New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It • Hacker News Board

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#71

Post by superfrank » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

xfitm3 wrote: post #53

scarface74 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If leetCode is what you have to do to compete in your market so be it. In the grand scheme of things, it would be hypocritical for me to criticize someone for spending hours upon hours on leetCode considering the amount of time I’ve spent on books about architecture, spent a year learning the ends and out of AWS, and the time I spent networking. Not to mention the fact that I will spend the next two year learning fro…

I think as our sector matures its more about emotional intelligence, and less about technical aptitude. I can’t help but think leetcode is a echo chamber. I personally disagree with this approach, I’ve met a few folks who think the CLI is useless and can be learned in a few days. But they score really well in algorithms. With today’s data privacy concerns and tough European regulations I don’t think this attitude is…

I get why companies want to use Leetcode for evaluation. It basically quantifies an applicant down to a number which makes hiring easier and more scalable. There's a lot less room for bias if every candidate can be boiled down to pass or fail by a single test.

That being said, I was on the hiring committee at my last job and personally, I found the best way to hire engineers is to just chat with them about previous projects. I'd usually run through one or two, "just confirming you can code" whiteboard questions and then ask them to tell me about a project they are proud of that they had a large part in. If you ask questions that dig into the project ("How did you do X?", "Why did you do Y?", "Now that it's over, what would you change?") you can usually get a pretty good idea of their skill level and knowledge as a developer as well as some great insights into their personality.

Obviously, that's much harder to scale and more subject to bias, but it worked for me.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#72

Post by quotemstr » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:01 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #52

> You’re in private mode. Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode. This is the first time I'm seeing this message and I hope this doesn't become a trend.

It's already a trend. The fault, IMHO, lies with browser vendors making it possible for sites to detect private browsing mode in the first place. That should be a privacy but and prioritized accordingly.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#73

Post by maxheadroom » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #39

pleasecalllater wrote: post #34

I still require to work in a company where my manager/boss/CTO know much more than me. I'm almost 40. It's really hard to work for a 20-something guy who has almost no experience and is happily making all the mistakes he could read in books about. Still, finding a job where my boss would know more is more and more problematic. When I was 33 I was rejected by a recruiter with "you know, here I have dozens of resumes o…

My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s. No one cares that I wrote C for DEC VAX and Stratus VOS mainframes in the late 90s or the systems I wrote with a combination of C++/COM and Vb6 in the early 2000s. I only go back 10 years. In fact, I negotiated not to be a team lead at my current job.

>My resume has always been one page. I hate looking over 3 page resumes. I don’t care what you did in the 90s.

This is very culture specific.

Example: Like you, I usually keep a revolving ~10 years history on my CV. As the years progress, I drop anything > 10 years, as it's really no longer relevant.

Anyways, I was pointedly asked one time during an interview, recently, for a company in a different country, "Where's the rest of your work history since university?"

That was almost 20 years ago, now. You have any idea just how long my CV would be, now, with all of that information?

/tableflip.gif

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#74

Post by outlace » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

If 70 year olds really are less productive software engineers than single Red Bull-fueled 22 year olds (on average), and you thus end up hiring less 70 year olds, is that really discrimination? I get the article has stories from older people that seem to suggest they are well-qualified for the job and literally just their age number seems to lose them the job, which of course would be discriminatory.

But the law suits of companies based on statistical analyses of the number of older people in the company made it seem like a company can be sued for not having an expected distribution of ages but it’s not clear what assumptions are baked into these analyses (ie is it assumed a priori that all ages are equally productive). Certainly older people are more productive in certain contexts than others (eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility).

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#75

Post by dba7dba » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:04 PM UTC

You know what I find really ironic?

The successes of startups in Silicon Valley really drove up the compensation of programmers. But these same startups have founders/managers who openly state they prefer younger programmers, and direct their HR/recruiters to act accordingly. And now, we have whole classes of programmers who can't get a job at all.

It's pretty obvious no recruiter lost his/her job for passing on resumes of younger programmers.

Also, the SV is really the bastion of anti discrimination. Which is great. But they replaced it with something else, ageism.

Just my 2 cents.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#76

Post by wellpast » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

I love this. I think evaluating/interviewing is hard, should be much more about experience and past projects but so what if the industry has got it wrong, so what you have to study a little to get the job? The world is what it is. I think criticizing this from a ‘we could do better as an industry’ perspective is productive but from a personal perspective — today — what is going to get you hired is playing the game as it is.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#77

Post by manfredo » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

freyr wrote: post #54

Can someone tell me where the older software engineers in the Bay Area have gone? I recently moved into the software industry (after years in the telecom industry), and the lack of older software engineers is disconcerting in a Soylent Green type of way. I guess some have moved into management, and others have made enough money to retire, or they've moved somewhere with better value than the Bay Area. They're likely…

Many of them are still there. It's important to highlight the fact that CS graduation rates have been increasing in popularity overall, so the age distribution is going to skew younger even absent any discrimination. There's oscillations but the overall trend is upward [1]. I've met plenty of developers in their 40s and a few in their 50s at "hip" companies in San Francisco.

Another factor is that high compensation means people can afford to retire earlier. I know a couple people that saved up a couple million, and then moved to "flyover" states with low CoL to live off passive income. It's often achievable by 40s or 50s depending on how much money is spent on kids. Especially if you have one or zero children it's within reach.

1. https://i0.wp.com/d24fkeqntp1r7r.cloudfront.net/wp-content/u... (separate male/female isn't part of the point I'm trying to make, this is just the graph I had on hand)

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#78

Post by o10449366 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

New graduates are even more out of touch. In what other industry can you graduate with a bachelors (or have no degree at all) and obtain a six figure job in return for a few weeks of studying?

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#79

Post by scarejunba » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #52

> You’re in private mode. Log in or create a free New York Times account to continue reading in private mode. This is the first time I'm seeing this message and I hope this doesn't become a trend.

I hope it does. It helps ensure that content creators are rewarded for creation.

Re: New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

#80

Post by b212 » Sat, Jun 08, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

mykowebhn wrote: post #33

I'm 48, on the West Coast, and recently finished interviewing, receiving multiple offers. I did 250 Leetcode problems, practiced System Design, and Behavioral. In the end, I found doing 250 Leetcode was probably overkill, but it definitely helped. This will probably get me severely down-voted, and I do understand the antipathy toward having to Leetcode, but the way I see it is that I'm really lucky. I get to sit on m…

What do you mean by "I did 250 Leetcode"? You solved 250 problems there?