Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

blogs.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 106 posts

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#71

Post by DanBC »

amyjess wrote: post #62
jcadam wrote: post #13

I'm in my mid-30s, grew up tinkering/programming/etc., but I have to admit I just don't get social media. But then I'm not a very sociable person in general. My wife (not a techie), however, is all over facebook/pinterest/twitter/etc. doing God knows what while I'm coding all day. How I learned of the existence of Pinterest: Me: "Where did you say you posted that thing?" Wife (annoyed): "Pinterest" "Your what?" "Pint…

Part of that is just gender. Pinterest is aimed almost exclusively at women. You haven't heard of it because you're a dude and it's not marketed to you or your friends. Hell, I'm enough of a tomboy that I don't really use it. I looked at it a year and a half ago when I first started transitioning to female because I heard that girls are supposed to like it, and I never got into it because it was all about fashion and…

Pinterest is fantastic at what it does, which is an online pinboard of stuff you like around a theme.

The obvious use case is wedding planning. One board each for dresses, rings, locations, cakes, table decorations, invites, etc etc. or for redecorating a room - it's brilliant for that kind of stuff.

(I say brilliant, and I'm a Pinterest fan but the site has some user-hostile behaviours on mobile so I ise it a lot less often than I used to.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#72

Post by jldugger »

CydeWeys wrote: post #51
Toast_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that even be a metric?

Editing a wiki is the kind of experience that is much more valuable to employers than social networking or most common online activities for most occupations, with the exception of marketing/PR-specific roles. Collaborative work on a wiki involves teamwork, research, editing, effective communication, and a whole host of other skills that are useful in a business setting. Blabbing to your friends on Facebook or Twitte…

Plus, people who edit Wikipedia are less likely to put too much faith in it when doing research.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#73

Post by walshemj »

raverbashing wrote: post #25
walshemj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so do you think Bill Gates and Woz would qualify :-)

Neither Woz nor Bill Gates used Agile and TDD in their developments Neither knows what "the market" demands, no Ruby, no JS, no Java, etc. Maybe they know C, Fortran or 6502/8080 Assembly (recruiter rolls eyes) So, "thanks for your time and we'll contact you"

I recently called up a recruiter who was looking for a C++ developer to port some Fortran CFD code - realy just for a laugh.

Though why the cant they give a developer a copy of McCracken and tell them to learn the language - which was what I did when I left school

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#74

Post by jldugger »

Toast_ wrote: post #38
jldugger wrote: post #21

Digital natives do not exist in numbers you think. Fewer than 1 percent of entering freshmen have ever edited a wiki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hghekXykt-k&feature=youtu.be... EDIT: Totally misremembered, its more like 17 percent.

Why would that even be a metric?

It's certainly an advanced skill compared to taking a Facebook quiz, but I think it clarifies the assumptions people have about young people, that they know all the computer things because they grew up using them. That's really not the case.

If you want an alternative metric, something like 1 in 3 entering freshmen don't know what the BCC feature does in email. We know that pretty much everyone uses email daily (despite what they tell parents and teachers), so it cannot be that immersion alone leads to proficiency, or that proficiency cannot be learned as an adult.

If you want to rate candidates by skill, by all means do so, just don't go the extra discriminatory step of saying old people by definition cannot pass your measurement, and that young people by definition do.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#75

Post by Toast_ »

CydeWeys wrote: post #51
Toast_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that even be a metric?

Editing a wiki is the kind of experience that is much more valuable to employers than social networking or most common online activities for most occupations, with the exception of marketing/PR-specific roles. Collaborative work on a wiki involves teamwork, research, editing, effective communication, and a whole host of other skills that are useful in a business setting. Blabbing to your friends on Facebook or Twitte…

My first thought if I was hiring, and a prospect noted that they were experienced in editing wikis, is that they were involved in blackhat SEO.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#76

Post by Toast_ »

jldugger wrote: post #74
Toast_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that even be a metric?

It's certainly an advanced skill compared to taking a Facebook quiz, but I think it clarifies the assumptions people have about young people, that they know all the computer things because they grew up using them. That's really not the case. If you want an alternative metric, something like 1 in 3 entering freshmen don't know what the BCC feature does in email. We know that pretty much everyone uses email daily (desp…

Ah. I was mistaken in thinking that you were using 'wiki editing' in a manner that was more in-line as a qualification, rather than a simple means of discrimination. By that logic, I think 'hosting a minecraft server' would be comparable.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#77

Post by TeMPOraL »

rayiner wrote: post #14

The term "digital native" irks me for another reason, which is the presumption that younger people have a better understanding of technology than older people. Kids these days understand the Facebook and the Twitter, but they're deeply insulated from how computers actually work. One thing my wife pointed out to me is that her teenaged siblings have a lot more trouble finding things on Google than she does, because th…

> Kids these days understand the Facebook and the Twitter, but they're deeply insulated from how computers actually work.

I agree and it reminds me of an excellent rant on that topic: http://coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-comput....

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#78

Post by CountSessine »

mod wrote: post #70
CountSessine wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it OK for employers to discriminate based on criteria that the applicant can't reasonably change through education or training, like race or gender? Is that the same as discriminating based on age? Is 'digital native' HR-code for discriminating based on age?

Could 'digital native' be used for discrimination? Sure. Is it inherently or obviously used that way? No, not likely. As to the first question, yeah, in many cases it's okay to discriminate based on factors out of the control of applicants. Many disabilities, for instance, will preclude you from many jobs.

Could 'digital native' be used for discrimination? Sure. Is it inherently or obviously used that way? No, not likely.

'Digital native', interpreted literally is nonsense - almost by definition it requires context to have meaning. We can't talk about meaning being 'inherent' or 'obvious' without figuring out the context.

I think it's charmingly naive to think that a company advertising a job for a 'digital native' would always or even usually mean "we're looking for someone immersed in digital technology and culture". I can tell you given my experience and also given the amazing ubiquity of H-1B fraud, there are plenty of companies who are actually trying to say, "we're trying to use a phrase that attracts the young and the naive - kids who won't ask for their legally-entitled mat leave, won't claim their negotiated time-off to look after kids, are willing to work lots of unpaid hours on weekends, and don't know enough about the way the job market works to negotiate for equity in exchange for all the unpaid hard work they'll do".

As to the first question, yeah, in many cases it's okay to discriminate based on factors out of the control of applicants. Many disabilities, for instance, will preclude you from many jobs.

What about being black? Or female? The parent poster boldly declared, "Yes, their business, their decision", which just isn't true - acting accordingly could actually be illegal.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#79

Post by lsaferite »

DanBC wrote: post #71
amyjess wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of that is just gender. Pinterest is aimed almost exclusively at women. You haven't heard of it because you're a dude and it's not marketed to you or your friends. Hell, I'm enough of a tomboy that I don't really use it. I looked at it a year and a half ago when I first started transitioning to female because I heard that girls are supposed to like it, and I never got into it because it was all about fashion and…

Pinterest is fantastic at what it does, which is an online pinboard of stuff you like around a theme. The obvious use case is wedding planning. One board each for dresses, rings, locations, cakes, table decorations, invites, etc etc. or for redecorating a room - it's brilliant for that kind of stuff. (I say brilliant, and I'm a Pinterest fan but the site has some user-hostile behaviours on mobile so I ise it a lot le…

Unless you don't have a pinterest account in which case it becomes amazingly unhelpful. Many times I've searched for something boardgaming related, I like to make things for my games, and been blocked by the pinterest gatekeeper. I refuse to sign up so every time I leave.

Re: Is It OK for Employers to Seek Out ‘Digital Natives’?

#80

Post by lsaferite »

davesque wrote: post #33
jcadam wrote: post #13

I'm in my mid-30s, grew up tinkering/programming/etc., but I have to admit I just don't get social media. But then I'm not a very sociable person in general. My wife (not a techie), however, is all over facebook/pinterest/twitter/etc. doing God knows what while I'm coding all day. How I learned of the existence of Pinterest: Me: "Where did you say you posted that thing?" Wife (annoyed): "Pinterest" "Your what?" "Pint…

Seconded. I've never really drunk the social media koolaid and I feel just as native as the next guy. Got started on a used 2400 baud modem in the early nineties when it was not easy to get connected to the internet, let alone browse the web. I feel like that grit's gotta be worth something. Of course, this is to say nothing of the people I know and respect who wrote their first programs on freaking punch cards.

A good friend has been trying to get me into SM since Tribe and I've never really liked any platform I've tried. I'm mostly private and find no utility in chronicling my life in the open for everyone to see. If I want to share event from time to time I still do, just not via, for instance, Facebook.
Post reply on HN