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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

#391

Post by wadkar »

015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #67

I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the…

> as she said, "the type of people on the other side of the table from us are different than they used to be, and they don't want to be dealing with a bunch of 65-year-old white guys. So those aren't the type of people we're looking for." That's pretty much a direct quote.

Not to defend the quote, but I wonder how else would you characterize “non-diversity” in this context? Specifically, if their current workforce composition is indeed “bunch of 60 something old white males” then how else would you express your desire to be diverse without referring to the current reality?

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

#392

Post by adrianN »

user5994461 wrote: post #272
whatshisface wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My universal advice to graduating CS students is, "no matter what your current code quality/dev speed balance is, your boss will think you're polishing too much."

Second advice. If you want to pretend that quality matters, move to aerospace, finance, or any critical systems. Third advice. It's not enough to fix bug, everyone MUST know that you fixed that weird bug that customers were complaining about for years and noone could understand the cause.

> If you want to pretend that quality matters, move to aerospace, finance, or any critical systems.

The important word here is pretend. If the system is safety critical you'd think that quality matters. It doesn't. What matters is following the process laid out in ISO 26262 or whatever standard applies to your field. Whether or not that improves quality is not important (it does, but only a little). The important part is that you have reduced/no liability for accidents if you can prove that you did everything by the book.

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

#393

Post by lionelione43 »

harryh wrote: post #365
TheSmiddy wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At college career fairs you're selecting for people who are graduating with a relevant degree, there is no age requirements for attending college so a 55 year old who is just completing their bachelors could well be one of the people you recruit. Just because the environment you advertise in is inherently skewed young doesn't make it discrimination, explicitly preventing people of a certain age from seeing your ad is…

explicitly preventing people of a certain age from seeing your ad is. But that's not what "you" are doing. All these jobs are public. Every company in America has a jobs page that anyone of any age is free to look at. What you are doing is not paying money to force your ad in front of people in a certain age.

You bring up a good point. If you choose specifically to advertise to a specific demographic, can you be fined for NOT advertising to another? Is a company that puts a job offer ad in a men's or women's magazine breaking the law?

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

#394

Post by exelius »

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…

I mean; that’s fine. I wouldn’t want that job either — it’s why I got an MBA, got out of the tech side and now actually have power over hires/fires and product direction. But unless you’re directly bringing revenue in the door, you are a cost item to be cut. As soon as they can find someone cheaper, they will.

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

#395

Post by [deleted] »

wadkar wrote: post #391
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #67

I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has a big share of the search engine market. She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the…

> as she said, "the type of people on the other side of the table from us are different than they used to be, and they don't want to be dealing with a bunch of 65-year-old white guys. So those aren't the type of people we're looking for." That's pretty much a direct quote. Not to defend the quote, but I wonder how else would you characterize “non-diversity” in this context? Specifically, if their current workforce co…

[deleted]

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

#396

Post by c3534l »

tluyben2 wrote: post #387
c3534l wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically the stripper rents the stage, the club doesn't hire a stripper.

TIL

Yup. They're "independent contractors" for a variety of legal and tax reasons.

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

#397

Post by ForrestN »

It’s now perfectly clear that Facebook’s business is predicated on its ability to divide us up. This is already playing out destructively in more and more visible ways, but imagine all the invisible consequences of these categorizations.

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

#398

Post by itronitron »

lotyrin wrote: post #358
user5994461 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

There is an old Google paper where they talk about discovering that users returned more often if the search results list was 10 instead of 20, since the shorter list took marginally less time to load/render for the user. If your co-workers don't believe you then I am sure they would at least love the Google finding that minor performance improvements have a positive impact. They would then support improving performance in the app and brag about how much like Google they are.

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

#399

Post by a3n »

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…

Possibly the people hiring want similarly aged people to themselves, or the people hiring want to hire people of similar age to who they already have.

Or maybe they believe Zuckerberg when he said that younger people are smarter than older people.

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

#400

Post by itronitron »

leggomylibro wrote: post #76
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's a race to the bottom. You could pay more for better work that gets done more slowly (fewer hours as people have families, etc,) or you could pay less for worse work that gets done more quickly. Well, iOS11 needs to ship on its annual schedule, non-negotiable. And the SVP will really complain if I ask for more money this quarter. So, cheap it is. If a bridge falls down, it's really obvious and people die. If bill…

In my experience, worse work typically gets done a lot more slowly than good work.
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