24 ms·

Facebook Tools Are Used to Screen Out Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Claims

362 points by uptown 8y ago

afpx 8y ago
Excellent news! Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. So much for the claims that there is a shortage in tech. So crazy.
- Simon_says 8y ago
  This is something different. The suit is not claiming that there's discrimination in the hiring processes, but in who sees the ads for the jobs in the first place. Should it be illegal to advertise a job or housing in Black Enterprise magazine, because the readers are overwhelmingly African American? Or illegal to advertise in the Wall Street Journal because they're not?
  - danharaj 8y ago
    Do you think that's the same thing as is alleged in the submission?
  - imgabe 8y ago
    The difference is WSJ doesn't have an option that says "only show this ad to white readers".
    - Simon_says 8y ago
      That is a difference, but in degree, not in kind.
      - zeth___ 8y ago
        In the same way the difference between a stabbing and a murder is one of degree, and 2 inches depth.
      - rdiddly 8y ago
        You're declaring voluntary and involuntary segregation to be the same. I can read Black Enterprise or the WSJ. I can't read something deliberately hidden from me.
        brainwad 8y ago
        Facebook doesn't collect explicit race information, it's inferred from user behaviour. You can choose to do the sorts of things on Facebook that black people do, then advertisers will think you are black. Just like you can choose to read Black Enterprise, and advertisers will think you are black.
        imgabe 8y ago
        What possible relevance could there be between "doing the things black people do" and qualifications for any particular job? TFA is about age discrimination though, and Facebook does explicitly collect age information.
        rdiddly 8y ago
        Facebook explicitly collects your birth date though, doesn't it? (Question is both rhetorical and actual.)
        danShumway 8y ago
        And gives you explicit warnings not to lie about it. And limits the total number of times you can change it (so you'd better hope you lied when you signed up 5 or 10 years ago). Facebook is not real big on the 'ol anonymity. In practice they can't really stop you from lying, but just telling people not to lie and making the question sound serious can often be enough to stop the average person. I suspect most people put in their correct age. Odds are also pretty good your friends are going to mention your age at some point while wishing you Happy Birthday. If Facebook's data collection is smart enough it could decide to trust them over you. I kind of doubt that it is smart enough to do that right now, but it probably wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to do if people started commonly lying.
        8y ago
  - xphilter 8y ago
    You've missed the boat. It'd be akin to White Enterprise magazine checking the race of buyers before a purchase can be made or the ad being seen. That's obviously unlawful. The question is whether FB is immune from the CDA (depends
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    That's apples and oranges. This is a single platform, using a variety of techniques to "disappear" protected classes of people from employment -- it's akin to laundering discrimination. Including companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car is telling, as their business model has always been built around targeting new college grads to be branch managers and retaining them for <5 years. If you work in tech, you should be very much against this, as this is yet another example of bad behavior by Facebook that will hurt everyone. They are hiding behind the CDA to pretend that they are just passive conduits, and will ultimately push the government to tighten regulation and weaken non-Facebook sites that publish user generated content.
  - bcoates 8y ago
    I don't know if the rules are different in employment, but yes, selective advertising in newspapers with different demographics is considered evidence of "steering"/discrimination in housing. (in California)
- deleted 8y ago
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- p0nce 8y ago
  Readers: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    What are some common exit strategies in the industry? It seems like early startup options for employees are more of a lottery ticket than retirement plan.
    - p0nce 8y ago
      I guess it would the founder path, consultancy, moving to a bigger company, moving to a company where seniors are valued... and of course focus on maintenance for deep pockets.
    - balabaster 8y ago
      I moved to a farm and education centre.
    - StevePerkins 8y ago
      You move one of the larger, more conservative companies that employ probably 90% of the world's tech workforce. You do the non-sexy ETL work, or line-of-business app development, that 90% of the world's developer workforce does. Web forums are RIDICULOUSLY overweighted toward students and younger startup employees. Partially because older workers have jobs and families and better stuff to do than play online. Partially because the work they do isn't particularly worth writing about, and the latest fads aren't that relevant to their work. But please don't have the misguided assumption that what you see on HN or Reddit is truly representative of the industry as a whole. It took me a long time, and a lot of unnecessary anxiety, to wake up and see the bigger picture.
      - stopnamingnuts 8y ago
        Amen.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exaggerated this scenario a bit, but the point stands and it's very real.
  - DSingularity 8y ago
    Wait what? What did you just do? Did you just claim that most people above 40 are argumentative anti progress coders? Or did you claim that most people who are claiming age based discrimination are such? Either way, how can you back these statements?
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - deleted 8y ago
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    - jghn 8y ago
      They’re claiming the latter. Whether or not it’s true I don’t know. As an old myself I can say anecdotally that nearly all of the interviewees we bring in who exhibit this behavior are graybeards like myself, but even then they’re a minority
    - Rapzid 8y ago
      I read that as "a lot of people making that claim have or have developed these other, primary traits that are disqualifying them".
  - extralego 8y ago
    Sounds contentious. In my experience, if older co-workers have any common differences from younger ones, it’s the opposite of what you suggest. I find myself amazed by the humbleness and acceptance that so often comes with age. Also, my observations speak to older folks having great work ethics and organizational skills, even in absence of experience with the particular task at hand.
- mtkocak 8y ago
  Everything about the facebook falls apart really.
  - castle-bravo 8y ago
    I'm so glad they banned me.
- DavidWoof 8y ago
  I'm a programmer in my late 50s. While age discrimination is real, and I certainly have my share of "not a culture fit" and "overqualified" rejections over the past 10 years, if you're getting rejected over 90% of the time then I strongly suspect the problem isn't age discrimination. It's much more likely that your skills are out of date or you've gained some bad interviewing habits that you should examine. If people want to filter applicants based on age, it's pretty simple to do so before the interview stage.
  - afpx 8y ago
    No way. Sorry to be blunt. Sure, my speed has decreased a little. But, I make better decisions which saves orders more time. And, my skills are still solidly top 15-20%. I know most modern databases, Java, Scala, Python, JavaScript, Angular, React ... the list goes on. I only claim to be an expert in things I’m actually an expert in. To be fair, I do try to interview at interesting companies. So, that could be the problem. Maybe, it’s easier in IT or government contractors. But, I’d be pretty depressed.
    - tyrust 8y ago
      Resistance to constructive criticism is a potential no-hire signal.
      - zepto 8y ago
        Resistance to inaccurate feedback is essential to autonomous growth. Institutional certainty in the accuracy of feedback is a red flag for cult behavior in organizations.
      - raarts 8y ago
        > resistance to constructive criticism Very curious where you detect that in GP?
        tyrust 8y ago
        They completely discount the feedback without any concessions.
- shawnfratis 8y ago
  >Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. Sorry to say this, but get used, as I have, to getting flooded with employment offers that might as well have a note on the bottom that says "all are welcome to apply-EXCEPT YOU." Why they bother to waste resources to send these out is beyond me, unless they are just sadistic.
  - galieos_ghost 8y ago
    Boggles my mind that companies do this. I'm just out of college and am amazed by the depth of knowledge older programmers have. A lot of them can find bugs on an almost instinctive level . I think it might come down to founders being insecure around older engineers who probably won't be afraid to call them out on dumb decisions and won't be as likely to drink the hpye kool-aid because they've seen it all before. Seems like an opportunity for startups to get great talent.
    - john_moscow 8y ago
      There's a serious problem with the current economic cycle that basically makes technical expertise and efficiency irrelevant to the ways companies make money nowadays. It's a nasty thing to admit to yourself, but unless you do, you risk ending up exactly like that - no hire despite perfect technical skills due to unspoken reasons you didn't catch.
    - gowld 8y ago
      Why would a founder want to hire someone who doesn't believe in their business?
      - logfromblammo 8y ago
        Because the majority of startups are bullshit businesses that are destined to fail, and only those who can recognize the intrinsic problems with them could ever help the founders pivot to something sane and profitable before the runway is gone.
      - 8y ago
- john_moscow 8y ago
  Just out of curiosity: what kind of roles are you applying for? Are those the entry-level positions, non-specialized "senior %LANGUAGENAME% developer", or something requiring solid domain-specific experience?
- nunya213 8y ago
  Shouldn't you be in management by now?
  - ConcernedCoder 8y ago
    Is that really the end game? Am I an outlier since I don't want to manage people, I just want to write code? I'm 50 and have been programming since age 13 and I've turned down offers to move into management, since my 1st love is actually building things. Is it really just expected that at some point we all give up what we love to do just to fit into some corporate culture?
    - nunya213 8y ago
      Seems to be career suicide. You are turning down countless promotion opportunities and insane amounts of compensation. All so what, you can continue coding day to day? Seems absurd, code at home as your hobby if it means that much to you. As an individual contributor your value to any company is limited no matter your skill. At a certain point the company is going to ask, is your compensation worth the value you add? Its not a surprise that the answer to that question is often no.
      - svachalek 8y ago
        It depends. At a lot of companies, manager and senior software engineer are roughly equivalent in compensation. To make "insane" amounts of compensation you've got to make director or better, and that's a completely different job/life than engineering. A lot of people went into engineering because they don't have that in 'em.
      - geebee 8y ago
        That's a fine thesis, though I do think that software is one of those areas where a maker can under some circumstances, potentially have a vastly more powerful impact on an organization than a manager. Opportunities are fewer and the competition level is high, though. To really harness this, you probably have to either become a founder who writes an early version of a product (very difficult), or alternatively advance along one of the technical track ladders that exist in some big tech companies (they exist, but far fewer opportunities and intense competition). There's a chance you could pitch a breakthrough product, but many (not all!) organizations seem strangely hostile to this. So I do agree with you that going into management does offer greater opportunity for promotion and increased compensation. I disagree your value as an individual contributor is necessarily limited though, since a technically talented developer with a strong business sense can produce unreal value, sky is the limit on that combination.
- sjg007 8y ago
  Are you in the Bay area? I think that in the bay area it is easier to find a tech job regardless of age. Startups are one place but there are a lot of smaller established tech companies. Try biomedical companies or pharma. At some point, basically every company is a tech company or use technology in some way which requires a few software engineers. Even so.. even the big "old" companies (aka IBM) routinely try to remove older workers from their payrolls: https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/ https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  how would they know you’re 39 versus 40 in the interview process?
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  In case you hadn't noticed: When you post firsthand testimony like this, the typical reaction is a pile on of unsolicited advice. When you don't grovel in gratitude and promptly turn your life around in response to the brilliant wisdom of a bunch of internet strangers who know an entire paragraph about your problem, you will be quickly labeled as clearly the cause of your problem, never mind the information in the very article currently under discussion that makes it clear there are large scale forces at work. No, you cannot possibly be a victim of circumstance. You just must not be trying hard enough and making lame excuses to cover that up, like playing the victim card because you obviously have a victim mentality. If you argue it, that will be further evidence of your personal defects.
eli 8y ago
I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to people by age.
- bigtunacan 8y ago
  I think that's a sound argument except the claim is not only that third parties are doing this, but also that Facebook is following the same practice when advertising for positions with Facebook.
- kinsomo 8y ago
  > I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to people by age. It seems reasonable to me that an automated ad platform should take steps to prevent users from running illegal ads. It seems like it would be fairly easy, at least for discriminatory ad types: just look at the law and gray out selectors for protected classes when an ad for employment, housing, etc. For instance, if you run an employment ad, age, race, and gender demographic selectors should be disabled.
mesubli 8y ago
So, where do the veterans go? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Get a reverse mortgage, work for Home Depot, the government, or lobby for UBI.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
I know almost nothing about the law here, but I imagine intent could be a big part of it. I'm surprised the Bloomberg article seems to make no mention of it. I was also surprised to see this: > Goldman wrote that, “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work.” Why would it ever be acceptable to deliberately filter on the grounds of age?
- jrkatz 8y ago
  You're assuming they'd be using that to filter people out, but they could simply target ads emphasizing different aspects of the company to different age groups. 'Great kegerator!' for twenty-somethings and 'Great 401k match and relocation packages!' for older groups, or something along those lines.
- wmeredith 8y ago
  What if they were targeting older workers as part of a diversity program?
  - bluGill 8y ago
    That is discrimination against younger workers. Diversity programs are a double edged sword, there are groups that are under represented. However every time you target them you lose the larger group that you didn't target, and that group has great people.
    - rohansingh 8y ago
      Not making a judgement either way, but just a heads-up— there's actually no federal prohibition against discriminating on the basis of youth. Age discrimination laws only work in one direction.
      - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
        Interesting. Here in the UK, the law can work both ways, with exceptions where there is good reason. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/protected-characteristics/age-discrimination/ https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discriminat... , https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work-learning/discrimination-rights/the-equality-act/ https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work-learning/di...
JaceLightning 8y ago
I mean, are we going to start suing companies who go to career fairs at colleges too?
- csixty4 8y ago
  There are plenty of older college students. There were lots of grey hairs in my night classes.
  - dominotw 8y ago
    Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to.
    - electricslpnsld 8y ago
      I don't think this is true -- most of the Ivys have entire schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students (see, for example, the Columbia University School of General Studies), and Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys.
      - dominotw 8y ago
        > Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys. Yes but do they recruit older non traditional students. Schools catering to them doesn't automatically imply that they are being hired by google.
        lainga 8y ago
        You just moved the goalposts from "don't recruit where there are older students" to "yes, they recruit there, but do they recruit the older students".
        dominotw 8y ago
        ok. I see what you mean. > don't recruit where there are older students But they don't recuit from 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students ' My original comment is still true > Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to. "places" here can be 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students' within Ivies.
tannhaeuser 8y ago
In the sense that if you are "on Fb" you're old by definition I guess.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
danschumann 8y ago
I sometimes wonder how much the fear of something is actually an additional problem to the thing itself. NOTE: I am not denying agism exists, I'm wondering about the additional problem of fear of agism. The fear that someone might be agist, might make you look at them judgmentally/suspiciously. If you look at your interviewer judgmentally/suspiciously they likely won't hire you, and they probably feel pretty suspicious about you. If you walk into an interview and say, "I know I'm old, and you probably won't hire me because you want a young person", well, obviously they won't hire you because you sound depressed. Again, this is not to say that some people aren't agist, even if the candidate shows none of these signs. I'm just wondering how much of factor the fear of agism is, compared to agism itself, on a regional level. Are there any people who do clinical studies here?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  While this might be interesting academically, I think if ageism is a problem that might generically scare candidates, then that too is the ageists fault for creating that culture of policy, and not a candidate's fault for sincerely being worried about something that is actually worth worrying about. We could say something similar about racism. "How much of a factor the fear of racism is, compared to racism itself..." It seems silly to really spend any time on this type of second-order extra effect when there are real, harmful, huge first-order effects (namely, actual racism and actual ageism) demonstrably happening. We should focus on the big, up-front, obvious monster standing right in front of us, instead of asking, how much of our problem is caused by the monster in front of us as opposed to a hypothetical monster in the closet, and letting it distract us (or worse, trying to flip things around and blame candidates for being too sensitive or try to sympathetically justify what ageist businesses are doing to their long-time employees or to older job candidates).
  - danschumann 8y ago
    The racist wins if he can spoil your other interviews. Let's say you have 4 interviews, the first one has a racist, and it's obvious. Now let's say you get bitter and resentful, and you blow your other 3 interviews, even though those 3 people aren't racist. The racist is happy(if he finds out) because not only did he prevent you from getting his job, he messed with your head and prevented you from getting the attainable 3 jobs. So, within the scenario above, racism can take one toll or many tolls. And this is on the individual level, wherein people operate from day to day. They need a job. It would seem that being able to reset expectations, forgive, forbear, and go into the subsequent 3 interviews would be the ideal strategy to achieve success in job hunting, and prevent the racist from doing the most damage. Since you mentioned 2nd order effects: how much do the 2nd order effects recreate/reinforce the first order effects? This would be another psychological survey I would be interested in. If someone is fearful of racists, how many people are likely to become more racist as a result of this fear ( either themselves or people they come in contact with )? Isn't racism based on fear in the first place? Fear of other races? ( and therefore a reaction to fight or flight arbitrarily based on race? ) Batman: "Gee Robbin, I notice you are afraid when you are around people of other races" Robbin: "Well it's because I think they're racist against me" slap Batman: "Robbin you are becoming the thing you fear the most!"
notacoward 8y ago
As a 53-year-old Facebook employee, I find the part about Facebook doing this for their own hiring a bit odd. To the extent that anyone has ever reacted to my age with anything other than mild surprise, people generally seem quite glad to see something besides another fresh 20-something face and to hear the voice of long experience. Then again, I didn't come in via a Facebook ad. Maybe companies use different methods to search for candidates of different ages or experience levels because our own job-seeking habits are different. I was already a principal before the web even existed, let alone Facebook or LinkedIn. Even then I didn't look at generic ads anywhere to find a new job. I used headhunters, and then purely personal contacts. I'm sure many of my contemporaries are the same. If such broadcast ads are basically a waste of money seeking that kind of employee, and other methods are being tried, is that really "disparate treatment" in any meaningful sense?
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I don't know. I was recommended to a specific domain-specialized role in Facebook by someone with a long tenure inside the company, and after the recommendation, I was just auto-routed into the standard, crappy candidate pipeline like everyone else, told I'd have to do whatever 6-month rotation bootcamp, asked why I didn't have a bunch of Javascript experience. It certainly felt like they make an effort to pedantically screen everyone through such a process exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards. I am not claiming that I specifically experienced ageism, although it is possible. But I definitely experienced some type of "junior dev, infinitely flexible, doesn't know his own market compensation worth, etc." filters, which in many cases are going to systematically filter out experienced professionals.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    > exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards. Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of the "disparate treatment" the lawsuit alleges?
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
master_yoda_1 8y ago
Facebook themselves are a big age discriminator in recruiting. Most of the company in the silicon valley do age discrimination.
koolba 8y ago
If I advertise a job in a church newsletter am I screening out Jews, Muslims, and atheists? How about a job in a predominantly black newspaper, am I screening out Latino candidates? How about a job ad in a predominantly lesbian one, is that screening straight men? What about one in a youth newsletter or Facebook demographically targeted ad, is that screening out old people? I’d argue intent is what matters. If the goal is to reach a demographic you think will have fine candidates then proceed. If it’s purely exclusionary to circumvent labor laws because you’re avoiding someone else then it’s a problem. The analysis for this should not be at the inbound funnel, but instead at the net result based on the received candidate pool. That’s where you can see whether an actual bias exists.
sandworm101 8y ago
Take this from a former tech lawyer: The startups that only want kids and new grads are hiding skeletons. They know they are doing something incorrectly/illegally and don't want anyone in the building who is likely to recognize such mistakes, let alone object to them. They fear industry knowledge and experience. Typical example: I had a couple clients who sent new staff on unpaid "training" courses, in violation of labour laws. They only hired kids and so by the time I showed up this had been going on for ten years. The founders knew, but all under them didn't know a thing about labour laws, including the extensive HR department. Then one day a former employee sent an email ... and I handed the client to a litigator to prepare the response to the class action by former employees.
superkuh 8y ago
It'd be nice if these same protected class laws applied to the rampant and increasing age discrimination against 18 to 21 year old adults. Discrimination of them is not just common but baked into the culture and acknowledged as a good thing (ie, car rentals, firearm purchases, etc). They get all the downsides and responsibilities of being a full citizen but are treated as second class citizens. Sure, discrimination against the old happens. But it's not nearly as common or widespread as discrimination against the young.
ivanhoe 8y ago
Older devs don't buy the CEO's BS that easy and don't care about table tennis, you need to pay them in real money - which obviously makes them a completely wrong fit for so many players in the industry...
this_na_hipster 8y ago
While I understand Ageism exists, I do see a trend change though. Take for example all these technical tracks in many companies now. All of these engineers are very tenured and usually very experienced(40+). In-fact they are considered irreplaceable by management since they set the vision of the company. Especially in the valley, the trend I notice is that you don't want to lose these "senior staff, staff engineers etc."
BasHamer 8y ago
Data-driven algorithms are discriminating based upon undesirable/illegal vectors; they are utterly amoral in optimizing their solutions. Even if the algorithm does not have access to the "Age" field, then there are plenty of proxies, like what reunion tour you liked. And the same goes for race, gender, sexual identification, religion, etc. To solve this we either need the training data to have no illegal/undesired discrimination, or we make the system moral. I think the first is impossible, and the second is what we will do sooner or later.
- biztos 8y ago
  How would you make the system moral? Let's say "moral" means "won't discriminate based on X" and the same "system" is used by everyone, which of course it wouldn't be. So do you make up a bunch of fake "people" who are equal in everything except X, and test that it doesn't advantage/disadvantage the X's? Would that even be possible if the "system" is getting its inputs from social media? Do you do mandate some kind of audit of the system's decisions, and require it to choose on average the same percentage of Xs as... what? As there are Xs in the general population? In the candidate pool? I'd love for this kind of thing to work but even in an idealized hypothetical version it's hard to see how it could. I think in tech we've already shown that shame is no barrier to hiring discrimination, and as HR+AI type filtering systems preselect candidates for you it'll be harder and harder for you or the government or the disadvantaged candidates to even know if you're discriminating. You'll judge the "system" based solely on whether the set of candidates you got achieved the outcome you needed.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "How would you make the system moral?" Don't use it.
  - BasHamer 8y ago
    train it. Give it examples that we consider moral and examples of what we consider immoral and have it figure it out. The solutions that the algorithms create are less complex than the data that they base the solutions on; so it should be relatively easy for it to model these solutions as data. We would have to train it on what we consider moral and immoral; that would require us to visualize the solutions in a way that a human can make the determination and provide the feedback. As far as how we get to the solution, that will probably come when there is a liability for discrimination. So lawsuits like the one mentioned. I think that mandating does not work well, it would be more appropriate to make people liable for the decisions made by amoral systems. This liability would create a demand for moral systems.
bo1024 8y ago
Many of the posts here focus on ageism but this is just one example of discriminatory algorithms/ML in action. Don't be surprised if the same headline reappears soon with gender or race substituted. There is currently an academic movement often called "fairness in machine learning" aiming to correct these kinds of behaviors in automated systems.
- biztos 8y ago
  Thanks, I didn't know this was a Thing in academia. Just found a nice intro here, starting a few slides in: https://fairmlclass.github.io/1.html https://fairmlclass.github.io/1.html
  - biztos 8y ago
    OT but I'm surprised this got down voted. Anybody care to tell me what etiquette I violated here?
    - bo1024 8y ago
      No idea
- gowld 8y ago
  As the former-kids say, "Simpsons did it". We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination in ads. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing-ads-discrimination-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing...
  - Jeff-Stryker 8y ago
    >We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination We will have it again. News is manufactured. Discrimination in the news is meant to splinter the populace. You Old people need to fear and hate the young (millennials vs. Boomers) You Black people need to fear and hate the whites You White people need to fear and hate the latinos You Gay people need to fear and hate the transsexuals It is a constant barrage if you are paying attention. Divide and Conguer.
agrippanux 8y ago
Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last startup. The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. If you know how to run a tight org - and not a sweatshop of 20-year olds pulling 16 hour days where only maybe 2-3 hours are actual programming time - then older devs are a fantastic bargain. Plus, when it comes time to architect something complex, I have found older devs typically create more simple and elegant solutions just because they have been exposed to more. Of course, I do run into the occasional stuck-in-the-mud older dev who is very slow to adapt to current trends and wants everyone else to get off their lawn. That has been a rare exception to my overall experience and I don't think it should be used to stereotype the older devs as a group.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  > The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. Outside of extremely rare triage situations, this limit is true for all developers, regardless of age or quality of output. Beyond about the 6 hour mark, people can force themselves to sit in a chair and hit keys on a keyboard like the Swedish chef from the muppets, but it's pure management denial to believe those hours count as "productivity" and in fact when the defect rates start to get high and fatigue compounds and morale drops, it's really anti-productive. Really, younger age is just usually correlated with fewer extracurricular responsibilities, i.e. home repair, health maintenance, domestic responsibilities, marriage, children, etc. These things tend to increase with age, making it a scheduling impossibility for older workers to sit in the chair at 8 pm going "hur duh dur" while slapping keys.
  - always_good 8y ago
    > this limit is true for all developers Maybe sober, but that's not the limit once you factor in the rampant use of amphetamine.
jhowell 8y ago
Maybe this company needs regulation. I think the benefit of the doubt can be used to hide reason.
GhostVII 8y ago
Would radio ads be discrimination because they generally target and older audience? Or TV adds on shows that are generally viewed by older audiences or younger audiences? If it is discrimination to only show Facebook job ads to certain demographics, it should also be descrimination to show ads on platforms only viewed by certain demographics.
- oculusthrift 8y ago
  lol this is a pretty lame argument. radio stations would love more young listeners. it’s a little differnt than intentionally filtering out some of your audience
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oculusthrift 8y ago
devils advocate reasons to avoid older tech job seekers: 1. they are less pliable. they have experience st other companies and typically want to keep doing stuff the way they did at their previous company. it’s a lot more work to make someone unlearn bad habits than teach them good ones 2. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you’re still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect. 3. Our company wants people to work insane hours and maybe your family prevents that
- biztos 8y ago
  adversarial advocate: 1. your idea of good habits resists logical scrutiny, and more experienced workers might bring this to light. 2. many people never advance into positions of broader responsibility, and if you're hiring for a dev job this is not a bad thing. (also, cf. real-world corporate engineering vs. management ladders) 3. if your company is open about its insane hours and compensates accordingly, candidates who aren't cool with it will self-deselect.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  The devil has plenty of advocates already. "2. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you’re still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect." This is absolute crap; not wanting to be in management because you don't have the skillset for it is not a defect. This idea needs to die a painful death.
OhHeyItsE 8y ago
I always wonder where the myth that older developers are "slower" comes from. Dunno about you folks, but I get better and faster every year. And, for me, that productivity metric is probably approaching parabolic. You learn enough languages, frameworks, tools - all the fundamentals start to merge together. You can pick the next one up faster than you did the one you just put down. You understand how to design software; how to organize code. Exactly when to reuse, refactor, or copy/paste. You have a better understanding of how the market works and the competitive strategies around product development will manifest - not only within your own product and industry, but when analyzing and choosing vendors as well (you really want to leave it up to a 25 year-old to choose AWS vs GCP?). Sure, I've got a ton of better things to spend my nights and weekends on than writing code for free. I can also spot a doomed project from a mile a way and have no qualms about delivering a very curt "yeah no thanks" to that project manager who waddles over with some deluded hero fantasy where they carry the flag on my back for something that's probably never going to see the light of day anyway. Maybe that's it? That's probably it...
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  53-year-old coder here. (Although that's not my primary job) I still love programming. I love new frameworks and tools, I love solving problems for people. I love having fun with a good team. I do reason a bit slower, but that's because -- I think -- I'm considering more options than I did when I was younger. I also have a tendency to like "grinding": you know, things like hooking up copy constructors for C++ classes in order to make a more complete type system. So I stay on the lookout for that. If anything has changed, it's just I try to be much more careful about getting in a rut. And that's crazy, because that's the accusation people make about older coders. I always want to hold the problem in one hand and the tech in the other, looking to see what the minimum amount of work is required. When I was younger, people would describe the problem to me, then I would dive down and focus almost exclusively on whatever the tech was. It was like a big video game or mathematical puzzle that I enjoyed as much or more than making stuff people wanted. I've seen a lot of people in the industry spend a lot of time, effort, and money doing that. I've seen good friends end up out of work because they fell in love with a certain tech that the rest of the industry decided wasn't cool any more. So now I try to look at solutions as much as tech -- more so, really. Ideally you wouldn't code anything, just make stuff people want without indulging your desire to work with detailed systems of symbols.
BadassFractal 8y ago
As someone approaching that 40yo cutoff soon enough, does that same apparent bias in hiring show up for managers and executives as well, or only hands-on individual contributors? Maybe there's a general perception that if you're in your 40s and you've worked hard enough, by then you should be a director or VP of some kind, and if you're not you must have messed up? I understand not everybody is meant for managerial ladder climbing, but is that perhaps the stereotype that everybody expects?
cm2012 8y ago
This is really dumb if you understand how Facebook's advertising algorithm works. It's going to optimize job ads towards people who click job ads. Young people are more likely to be looking for jobs than older people, and thus click job ads more. [1] So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective, because they want to see these type of ads more by far. By the data, older people do not want to see these type of ads and thus are not shown them. If you did show it to them, they would complain about bad ads (anyone who does FB advertising gets a report from FB on how many people Xed out an ad, and too many is really bad for your account) Nothing to do with worker effectiveness or how HR treats older applicants, which is what 95% of the comments in this thread are taking the opportunity to talk about. [1] " About 60% of Millennials are currently open to a new job opportunity and are by far the most likely generation to switch jobs. To support that, 21% of Millennials in 2016 reported switching jobs within the past year, compared to roughly 7% of gen Xers and other non-Millennials. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennials-arent-job-hopping-young-people-are-5-things-to-keep-in-mind/#26d1e0ab10d8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennia...
- gowld 8y ago
  Comments may be offtopic, but I don't see what's "dumb" about it. The article is about discrimination, and you described how Facebook's algorithm learns to discriminate.
  - cm2012 8y ago
    That's fair. But discrimination in where you advertise (with the goal of saving 2/3 of your total cash outlay, rather than ruling out a group as a goal) is a whole different kettle of fish compared to discrimination in the HR process. People shouldn't think Facebook ads have anything to do with the latter.
- kartan 8y ago
  > So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective Because there is a technical explanation doesn't means that it is not discrimination. Actually discrimination had a lot to do about getting an individual differently because he/she is part of a group. We didn't baked a law, the machine did. It is not a good defense in a trial, or at least I hope it is not. A good read on this topic http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should-artificial-intelligence-be-legally-required-explain-itself http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should-artificial-...
jiggliemon 8y ago
The joke is really on the employer using Facebook ads to target a younger candidate pool. Youngsters don’t use Facebook. And if a young dev is using Facebook - they’re certainly using an ad-blocker. If they’re not using an ad blocker on Facebook, do you even want to hire them? Seems like if you wanted to attract a pool of young candidates now days, you’d target the parents of the said youngsters. The ones with no applicable experience, and who are still living at home “looking for a job.” The ad should be to the effect of “tired of your good for nothing millennial taking up your third bedroom? Want them to move out? We’re hiring good for nothing straight out of college devs so as to lock them into a low tier pay bracket.”
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  As someone who runs ads on Facebook and other platforms and has a lot of devs who respond, this isn’t true. Not only do devs not all block ads (and it’s kind of offensive to imply that only the good ones do), they even click on ads!
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    Yeah, just looked it up. There are over 50 million active users on Facebook between the ages of 25 and 34. In the US alone.
coliveira 8y ago
Discrimination is essentially THE business for FB advertisements in areas such as housing and job openings. It is just a fancy way to circumvent legal requirements that jobs must be posted independent of sex, racial, or religious affiliation. Similarly for housing offerings.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
What statutes would FB be violating, assuming their tools are being used in this way? I wish articles like this would provide a link to the complaint, which is presumably a matter of public record.
edikit 8y ago
It doesn't seem like the blame should fall on Facebook here, but rather the companies using Facebook's tools to age discriminate (assuming there is even blame to place at all). Age-based targeting can be applied across their entire platform, not just for job postings, and it can be applied in either direction (i.e. companies can also create ads targeting only people over the age of 40). > In the amended complaint, CWA alleged that Facebook encourages advertisers to exclude some job-seekers by providing both age filters and regularly updated data on how ads perform among different age groups. IMO, this complaint achieves the opposite of what they want it to achieve. It suggests that the age-related metrics that Facebook offers are a) explicitly defined by the individual advertiser and b) are used to objectively determine the ad's effectiveness rather than to unjustly discriminate.
jcadam 8y ago
I currently work (as of 6 months ago) at a company where the software engineering staff is made up almost exclusively of two types of people: 1.) young 20-somethings who were hired right out of college. They do all of the coding and grunt work (for cheap). 2.) A smaller set of 55+ engineers who are coasting into retirement. They do all of the architecture and design work. I was recruited rather aggressively and eventually accepted an offer (I'm definitely being paid on the high side for this area). As a 38 year old, this place is incredibely lonely (I have no "peers"). I have absolutely no idea why they hired me. The "elders", who have been at the company for 20+ years, are hostile, backstabbing and hoard all of the interesting work (and credit) for themselves. My "lead" (not the manager who made the decision to hire me - I never see that person now) seems to be actively sidelining me - I've been assigned nothing but grunt work.

362 points by uptown 8y ago

afpx 8y ago

Excellent news! Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. So much for the claims that there is a shortage in tech. So crazy.

Simon_says 8y ago
This is something different. The suit is not claiming that there's discrimination in the hiring processes, but in who sees the ads for the jobs in the first place. Should it be illegal to advertise a job or housing in Black Enterprise magazine, because the readers are overwhelmingly African American? Or illegal to advertise in the Wall Street Journal because they're not?
- danharaj 8y ago
  Do you think that's the same thing as is alleged in the submission?
- imgabe 8y ago
  The difference is WSJ doesn't have an option that says "only show this ad to white readers".
  - Simon_says 8y ago
    That is a difference, but in degree, not in kind.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      In the same way the difference between a stabbing and a murder is one of degree, and 2 inches depth.
    - rdiddly 8y ago
      You're declaring voluntary and involuntary segregation to be the same. I can read Black Enterprise or the WSJ. I can't read something deliberately hidden from me.
      - brainwad 8y ago
        Facebook doesn't collect explicit race information, it's inferred from user behaviour. You can choose to do the sorts of things on Facebook that black people do, then advertisers will think you are black. Just like you can choose to read Black Enterprise, and advertisers will think you are black.
        imgabe 8y ago
        What possible relevance could there be between "doing the things black people do" and qualifications for any particular job? TFA is about age discrimination though, and Facebook does explicitly collect age information.
        rdiddly 8y ago
        Facebook explicitly collects your birth date though, doesn't it? (Question is both rhetorical and actual.)
        danShumway 8y ago
        And gives you explicit warnings not to lie about it. And limits the total number of times you can change it (so you'd better hope you lied when you signed up 5 or 10 years ago). Facebook is not real big on the 'ol anonymity. In practice they can't really stop you from lying, but just telling people not to lie and making the question sound serious can often be enough to stop the average person. I suspect most people put in their correct age. Odds are also pretty good your friends are going to mention your age at some point while wishing you Happy Birthday. If Facebook's data collection is smart enough it could decide to trust them over you. I kind of doubt that it is smart enough to do that right now, but it probably wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to do if people started commonly lying.
        8y ago
- xphilter 8y ago
  You've missed the boat. It'd be akin to White Enterprise magazine checking the race of buyers before a purchase can be made or the ad being seen. That's obviously unlawful. The question is whether FB is immune from the CDA (depends
- Spooky23 8y ago
  That's apples and oranges. This is a single platform, using a variety of techniques to "disappear" protected classes of people from employment -- it's akin to laundering discrimination. Including companies like Enterprise Rent-A-Car is telling, as their business model has always been built around targeting new college grads to be branch managers and retaining them for <5 years. If you work in tech, you should be very much against this, as this is yet another example of bad behavior by Facebook that will hurt everyone. They are hiding behind the CDA to pretend that they are just passive conduits, and will ultimately push the government to tighten regulation and weaken non-Facebook sites that publish user generated content.
- bcoates 8y ago
  I don't know if the rules are different in employment, but yes, selective advertising in newspapers with different demographics is considered evidence of "steering"/discrimination in housing. (in California)
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p0nce 8y ago
Readers: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  What are some common exit strategies in the industry? It seems like early startup options for employees are more of a lottery ticket than retirement plan.
  - p0nce 8y ago
    I guess it would the founder path, consultancy, moving to a bigger company, moving to a company where seniors are valued... and of course focus on maintenance for deep pockets.
  - balabaster 8y ago
    I moved to a farm and education centre.
  - StevePerkins 8y ago
    You move one of the larger, more conservative companies that employ probably 90% of the world's tech workforce. You do the non-sexy ETL work, or line-of-business app development, that 90% of the world's developer workforce does. Web forums are RIDICULOUSLY overweighted toward students and younger startup employees. Partially because older workers have jobs and families and better stuff to do than play online. Partially because the work they do isn't particularly worth writing about, and the latest fads aren't that relevant to their work. But please don't have the misguided assumption that what you see on HN or Reddit is truly representative of the industry as a whole. It took me a long time, and a lot of unnecessary anxiety, to wake up and see the bigger picture.
    - stopnamingnuts 8y ago
      Amen.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
seattle_spring 8y ago
I'm not saying you're this person, but a lot of people making this claim are also the people that seem argue with literally everything. They always claim they know better. "Oh your team of 8 has spent the last 12 months building this complex webapp with React? Gosh darn millennial hipsters and their FRAMEWORKS. I could have built it with jQuery in a week, and still had a nickel leftover for the trolley!" Yes I've exaggerated this scenario a bit, but the point stands and it's very real.
- DSingularity 8y ago
  Wait what? What did you just do? Did you just claim that most people above 40 are argumentative anti progress coders? Or did you claim that most people who are claiming age based discrimination are such? Either way, how can you back these statements?
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - jghn 8y ago
    They’re claiming the latter. Whether or not it’s true I don’t know. As an old myself I can say anecdotally that nearly all of the interviewees we bring in who exhibit this behavior are graybeards like myself, but even then they’re a minority
  - Rapzid 8y ago
    I read that as "a lot of people making that claim have or have developed these other, primary traits that are disqualifying them".
- extralego 8y ago
  Sounds contentious. In my experience, if older co-workers have any common differences from younger ones, it’s the opposite of what you suggest. I find myself amazed by the humbleness and acceptance that so often comes with age. Also, my observations speak to older folks having great work ethics and organizational skills, even in absence of experience with the particular task at hand.
mtkocak 8y ago
Everything about the facebook falls apart really.
- castle-bravo 8y ago
  I'm so glad they banned me.
DavidWoof 8y ago
I'm a programmer in my late 50s. While age discrimination is real, and I certainly have my share of "not a culture fit" and "overqualified" rejections over the past 10 years, if you're getting rejected over 90% of the time then I strongly suspect the problem isn't age discrimination. It's much more likely that your skills are out of date or you've gained some bad interviewing habits that you should examine. If people want to filter applicants based on age, it's pretty simple to do so before the interview stage.
- afpx 8y ago
  No way. Sorry to be blunt. Sure, my speed has decreased a little. But, I make better decisions which saves orders more time. And, my skills are still solidly top 15-20%. I know most modern databases, Java, Scala, Python, JavaScript, Angular, React ... the list goes on. I only claim to be an expert in things I’m actually an expert in. To be fair, I do try to interview at interesting companies. So, that could be the problem. Maybe, it’s easier in IT or government contractors. But, I’d be pretty depressed.
  - tyrust 8y ago
    Resistance to constructive criticism is a potential no-hire signal.
    - zepto 8y ago
      Resistance to inaccurate feedback is essential to autonomous growth. Institutional certainty in the accuracy of feedback is a red flag for cult behavior in organizations.
    - raarts 8y ago
      > resistance to constructive criticism Very curious where you detect that in GP?
      - tyrust 8y ago
        They completely discount the feedback without any concessions.
shawnfratis 8y ago
>Up until age 39, I was never not given an offer after interviewing. Now after 40, my offer rate has dropped to 1 in 14. Sorry to say this, but get used, as I have, to getting flooded with employment offers that might as well have a note on the bottom that says "all are welcome to apply-EXCEPT YOU." Why they bother to waste resources to send these out is beyond me, unless they are just sadistic.
- galieos_ghost 8y ago
  Boggles my mind that companies do this. I'm just out of college and am amazed by the depth of knowledge older programmers have. A lot of them can find bugs on an almost instinctive level . I think it might come down to founders being insecure around older engineers who probably won't be afraid to call them out on dumb decisions and won't be as likely to drink the hpye kool-aid because they've seen it all before. Seems like an opportunity for startups to get great talent.
  - john_moscow 8y ago
    There's a serious problem with the current economic cycle that basically makes technical expertise and efficiency irrelevant to the ways companies make money nowadays. It's a nasty thing to admit to yourself, but unless you do, you risk ending up exactly like that - no hire despite perfect technical skills due to unspoken reasons you didn't catch.
  - gowld 8y ago
    Why would a founder want to hire someone who doesn't believe in their business?
    - logfromblammo 8y ago
      Because the majority of startups are bullshit businesses that are destined to fail, and only those who can recognize the intrinsic problems with them could ever help the founders pivot to something sane and profitable before the runway is gone.
    - 8y ago
john_moscow 8y ago
Just out of curiosity: what kind of roles are you applying for? Are those the entry-level positions, non-specialized "senior %LANGUAGENAME% developer", or something requiring solid domain-specific experience?
nunya213 8y ago
Shouldn't you be in management by now?
- ConcernedCoder 8y ago
  Is that really the end game? Am I an outlier since I don't want to manage people, I just want to write code? I'm 50 and have been programming since age 13 and I've turned down offers to move into management, since my 1st love is actually building things. Is it really just expected that at some point we all give up what we love to do just to fit into some corporate culture?
  - nunya213 8y ago
    Seems to be career suicide. You are turning down countless promotion opportunities and insane amounts of compensation. All so what, you can continue coding day to day? Seems absurd, code at home as your hobby if it means that much to you. As an individual contributor your value to any company is limited no matter your skill. At a certain point the company is going to ask, is your compensation worth the value you add? Its not a surprise that the answer to that question is often no.
    - svachalek 8y ago
      It depends. At a lot of companies, manager and senior software engineer are roughly equivalent in compensation. To make "insane" amounts of compensation you've got to make director or better, and that's a completely different job/life than engineering. A lot of people went into engineering because they don't have that in 'em.
    - geebee 8y ago
      That's a fine thesis, though I do think that software is one of those areas where a maker can under some circumstances, potentially have a vastly more powerful impact on an organization than a manager. Opportunities are fewer and the competition level is high, though. To really harness this, you probably have to either become a founder who writes an early version of a product (very difficult), or alternatively advance along one of the technical track ladders that exist in some big tech companies (they exist, but far fewer opportunities and intense competition). There's a chance you could pitch a breakthrough product, but many (not all!) organizations seem strangely hostile to this. So I do agree with you that going into management does offer greater opportunity for promotion and increased compensation. I disagree your value as an individual contributor is necessarily limited though, since a technically talented developer with a strong business sense can produce unreal value, sky is the limit on that combination.
sjg007 8y ago
Are you in the Bay area? I think that in the bay area it is easier to find a tech job regardless of age. Startups are one place but there are a lot of smaller established tech companies. Try biomedical companies or pharma. At some point, basically every company is a tech company or use technology in some way which requires a few software engineers. Even so.. even the big "old" companies (aka IBM) routinely try to remove older workers from their payrolls: https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/ https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...
oculusthrift 8y ago
how would they know you’re 39 versus 40 in the interview process?
DoreenMichele 8y ago
In case you hadn't noticed: When you post firsthand testimony like this, the typical reaction is a pile on of unsolicited advice. When you don't grovel in gratitude and promptly turn your life around in response to the brilliant wisdom of a bunch of internet strangers who know an entire paragraph about your problem, you will be quickly labeled as clearly the cause of your problem, never mind the information in the very article currently under discussion that makes it clear there are large scale forces at work. No, you cannot possibly be a victim of circumstance. You just must not be trying hard enough and making lame excuses to cover that up, like playing the victim card because you obviously have a victim mentality. If you argue it, that will be further evidence of your personal defects.

eli 8y ago

I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to people by age.

bigtunacan 8y ago
I think that's a sound argument except the claim is not only that third parties are doing this, but also that Facebook is following the same practice when advertising for positions with Facebook.
kinsomo 8y ago
> I'm not sure I agree that it's Facebook's fault that people use its platform to target ads illegally, but clearly you shouldn't be targeting job ads to people by age. It seems reasonable to me that an automated ad platform should take steps to prevent users from running illegal ads. It seems like it would be fairly easy, at least for discriminatory ad types: just look at the law and gray out selectors for protected classes when an ad for employment, housing, etc. For instance, if you run an employment ad, age, race, and gender demographic selectors should be disabled.

mesubli 8y ago

So, where do the veterans go? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179054

Spooky23 8y ago
Get a reverse mortgage, work for Home Depot, the government, or lobby for UBI.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

I know almost nothing about the law here, but I imagine intent could be a big part of it. I'm surprised the Bloomberg article seems to make no mention of it. I was also surprised to see this: > Goldman wrote that, “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work.” Why would it ever be acceptable to deliberately filter on the grounds of age?

jrkatz 8y ago
You're assuming they'd be using that to filter people out, but they could simply target ads emphasizing different aspects of the company to different age groups. 'Great kegerator!' for twenty-somethings and 'Great 401k match and relocation packages!' for older groups, or something along those lines.
wmeredith 8y ago
What if they were targeting older workers as part of a diversity program?
- bluGill 8y ago
  That is discrimination against younger workers. Diversity programs are a double edged sword, there are groups that are under represented. However every time you target them you lose the larger group that you didn't target, and that group has great people.
  - rohansingh 8y ago
    Not making a judgement either way, but just a heads-up— there's actually no federal prohibition against discriminating on the basis of youth. Age discrimination laws only work in one direction.
    - MaxBarraclough 8y ago
      Interesting. Here in the UK, the law can work both ways, with exceptions where there is good reason. https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/protected-characteristics/age-discrimination/ https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discriminat... , https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work-learning/discrimination-rights/the-equality-act/ https://www.ageuk.org.uk/information-advice/work-learning/di...

JaceLightning 8y ago

I mean, are we going to start suing companies who go to career fairs at colleges too?

csixty4 8y ago
There are plenty of older college students. There were lots of grey hairs in my night classes.
- dominotw 8y ago
  Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to.
  - electricslpnsld 8y ago
    I don't think this is true -- most of the Ivys have entire schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students (see, for example, the Columbia University School of General Studies), and Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys.
    - dominotw 8y ago
      > Google/Facebook/etc recruit quite heavily from the Ivys. Yes but do they recruit older non traditional students. Schools catering to them doesn't automatically imply that they are being hired by google.
      - lainga 8y ago
        You just moved the goalposts from "don't recruit where there are older students" to "yes, they recruit there, but do they recruit the older students".
        dominotw 8y ago
        ok. I see what you mean. > don't recruit where there are older students But they don't recuit from 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students ' My original comment is still true > Not in the places where top tech companies are willing to go to. "places" here can be 'schools dedicated to older 'nontraditional' students' within Ivies.

tannhaeuser 8y ago

In the sense that if you are "on Fb" you're old by definition I guess.

deleted 8y ago
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danschumann 8y ago

I sometimes wonder how much the fear of something is actually an additional problem to the thing itself. NOTE: I am not denying agism exists, I'm wondering about the additional problem of fear of agism. The fear that someone might be agist, might make you look at them judgmentally/suspiciously. If you look at your interviewer judgmentally/suspiciously they likely won't hire you, and they probably feel pretty suspicious about you. If you walk into an interview and say, "I know I'm old, and you probably won't hire me because you want a young person", well, obviously they won't hire you because you sound depressed. Again, this is not to say that some people aren't agist, even if the candidate shows none of these signs. I'm just wondering how much of factor the fear of agism is, compared to agism itself, on a regional level. Are there any people who do clinical studies here?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
While this might be interesting academically, I think if ageism is a problem that might generically scare candidates, then that too is the ageists fault for creating that culture of policy, and not a candidate's fault for sincerely being worried about something that is actually worth worrying about. We could say something similar about racism. "How much of a factor the fear of racism is, compared to racism itself..." It seems silly to really spend any time on this type of second-order extra effect when there are real, harmful, huge first-order effects (namely, actual racism and actual ageism) demonstrably happening. We should focus on the big, up-front, obvious monster standing right in front of us, instead of asking, how much of our problem is caused by the monster in front of us as opposed to a hypothetical monster in the closet, and letting it distract us (or worse, trying to flip things around and blame candidates for being too sensitive or try to sympathetically justify what ageist businesses are doing to their long-time employees or to older job candidates).
- danschumann 8y ago
  The racist wins if he can spoil your other interviews. Let's say you have 4 interviews, the first one has a racist, and it's obvious. Now let's say you get bitter and resentful, and you blow your other 3 interviews, even though those 3 people aren't racist. The racist is happy(if he finds out) because not only did he prevent you from getting his job, he messed with your head and prevented you from getting the attainable 3 jobs. So, within the scenario above, racism can take one toll or many tolls. And this is on the individual level, wherein people operate from day to day. They need a job. It would seem that being able to reset expectations, forgive, forbear, and go into the subsequent 3 interviews would be the ideal strategy to achieve success in job hunting, and prevent the racist from doing the most damage. Since you mentioned 2nd order effects: how much do the 2nd order effects recreate/reinforce the first order effects? This would be another psychological survey I would be interested in. If someone is fearful of racists, how many people are likely to become more racist as a result of this fear ( either themselves or people they come in contact with )? Isn't racism based on fear in the first place? Fear of other races? ( and therefore a reaction to fight or flight arbitrarily based on race? ) Batman: "Gee Robbin, I notice you are afraid when you are around people of other races" Robbin: "Well it's because I think they're racist against me" slap Batman: "Robbin you are becoming the thing you fear the most!"

notacoward 8y ago

As a 53-year-old Facebook employee, I find the part about Facebook doing this for their own hiring a bit odd. To the extent that anyone has ever reacted to my age with anything other than mild surprise, people generally seem quite glad to see something besides another fresh 20-something face and to hear the voice of long experience. Then again, I didn't come in via a Facebook ad. Maybe companies use different methods to search for candidates of different ages or experience levels because our own job-seeking habits are different. I was already a principal before the web even existed, let alone Facebook or LinkedIn. Even then I didn't look at generic ads anywhere to find a new job. I used headhunters, and then purely personal contacts. I'm sure many of my contemporaries are the same. If such broadcast ads are basically a waste of money seeking that kind of employee, and other methods are being tried, is that really "disparate treatment" in any meaningful sense?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I don't know. I was recommended to a specific domain-specialized role in Facebook by someone with a long tenure inside the company, and after the recommendation, I was just auto-routed into the standard, crappy candidate pipeline like everyone else, told I'd have to do whatever 6-month rotation bootcamp, asked why I didn't have a bunch of Javascript experience. It certainly felt like they make an effort to pedantically screen everyone through such a process exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards. I am not claiming that I specifically experienced ageism, although it is possible. But I definitely experienced some type of "junior dev, infinitely flexible, doesn't know his own market compensation worth, etc." filters, which in many cases are going to systematically filter out experienced professionals.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > exactly to enforce various uniformity and policy standards. Wouldn't that be the exact opposite of the "disparate treatment" the lawsuit alleges?
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago

master_yoda_1 8y ago

Facebook themselves are a big age discriminator in recruiting. Most of the company in the silicon valley do age discrimination.

koolba 8y ago

If I advertise a job in a church newsletter am I screening out Jews, Muslims, and atheists? How about a job in a predominantly black newspaper, am I screening out Latino candidates? How about a job ad in a predominantly lesbian one, is that screening straight men? What about one in a youth newsletter or Facebook demographically targeted ad, is that screening out old people? I’d argue intent is what matters. If the goal is to reach a demographic you think will have fine candidates then proceed. If it’s purely exclusionary to circumvent labor laws because you’re avoiding someone else then it’s a problem. The analysis for this should not be at the inbound funnel, but instead at the net result based on the received candidate pool. That’s where you can see whether an actual bias exists.

sandworm101 8y ago

Take this from a former tech lawyer: The startups that only want kids and new grads are hiding skeletons. They know they are doing something incorrectly/illegally and don't want anyone in the building who is likely to recognize such mistakes, let alone object to them. They fear industry knowledge and experience. Typical example: I had a couple clients who sent new staff on unpaid "training" courses, in violation of labour laws. They only hired kids and so by the time I showed up this had been going on for ten years. The founders knew, but all under them didn't know a thing about labour laws, including the extensive HR department. Then one day a former employee sent an email ... and I handed the client to a litigator to prepare the response to the class action by former employees.

superkuh 8y ago

It'd be nice if these same protected class laws applied to the rampant and increasing age discrimination against 18 to 21 year old adults. Discrimination of them is not just common but baked into the culture and acknowledged as a good thing (ie, car rentals, firearm purchases, etc). They get all the downsides and responsibilities of being a full citizen but are treated as second class citizens. Sure, discrimination against the old happens. But it's not nearly as common or widespread as discrimination against the young.

ivanhoe 8y ago

Older devs don't buy the CEO's BS that easy and don't care about table tennis, you need to pay them in real money - which obviously makes them a completely wrong fit for so many players in the industry...

this_na_hipster 8y ago

While I understand Ageism exists, I do see a trend change though. Take for example all these technical tracks in many companies now. All of these engineers are very tenured and usually very experienced(40+). In-fact they are considered irreplaceable by management since they set the vision of the company. Especially in the valley, the trend I notice is that you don't want to lose these "senior staff, staff engineers etc."

BasHamer 8y ago

Data-driven algorithms are discriminating based upon undesirable/illegal vectors; they are utterly amoral in optimizing their solutions. Even if the algorithm does not have access to the "Age" field, then there are plenty of proxies, like what reunion tour you liked. And the same goes for race, gender, sexual identification, religion, etc. To solve this we either need the training data to have no illegal/undesired discrimination, or we make the system moral. I think the first is impossible, and the second is what we will do sooner or later.

biztos 8y ago
How would you make the system moral? Let's say "moral" means "won't discriminate based on X" and the same "system" is used by everyone, which of course it wouldn't be. So do you make up a bunch of fake "people" who are equal in everything except X, and test that it doesn't advantage/disadvantage the X's? Would that even be possible if the "system" is getting its inputs from social media? Do you do mandate some kind of audit of the system's decisions, and require it to choose on average the same percentage of Xs as... what? As there are Xs in the general population? In the candidate pool? I'd love for this kind of thing to work but even in an idealized hypothetical version it's hard to see how it could. I think in tech we've already shown that shame is no barrier to hiring discrimination, and as HR+AI type filtering systems preselect candidates for you it'll be harder and harder for you or the government or the disadvantaged candidates to even know if you're discriminating. You'll judge the "system" based solely on whether the set of candidates you got achieved the outcome you needed.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "How would you make the system moral?" Don't use it.
- BasHamer 8y ago
  train it. Give it examples that we consider moral and examples of what we consider immoral and have it figure it out. The solutions that the algorithms create are less complex than the data that they base the solutions on; so it should be relatively easy for it to model these solutions as data. We would have to train it on what we consider moral and immoral; that would require us to visualize the solutions in a way that a human can make the determination and provide the feedback. As far as how we get to the solution, that will probably come when there is a liability for discrimination. So lawsuits like the one mentioned. I think that mandating does not work well, it would be more appropriate to make people liable for the decisions made by amoral systems. This liability would create a demand for moral systems.

bo1024 8y ago

Many of the posts here focus on ageism but this is just one example of discriminatory algorithms/ML in action. Don't be surprised if the same headline reappears soon with gender or race substituted. There is currently an academic movement often called "fairness in machine learning" aiming to correct these kinds of behaviors in automated systems.

biztos 8y ago
Thanks, I didn't know this was a Thing in academia. Just found a nice intro here, starting a few slides in: https://fairmlclass.github.io/1.html https://fairmlclass.github.io/1.html
- biztos 8y ago
  OT but I'm surprised this got down voted. Anybody care to tell me what etiquette I violated here?
  - bo1024 8y ago
    No idea
gowld 8y ago
As the former-kids say, "Simpsons did it". We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination in ads. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing-ads-discrimination-lawsuit.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/nyregion/facebook-housing...
- Jeff-Stryker 8y ago
  >We already had the news cycle over racial discrimination We will have it again. News is manufactured. Discrimination in the news is meant to splinter the populace. You Old people need to fear and hate the young (millennials vs. Boomers) You Black people need to fear and hate the whites You White people need to fear and hate the latinos You Gay people need to fear and hate the transsexuals It is a constant barrage if you are paying attention. Divide and Conguer.

agrippanux 8y ago

Age discrimination being rampant in our industry is a fantastic opportunity for an astute hiring manager. I go out of my way to hire older devs that are eschewed by typical Bay Area startups. I can get a seasoned pro with a solid background in C - and other more trendy languages - for about the same price of a 3-years-working-experience "senior dev" who likely was battlefield commissioned into the role at their last startup. The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. If you know how to run a tight org - and not a sweatshop of 20-year olds pulling 16 hour days where only maybe 2-3 hours are actual programming time - then older devs are a fantastic bargain. Plus, when it comes time to architect something complex, I have found older devs typically create more simple and elegant solutions just because they have been exposed to more. Of course, I do run into the occasional stuck-in-the-mud older dev who is very slow to adapt to current trends and wants everyone else to get off their lawn. That has been a rare exception to my overall experience and I don't think it should be used to stereotype the older devs as a group.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> The typical solid dev can only put in 4, maybe 5-6 hours of actual good coding a day. Outside of extremely rare triage situations, this limit is true for all developers, regardless of age or quality of output. Beyond about the 6 hour mark, people can force themselves to sit in a chair and hit keys on a keyboard like the Swedish chef from the muppets, but it's pure management denial to believe those hours count as "productivity" and in fact when the defect rates start to get high and fatigue compounds and morale drops, it's really anti-productive. Really, younger age is just usually correlated with fewer extracurricular responsibilities, i.e. home repair, health maintenance, domestic responsibilities, marriage, children, etc. These things tend to increase with age, making it a scheduling impossibility for older workers to sit in the chair at 8 pm going "hur duh dur" while slapping keys.
- always_good 8y ago
  > this limit is true for all developers Maybe sober, but that's not the limit once you factor in the rampant use of amphetamine.

jhowell 8y ago

Maybe this company needs regulation. I think the benefit of the doubt can be used to hide reason.

GhostVII 8y ago

Would radio ads be discrimination because they generally target and older audience? Or TV adds on shows that are generally viewed by older audiences or younger audiences? If it is discrimination to only show Facebook job ads to certain demographics, it should also be descrimination to show ads on platforms only viewed by certain demographics.

oculusthrift 8y ago
lol this is a pretty lame argument. radio stations would love more young listeners. it’s a little differnt than intentionally filtering out some of your audience

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

oculusthrift 8y ago

devils advocate reasons to avoid older tech job seekers: 1. they are less pliable. they have experience st other companies and typically want to keep doing stuff the way they did at their previous company. it’s a lot more work to make someone unlearn bad habits than teach them good ones 2. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you’re still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect. 3. Our company wants people to work insane hours and maybe your family prevents that

biztos 8y ago
adversarial advocate: 1. your idea of good habits resists logical scrutiny, and more experienced workers might bring this to light. 2. many people never advance into positions of broader responsibility, and if you're hiring for a dev job this is not a bad thing. (also, cf. real-world corporate engineering vs. management ladders) 3. if your company is open about its insane hours and compensates accordingly, candidates who aren't cool with it will self-deselect.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
The devil has plenty of advocates already. "2. If you have 20+ years of experience you should really be at the management or architect level. if you’re still a typical engineer (even senior) it may indicate a defect." This is absolute crap; not wanting to be in management because you don't have the skillset for it is not a defect. This idea needs to die a painful death.

OhHeyItsE 8y ago

I always wonder where the myth that older developers are "slower" comes from. Dunno about you folks, but I get better and faster every year. And, for me, that productivity metric is probably approaching parabolic. You learn enough languages, frameworks, tools - all the fundamentals start to merge together. You can pick the next one up faster than you did the one you just put down. You understand how to design software; how to organize code. Exactly when to reuse, refactor, or copy/paste. You have a better understanding of how the market works and the competitive strategies around product development will manifest - not only within your own product and industry, but when analyzing and choosing vendors as well (you really want to leave it up to a 25 year-old to choose AWS vs GCP?). Sure, I've got a ton of better things to spend my nights and weekends on than writing code for free. I can also spot a doomed project from a mile a way and have no qualms about delivering a very curt "yeah no thanks" to that project manager who waddles over with some deluded hero fantasy where they carry the flag on my back for something that's probably never going to see the light of day anyway. Maybe that's it? That's probably it...

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
53-year-old coder here. (Although that's not my primary job) I still love programming. I love new frameworks and tools, I love solving problems for people. I love having fun with a good team. I do reason a bit slower, but that's because -- I think -- I'm considering more options than I did when I was younger. I also have a tendency to like "grinding": you know, things like hooking up copy constructors for C++ classes in order to make a more complete type system. So I stay on the lookout for that. If anything has changed, it's just I try to be much more careful about getting in a rut. And that's crazy, because that's the accusation people make about older coders. I always want to hold the problem in one hand and the tech in the other, looking to see what the minimum amount of work is required. When I was younger, people would describe the problem to me, then I would dive down and focus almost exclusively on whatever the tech was. It was like a big video game or mathematical puzzle that I enjoyed as much or more than making stuff people wanted. I've seen a lot of people in the industry spend a lot of time, effort, and money doing that. I've seen good friends end up out of work because they fell in love with a certain tech that the rest of the industry decided wasn't cool any more. So now I try to look at solutions as much as tech -- more so, really. Ideally you wouldn't code anything, just make stuff people want without indulging your desire to work with detailed systems of symbols.

BadassFractal 8y ago

As someone approaching that 40yo cutoff soon enough, does that same apparent bias in hiring show up for managers and executives as well, or only hands-on individual contributors? Maybe there's a general perception that if you're in your 40s and you've worked hard enough, by then you should be a director or VP of some kind, and if you're not you must have messed up? I understand not everybody is meant for managerial ladder climbing, but is that perhaps the stereotype that everybody expects?

cm2012 8y ago

This is really dumb if you understand how Facebook's advertising algorithm works. It's going to optimize job ads towards people who click job ads. Young people are more likely to be looking for jobs than older people, and thus click job ads more. [1] So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective, because they want to see these type of ads more by far. By the data, older people do not want to see these type of ads and thus are not shown them. If you did show it to them, they would complain about bad ads (anyone who does FB advertising gets a report from FB on how many people Xed out an ad, and too many is really bad for your account) Nothing to do with worker effectiveness or how HR treats older applicants, which is what 95% of the comments in this thread are taking the opportunity to talk about. [1] " About 60% of Millennials are currently open to a new job opportunity and are by far the most likely generation to switch jobs. To support that, 21% of Millennials in 2016 reported switching jobs within the past year, compared to roughly 7% of gen Xers and other non-Millennials. " https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennials-arent-job-hopping-young-people-are-5-things-to-keep-in-mind/#26d1e0ab10d8 https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryalton/2018/01/22/millennia...

gowld 8y ago
Comments may be offtopic, but I don't see what's "dumb" about it. The article is about discrimination, and you described how Facebook's algorithm learns to discriminate.
- cm2012 8y ago
  That's fair. But discrimination in where you advertise (with the goal of saving 2/3 of your total cash outlay, rather than ruling out a group as a goal) is a whole different kettle of fish compared to discrimination in the HR process. People shouldn't think Facebook ads have anything to do with the latter.
kartan 8y ago
> So Facebook's ad algorithm's are going to target younger people because it's more cost effective Because there is a technical explanation doesn't means that it is not discrimination. Actually discrimination had a lot to do about getting an individual differently because he/she is part of a group. We didn't baked a law, the machine did. It is not a good defense in a trial, or at least I hope it is not. A good read on this topic http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should-artificial-intelligence-be-legally-required-explain-itself http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/qa-should-artificial-...

jiggliemon 8y ago

The joke is really on the employer using Facebook ads to target a younger candidate pool. Youngsters don’t use Facebook. And if a young dev is using Facebook - they’re certainly using an ad-blocker. If they’re not using an ad blocker on Facebook, do you even want to hire them? Seems like if you wanted to attract a pool of young candidates now days, you’d target the parents of the said youngsters. The ones with no applicable experience, and who are still living at home “looking for a job.” The ad should be to the effect of “tired of your good for nothing millennial taking up your third bedroom? Want them to move out? We’re hiring good for nothing straight out of college devs so as to lock them into a low tier pay bracket.”

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
As someone who runs ads on Facebook and other platforms and has a lot of devs who respond, this isn’t true. Not only do devs not all block ads (and it’s kind of offensive to imply that only the good ones do), they even click on ads!
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Yeah, just looked it up. There are over 50 million active users on Facebook between the ages of 25 and 34. In the US alone.

coliveira 8y ago

Discrimination is essentially THE business for FB advertisements in areas such as housing and job openings. It is just a fancy way to circumvent legal requirements that jobs must be posted independent of sex, racial, or religious affiliation. Similarly for housing offerings.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

What statutes would FB be violating, assuming their tools are being used in this way? I wish articles like this would provide a link to the complaint, which is presumably a matter of public record.

edikit 8y ago

It doesn't seem like the blame should fall on Facebook here, but rather the companies using Facebook's tools to age discriminate (assuming there is even blame to place at all). Age-based targeting can be applied across their entire platform, not just for job postings, and it can be applied in either direction (i.e. companies can also create ads targeting only people over the age of 40). > In the amended complaint, CWA alleged that Facebook encourages advertisers to exclude some job-seekers by providing both age filters and regularly updated data on how ads perform among different age groups. IMO, this complaint achieves the opposite of what they want it to achieve. It suggests that the age-related metrics that Facebook offers are a) explicitly defined by the individual advertiser and b) are used to objectively determine the ad's effectiveness rather than to unjustly discriminate.

jcadam 8y ago

I currently work (as of 6 months ago) at a company where the software engineering staff is made up almost exclusively of two types of people: 1.) young 20-somethings who were hired right out of college. They do all of the coding and grunt work (for cheap). 2.) A smaller set of 55+ engineers who are coasting into retirement. They do all of the architecture and design work. I was recruited rather aggressively and eventually accepted an offer (I'm definitely being paid on the high side for this area). As a 38 year old, this place is incredibely lonely (I have no "peers"). I have absolutely no idea why they hired me. The "elders", who have been at the company for 20+ years, are hostile, backstabbing and hoard all of the interesting work (and credit) for themselves. My "lead" (not the manager who made the decision to hire me - I never see that person now) seems to be actively sidelining me - I've been assigned nothing but grunt work.