5 ms·

>median age of an American is 41. That we're discussing people in that age range as counterexamples kind of proves the point. Don't take my previous post as a

• mbesto 9y ago
  > will actually discriminate against the young 20-somethings for certain roles. Uhh that's not age discrimination, that's creating a job role "Chief Internet Evanglist" and hiring the best person for the job, "Vint Cerf". Do you think anyone other than the creator of the TCPIP protocol could fill that role regardless of age? Also, isn't there also an implicit age discrimination against younger people in any job spec when you say "X years experience"?
  • lmm 9y ago
    > isn't there also an implicit age discrimination against younger people in any job spec when you say "X years experience"? Yes there is, and it's lazy and wrong. Figure out how to test for the skills you need; how many years someone's been using something is only very weakly correlated with how well they know it.
    • mbesto 9y ago
      > Figure out how to test for the skills you need; If you know how to systematically do this for all hiring positions, I literally have thousands of businesses that would pay you serious money to help them.
  • jasode 9y ago
    >Do you think anyone other than the creator of the TCPIP protocol could fill that role regardless of age? Not to argue with you but if we want to have fun with question... it's not "Chief TCPIP Evangelist" but "Chief _Internet_ Evangelist". If "internet" is the key word, we don't have to be limited to an arbitrary point in the network stack and pick a person from it. If we go lower and more foundational to the "internet" which is "packet switching", maybe Leonard Kleinrock[1] is more appropriate "Internet Evangelist". If we go higher in the stack to http, maybe Tim Berners-Lee is the better fit for "Internet Evangelist". If we really embrace "internet evangelist", maybe the best person is none of the technical guys but a 19-year old college dropout from Africa. Conceivably, that type of person would have more to gain from a better internet so his brand of "evangelism" for internet's future growth would be more effective than any of the older white guys from 1st world countries. >Also, isn't there also an implicit age discrimination against younger people in any job spec when you say "X years experience"? Sure. One could also argue that there's stealth age discrimination when your job requirements list "Rust programming language experience" since more 20-year olds than 50-year olds will learn that language. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRlZcKUp2vo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRlZcKUp2vo
    • mbesto 9y ago
      > If we really embrace "internet evangelist", maybe the best person is none of the technical guys but a 19-year old college dropout from Africa. Ok, now you're just being contrarian, but I'll play along. Maybe you're right, maybe the 19-year old college dropout from Africa is the best candidate for the position. So while you play armchair head of HR, care to explain to me how you unanimously align the merit of every candidate in the pool with respective open positions in corporate entities? > One could also argue that there's stealth age discrimination when your job requirements list So then shouldn't it be illegal to list # years of experience as a requirement?
      • jasode 9y ago
        >Ok, now you're just being contrarian, but I'll play along. Maybe you're right, maybe the 19-year old college dropout The point wasn't to annoy you. I used the college dropout as an extreme example because when Vint Cerf gives talks under the banner of "internet evangelism", he doesn't actually use any of his technical TCPIP specific knowledge to do the cheerleading. (But I'm also not saying the Cerf is the wrong guy for that role.) >explain to me how you unanimously align the merit of every candidate in the pool with respective open positions This is actually impossible to accomplish. The problem is: (1) desirable characteristics are multidimensional (2) undesirable characteristics are also multidimensional (3) "fairness" of evaluation and outcome cannot be unanimously agreed upon from the employer _and_ from the candidate _and_ from the outside non-participants that compile statistics on job acceptance/rejection interactions (4) any qualifications with a non-age & non-years-experience label such as "Rust expertise", or "culture fit", or "on-call weekend rotations required" will be _perceived_ as "age discrimination" or other discrimination. This is related to (3) that "fairness" cannot be universally be agreed upon. All items above are also subjective. We are compressing multidimensional factors into a single outcome of "accept/reject". The multidimensions remain subjective and possibly unable to be articulated but the rejection of a candidate is an objective fact and is directly observable. There is no difficulty articulating the binary outcome that the candidate was accepted/rejected. >So then shouldn't it be illegal to list # years of experience as a requirement? I think you interpreted an unintended idea from my "Rust" example. I'm saying that even if an employer specifies a desired attribute in the job listing with no malicious intention of age discrimination, the actual candidate pool will be skewed and be _perceived_ as age discrimination and thus -- it can be argued by some that it _is_ "stealth age discrimination". For example, if a job listing specifies "candidate will have enterprise resource management expertise with at least 2 previous full life-cycle implementations from fit requirements gathering to production go live", the candidate pool will heavily skew towards the 30-somethings and 40-somethings. Complex ERP implementations can take ~5+ years so asking the candidate to have 2 of them under their belt will be near impossible for 20-somethings. Likewise, a COO job listing requiring "previous profit & loss responsibility of at least $10 million" will heavily skew towards 40-somethings and 50-somethings. Very few 20-somethings will have leadership responsibility over a $10 million division -- unless he was a young founder of his own company like Mark Zuckerberg. (And obviously, 20-year old founders do not answer others' corporate job listings so they won't be in the candidate pool.) Even if employers leave out words like "years of experience" and instead, substitute "expertise" or "previous responsibilities", the world can always find an argument for "unfairness". My comment you replied to was just observing an unavoidable perception rather than making any recommendations on how to write job postings.
• ataturk 9y ago
  Nobody is going to want me (or you) at age 62. Sorry. These are far outlier examples of notables in the industry of which there are only a handful.
• humanrebar 9y ago
  > ...will actually discriminate against the young 20-somethings for certain roles. Sure. They won't seem "authoritative" or something vague like that. They'll be passed up for leadership roles because they're too "green". But you can have discrimination against young 20-somethings and the 40+ crowd at the same time.