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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

#671
post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The tyranny of low expectations: "Oh, it broke and I have to start over? Well, computers are like that, right?"

> 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

Yea, I was going to say - do customers expect flaky products, and companies have structured themselves accordingly? Or have companies produced flaky products, thereby getting users accustomed to paying for flaky products with promises of "we'll fix it in the next version," thus allowing companies to produce ever flakier products? Chicken and egg question I guess.

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

#673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may be "reasons", but are they ethical? I'd like an example of such a reason, if you have one.

Older people might be closer to having a family, which means less productivity, high cost (parental leave is very expensive*), and also in areas like SF or mountain view might have high turn-over rate because of the expensiveness of the city, whereas younger people can cram into a room for a decade until that happens. Also many corporate benefits like booze, free food and all that might not have the same premium for…

> There is always the wildcard of 'culture fit'.

Which is the universal way to discriminate against others based on race, gender, country of origin ...

all "technically" illegal in the US. (under Trump, nothing is "illegal" )

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

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To a business they see software/engineers as a expense. Anecdotally, this is one of the first things I try to gauge at a prospective employer. "Are their development teams seen as cost centers, or profit centers?" If the company works with technology a lot and doesn't see technology as being particularly important to its bottom line, that's usually a bad sign. Also, discussions with C-levels tend to be pretty one-di…

>"Are their development teams seen as cost centers, or profit centers?" It's not a matter of opinion, but what the term means. They are cost centers unless they are closing sales (or being billed for about 3x what they cost, which is still way less than sales people will generate, being closer to 10x+ cost). Best thing any employee can do is find out how their company actually makes money and understand how they alig…

How can a software developer fight against this salary limitation?

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

#675
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you explain why using microservoces is over engineering? Is it because it’s a relatively new approach? Im getting involved in a new project that is using microservices and a new framework...

Because like any design pattern microservices should be used to address a specific problem. Martin Fowler describes that particular design pattern here in great detail: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html Microservices however unfortunately have become a fashionable cure-all that's applied indiscriminately to software projects of all sizes, ages and purposes. Hardly anyone seems to be asking anymore…

What about flow-based programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-based_programming)? How would you argue (or not argue) that differs from microservices? When would you advocate for a monolith first vs building one tool that does one thing and does it well and then pipes its output into another tool?

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

#676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, that the product is 10% better/more stable/whatever frequently does not translate into even a 10% increase in sales. So it's not worth it (from the business' perspective) to invest in that quality. Here is the core of the problem, and it's more of an incompatibility of goals than errors of one of the parties. Businesses want to make money. They usually don't give a flying fuck about what their product is or d…

The value the product actually provides to users is the viral coefficient. Lots of companies value growth. Find one.

Growth has been completely gamed already. Just look at most startups.

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

#677
post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to use LOCs to see at a glance the size of a project. A more complex business logic usually takes more LOCs to write it down. And I bet there is a strong correlation between LOCs and hours worked on a project which would make LOCs a good approximation of work done. Actually I should research it. Should be not too hard to find all the tickets for projects and compare the time logged to LOCs.

1) There is no fixed correlation between LOCs and business logic complexity. 2) there is actually an inverse correlation between LOCs and amount of work done. When I'm most productive I actually decrease the LOCs.

1) You tell me that if you take some fixed business logic and add some exceptions to it (make it more complex) you wont need more LOC's to address this added complexity? I don't believe you.

2) You can't be productive having 0 LOCs. So 0 LOCs = 0 productivity. n>0 LOCs = (presumable) some productivity. I would say we have a trend.

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

#678

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…

Your suffering from survivorship bias, and you also seem to be talking from the perspective of a colleauge at the same level or near enough as the new employee.

Managers and above want people who dont really know their rights, have the energy and willingness to just do the job.

They also assume that younger people have better skill sets.

All things equal, younger people cost less.

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

#679
It's probably too late to contribute meaningfully to this conversation. But look at the tone of many of these comments. So many "know it alls." So many strong opinions about the right way to hire and work with developers. Owners and execs often don't want to deal with the jaded baggage that comes with experience. Many owners/execs want to have a person integrate with the existing work flows rather than having to repeatedly justify a workflow to a person who thinks he or she knows a better way to do things. Not saying it's right or wrong, it just is. It also probably violates the uniform guidelines on employee selection.

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

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older people might be closer to having a family, which means less productivity, high cost (parental leave is very expensive*), and also in areas like SF or mountain view might have high turn-over rate because of the expensiveness of the city, whereas younger people can cram into a room for a decade until that happens. Also many corporate benefits like booze, free food and all that might not have the same premium for…

> There is always the wildcard of 'culture fit'. Which is the universal way to discriminate against others based on race, gender, country of origin ... all "technically" illegal in the US. (under Trump, nothing is "illegal" )

If your only beef is that its illegal, what an easy problem to solve!
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