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

#491

Post by nurettin » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

michaelpinto wrote: post #460

nurettin wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I hate to tell you this but you're looking in the mirror at your future self (and your peers) as coding isn't usually in most cases a healthy lifestyle choice.

That may be true, but it leaves me with the frustration of having no other choice as I haven't developed interest on any other subject that would possibly give me a more healthy lifestyle. Perhaps being rich with no worries in the world would help?

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

#492

Post by wellboy » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 9:59 AM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #461

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…

Do they care if a year down the road your maintenance costs increase fivefold? Have they seen the analysis which shows that initial development cost just makes a small fraction of the total cost and that fraction get smaller the longer software is in use? Do they care if a year down the road your TTM times increase tenfold? We know that the bad code slows us down. Why do we write it? Why do we write the code that slo…

No. When they have seen all the bugs, they will tell you to fix them and when you make a new feature they will tell you the same thing, just make it work, just ship it.

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

#493

Post by lmm » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:00 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…

> Let's address the first reason: malleability. A recent grad presumably will adopt the company's culture faster, complain less, and in general pick up things sooner. Well, the hardest, meanest coworkers I've ever had were late twenties, early thirties. I've worked with people in their sixties, and they're sweet people. Even the grumpy old sysadmin had only a thin layer of spikes. After just a few days I could see through most of it, and he was 10 times more helpful than my other sysadmins. Not only was he softer (at least deep down) but he was smarter, having done it for decades. Even when he met a new problem, his keenly developed taste made him more likely to choose something that would be more maintainable long term.

What if they're right on average, and your experience is the exception rather than the rule?

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

#494

Post by maltalex » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:01 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #484

maltalex wrote: post #481

The discussion here is interesting, but I haven't seen any psychological and sociological aspects of hiring mentioned yet. Not all hiring decisions are rational. First, there's a culture thing - when a company is composed out of 20 year olds, it's natural for them to prefer working with other young people who they can relate to. That 40 year old job applicant, the one with the kids and the years of experience in comp…

mold him into the employee you want him to be Exploit him or her with false promises. FTFY.

> Exploit him or her with false promises. FTFY.

Yeah, there's that too.

But let's not even go there and assume that everything is strictly aboveboard. Otherwise we'll derail the discussion, and I think that the cultural aspect is one worth discussing.

I really am talking about "molding him into the employee you want him to be" in terms of getting him to work the way you think is right. As opposed to hiring someone with different ideas than yours as to how to do the work he or she is supposed to to.

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

#495

Post by s3r3nity » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:05 AM UTC

maltalex wrote: post #481

The discussion here is interesting, but I haven't seen any psychological and sociological aspects of hiring mentioned yet. Not all hiring decisions are rational. First, there's a culture thing - when a company is composed out of 20 year olds, it's natural for them to prefer working with other young people who they can relate to. That 40 year old job applicant, the one with the kids and the years of experience in comp…

I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language, disabilities, etc etc.

I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems," rather than the cliche "would I want to grab a beer with this person?"

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

#496

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:14 AM UTC

SpEd3Y wrote: post #447

dpc59 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

I don't think the phenomenon you described, as some new thing specific to this age, is in any way real. If anything, the things you mention only reflect the new choices we have. Going over your individual examples:

> We don't want to wait for the food to be properly cooked, we want it now, so we go for fast food.

We go for fast food because it saves time. When I opt to order in instead of going out for lunch, or grab a burger from McDonald's en route, I do that because eating is mostly instrumental. I don't want to eat at that point, I have to, and the sooner I can fill myself up, the sooner I can get back to doing the things I actually care about.

Fast food, and food delivery services, allow people to choose to spend more time on other things, when those other things are more important to them. The same people will enjoy a finely cooked meal on a different occasion, when they prioritize it.

> 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.

Spending a year on learning something to just get a quick feeling of achievement is a very stupid way to go about it. Videogames are better for that. Learning is better for getting long-term feelings of achievement, and to actually gain knowledge/skills that you can use for something. And again, it's not something new - our generation wastes time on videogames, previous generations wasted time playing soccer, cards, darts, and doing tons of other quick-reward activities.

> 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'.

One-night stands exist for as long as humans are humans. Nothing fundamental changed, only the hookup methods evolved with population density and available communication tools.

--

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

Nah, they don't work the same. In them, the actors are not driven internally, they're driven externally. People write shitty software, or sell shitty products, not because of their need for instant gratification, but because of market pressures. A fast hack sold by your marketing team can be a difference between you getting $100M contract versus not getting it, or getting your product on the market first versus a week after your competitor. Market economy, because of all its efficiency, is what creates the culture of suck.

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

#497

Post by jldevezas » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:15 AM UTC

Consider me excluded. :-)

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

#498

Post by maltalex » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:16 AM UTC

s3r3nity wrote: post #495

maltalex wrote: post #481

The discussion here is interesting, but I haven't seen any psychological and sociological aspects of hiring mentioned yet. Not all hiring decisions are rational. First, there's a culture thing - when a company is composed out of 20 year olds, it's natural for them to prefer working with other young people who they can relate to. That 40 year old job applicant, the one with the kids and the years of experience in comp…

I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language, disabilities, etc etc. I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems," rather than the…

> I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language, disabilities, etc etc.

Well, yeah. Only it's not "implications", it's the reality of tech hiring. The hiring practices of many tech companies have been called racist, sexist and age-discriminatory (although I haven't heard anything with regard to disabilities). One of the first counter arguments for the accused company is "culture fit".

> I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems," rather than the cliche "would I want to grab a beer with this person?"

That's great in theory, but it doesn't hold water in practice. People are people. The "hacker culture" thing might work well if people work together via a mailing list, but if it's a bunch of people that spend many hours together in an office, then the social aspect play a bigger role I think.

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

#499

Post by daemin » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:17 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #392

user5994461 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pa…

Yep, part of the quality standard for medical devices is to have processes, and also processes to improve and change the processes. So theoretically there shouldn't be any doubt as what to do in a given circumstance when something fails, and that standards would rise as development matures. But in reality it's just a bunch of paperwork, and as far as the software is concerned, standard practices of unit and integration testing, code reviews, and strict compiler settings are more than adequate already.

Edit: It's all about documenting that those things have been done and signed off on, so keeping track of paperwork.

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

#500

Post by dorgo » Thu, Dec 21, 2017, 10:17 AM UTC

SpEd3Y wrote: post #447

dpc59 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 some…

You say it like is a bad thing. If I compare two service/products/relationships/experiences which are equal in all but one attribute: delivery time, guess which I will choose.. Delivery time is an important attribtue and reduces (subjective) risk of no delivery. And delivery time is an attribute which is measurable. In comparison it is hard to measure how bug free a peace of software is, or how healthy food is, or how successfull your relationship will be, or how good you can learn this new skill in a year.