saying you cannot force people to work the extreme amounts of overtime that they do in USA or in China. So older devs could be using the time they have more efficiently. My experience is also that older devs are very sought after. It could also have something to do with the shortage of developers here though.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#355

Post by agotterer »

aianus wrote: post #279
reaperducer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>50-year-olds have decades of savings and stock market and real-estate appreciation to fall back on if they find themselves unemployed. That's a lovely stereotype, but far from the truth; which is why so many people are working into their 70's these days and why reverse mortgages are on the rise. There was an article in the newspaper (You can Google what that is) recently that noted that more than half of Americans h…

> Somehow they think they're the only generation that's ever been through hard times. Not sure how you inferred this from my comment. My parents went through much harder times when they were my age. However, unemployment would be a trivial inconvenience for them now at 50. They’d probably just retire and not bother looking for another full time gig. I don’t really know any 26-year-olds who could say the same. Edit: I…

Net worth and savings are not the same thing. But let’s pretend for a second it was and a 55 year old was to lose his/her job and never have another source of income. That means the $150k would have to last 20+ years on average, which is $7500 a year to live on. But now let’s stop pretending and realize that net worth includes the value of assets, like cars and houses. So the amount to live on is even less money unless they sell all their assets. We are also assuming the house, car, and credit cards are paid off and there aren’t monthly debt obligations.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#356

Post by vageli »

somebodynew wrote: post #327
imbur wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going out of your way to recruit and have older applicants apply is not discrimination as long as you treat all applicants equally once they apply.

Is there some kind of asymmetry that prevents this logic from being applied with "older" replaced by other inherent physical attributes like race, or do you think that wouldn't be discrimination either?

Maybe the fact that everyone becomes old, whereas with other protected classes, everyone does not eventually gain membership into that class. So society as a whole is more sympathetic to discrimination that favors the older maybe because we can see ourselves in their shoes.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#357

Post by ryanwaggoner »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #319
jiggliemon wrote: post #229

The joke is really on the employer using Facebook ads to target a younger candidate pool. Youngsters don’t use Facebook. And if a young dev is using Facebook - they’re certainly using an ad-blocker. If they’re not using an ad blocker on Facebook, do you even want to hire them? Seems like if you wanted to attract a pool of young candidates now days, you’d target the parents of the said youngsters. The ones with no app…

As someone who runs ads on Facebook and other platforms and has a lot of devs who respond, this isn’t true. Not only do devs not all block ads (and it’s kind of offensive to imply that only the good ones do), they even click on ads!

Yeah, just looked it up. There are over 50 million active users on Facebook between the ages of 25 and 34. In the US alone.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#358

Post by mgkimsal »

philipov wrote: post #224
cannonedhamster wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good managers can measure effectiveness. The problem is it's hard to quantify to higher ups, and even when you do quantify the data, it never beats the sales guy drinking with the boss and knowing the boss's taste in wo/men.

I think that measurement implies a quantity being measured, so it sounds like we agree on the main point. Managers can form opinions about who is effective, but the silly quantities they come up with don't end up being useful, because "mistakes avoided" isn't an observable[0]. You can't count events that didn't happen, yet such hypothetical suppositions are crucial to appreciating the benefits of experience. 0: https…

Thanks - I've had that notion for a long time, but could never put it as succinctly. "You can't count events that didn't happen."

Had a lowball offer from a company once - had some friends working there. I could see from some earlier code that some really basic web knowledge was being overlooked. I won't go in to details, but... this was something I'd pointed out to one of the managers there (met at a local meetup). Fixing it then would have taken about 2-3 hours, scanning all the code to ensure it was in sync. Instead, the problem spread as they grew, and it's harder to fix when there are dozens of staff and thousands of files in use vs 5 staff and a dozen files. It became a 'this has to be fixed in order to close mega-deal X integration with company Y', and it took multiple devs several weeks of full-on effort to rectify everything.

How do you quantify that? "Please, take my advice, doing this 4 hours of work now now will save you >$50k and weeks of opportunity cost in 4 years". Generally people don't seem to care.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#359

Post by rhizome »

crdoconnor wrote: post #207
m12k wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the real value in recent grads (from a startup perspective) is that they're young and naive enough to work long hours based on 'team spirit' and the dream of 'making an impact' rather than silly old ideas like earning a real salary or a getting a big enough amount of equity to matter. And they usually don't have families to keep them from working long hours either. They'll drink whatever kool-aid the startup…

None of that actually provides real value though. There's zero point to overworking programmers - that's how you get crap. I think it's probably just VC bias driven by the number of unicorns which had young founders (VCs aren't after 'moderately successful startups', where founders tend to be older, they're after wildly successful unicorns). Those young founders hire "people like themselves" which naturally means peo…

VCs also want people who "disrupt" like Facebook has disrupted personal information and data, or Uber and driverless cars. Older people have to be evil (subject to opinion) to start a company to do that, but younger people see Zuck's $$ without knowing where it comes from and want the same thing. They can modify their ethics if necessary, and it only happens bit by bit, which makes it easier.

Re: Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

#360

Post by nunya213 »

geebee wrote: post #341
nunya213 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to be career suicide. You are turning down countless promotion opportunities and insane amounts of compensation. All so what, you can continue coding day to day? Seems absurd, code at home as your hobby if it means that much to you. As an individual contributor your value to any company is limited no matter your skill. At a certain point the company is going to ask, is your compensation worth the value you add?…

That's a fine thesis, though I do think that software is one of those areas where a maker can under some circumstances, potentially have a vastly more powerful impact on an organization than a manager. Opportunities are fewer and the competition level is high, though. To really harness this, you probably have to either become a founder who writes an early version of a product (very difficult), or alternatively advanc…

Well naturally everyone on Hacker News assumes they are a 10x dev, are gods gift to programming and will be the next Jeff Dean but that's simply not reality.
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