Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads • Hacker News Board

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

#441

Post by gaius » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:46 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #212

ryanmarsh wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If billions of computers become vulnerable to malicious actors and a few hundred or thousand people suffer dramatic personal damages, well that's a nice and quiet problem which will be quickly forgotten in the 24-hour news cycle. This. I do development coaching and training. I’m totally burned out because my job doesn’t matter. These companies don’t care. They hire me to “increase code quality” but that ends up being…

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…

The industry does itself no favours by regularly rejecting techniques to improve software quality tho'. We could all be writing rock solid Ada, but programmers said no, we prefer JavaScript, hell we'll even try to use it on the server...

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

#442

Post by jventura » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:51 AM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #390

eric_b wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and this is a hard lesson to learn. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Software should really only be measured by the value it provides. If a terribly buggy piece of poorly written code still saves hundreds of man hours a week, it's a win. (Unit tests be damned) If that big ball of mud that's using 20 year old technology still prints a billion dollars a year - that's a win. (Microservic…

This is what I call the Mediocre Mercenary Mentality, this idea that "as long as we can make money off of it, it's good enough". This mentality is the reason why sometimes -- but not always! -- my phone won't play music in my car until I restart the _car_. This mentality is why game development companies get away with charging full price for unfinished, bug-ridden games with crippled features and missing content. Thi…

> This mentality is the reason why...

The way I see the post you're replying to is either you learn to cope with these things or you'll burn out faster.

Since there's no accountability, if you want to do things the right way, you'll have to do it by yourself and be prepared to swim against the tide..

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

#443

Post by nurettin » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:54 AM UTC

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 experience with an elderly coder in his mid 50s. He was a decent delphi and .net coder, he was a decent human being, but he had health problems. Most of the week he had hospital appointments. He required nose surgery. His blood levels were low. He needed vitamin d and iron supplements and during our four month acquintance, he never got any better. He constantly forgot things and he feared his lack of iron had caused a permanent damage to his brain. He was a diabetic which gave him license to be more hot headed and harder to persuade. He had accumulated a lot of debts which gave him license to be more hectic and disturbed. Overall, his long life and experience did not outweigh his negative properties.

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

#444

Post by dorfsmay » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:54 AM UTC

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…

Insecure middle managers.

They know seasoned workers are not going to put up with their shit and will make them look bad, possibly make higher management wanting to replace them, possibly with the season worker.

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

#445

Post by hliyan » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:54 AM UTC

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'm almost 40, in the tech industry, own zero small businesses and am doing very well for myself. You just need to keep your skills up to date rather than resting on your laurels, and it works out.

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

#446

Post by woolvalley » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:55 AM UTC

CodeMage wrote: post #390

eric_b wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, and this is a hard lesson to learn. But I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Software should really only be measured by the value it provides. If a terribly buggy piece of poorly written code still saves hundreds of man hours a week, it's a win. (Unit tests be damned) If that big ball of mud that's using 20 year old technology still prints a billion dollars a year - that's a win. (Microservic…

This is what I call the Mediocre Mercenary Mentality, this idea that "as long as we can make money off of it, it's good enough". This mentality is the reason why sometimes -- but not always! -- my phone won't play music in my car until I restart the _car_. This mentality is why game development companies get away with charging full price for unfinished, bug-ridden games with crippled features and missing content. Thi…

I have this saying that most software is tent software. Nothing wrong with tents, music festivals are built on tents for example. They are cheap, quick to put up and put down and can do a lot!

You just have realize that most software buildings are tents, and there are a few buildings that you can use out there.

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

#447

Post by SpEd3Y » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:57 AM UTC

dpc59 wrote: post #408

CodeMage wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I call the Mediocre Mercenary Mentality, this idea that "as long as we can make money off of it, it's good enough". This mentality is the reason why sometimes -- but not always! -- my phone won't play music in my car until I restart the _car_. This mentality is why game development companies get away with charging full price for unfinished, bug-ridden games with crippled features and missing content. Thi…

We have an economic system where we reward maximizing short term financial gain. As long as that doesn't change companies will try to sell the crappiest shit they can sell you for the most money.

I think this is more than just the economic system. If you look at people in general, we live in the age of instant gratification.

We want everything fast! Nobody is willing to put in the work and get the reward after a longer period of time... No! We want results now! We don't want to wait for the food to be properly cooked, we want it now, so we go for fast food. We don't want to put in 1 year of work to learn something new so we can feel that we achieved something, we want it now, so we play a game where we can 'win' in 30 minutes. We don't want to build a relationship and eventually end up being intimate, we want it now, so we go for 'one night stands'.

Then you ask yourself... is it weird that the economic system works the same? That the software industry works the same? :/

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

#448

Post by bdcravens » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:58 AM UTC

k3liutZu wrote: post #439

bdcravens wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they mean slow development. Rather, overall rate - all other things equal, someone who insists on no more than a 40 hour week will accomplish less than someone willing to work 60-80 based on whatever metric you use (KLOC, story points, etc)

I think his argument still applies to an "overall" metric.

Are you saying the 40 hour developer has a lower code quality than the 80 hour developer?

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

#449

Post by gnopgnip » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 7:59 AM UTC

MilnerRoute wrote: post #191

I want to believe these companies don't know it's illegal to discriminate based on age. Because the alternative is that they're intentionally discriminating -- and thinking they won't get caught, because the ads are only appearing on Facebook. But any government agency that's investigating this can obviously just to ask Facebook for the company's ad buys, and there's an irrefutable paper trail. (It can't be that hard…

It is illegal to discriminate based on age in hiring practices. It is not illegal to discriminate in advertising, or specifically target spending for advertising.

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

#450

Post by bodegajed » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 8:03 AM UTC

racer-v wrote: post #136

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…

There's a perception in computer programming that any experience outside of the specific language, library and toolkit being used on the project is irrelevant. Or worse, an impediment; "I don't want somebody with bad habits and instincts acquired from working on now-obsolete systems". Managers really believe a kid with 3 years JavaScript experience and 1 year of Vue is as good (or better) than a senior programmer wit…

Need someone's opinion on this since OP mentioned c++. If I take c++ as a specialty language would a companies be more willing to hire people in their 50-60's I know it's a difficult question to answer but I feel like c++ is a ageism proof skill much like Fortran or COBOL. Let's all find a solution to this problem as this topic always come up every month on HN. So which programming languages are "ageism proof"?