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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 t
by 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 agoThis 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 agoDo you think that's the same thing as is alleged in the submission?
- imgabe 8y agoThe difference is WSJ doesn't have an option that says "only show this ad to white readers".
- Simon_says 8y agoThat is a difference, but in degree, not in kind.
- zeth___ 8y agoIn the same way the difference between a stabbing and a murder is one of degree, and 2 inches depth.
- rdiddly 8y agoYou'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 agoFacebook 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 agoWhat 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 agoFacebook explicitly collects your birth date though, doesn't it? (Question is both rhetorical and actual.)
- danShumway 8y agoAnd 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.
- Larrikin 8y agoUsing dozens and possibly hundreds of pictures of the user is not inferred information in any meaningful since. They know your race, most likely with higher than 99% confidence on most people from the images alone. I'm sure it gets even more exact when they start doing text analysis, looking at your likes, and using the image data of your friends and family.
- xphilter 8y agoYou'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 agoThat'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 agoI 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[deleted]
- p0nce 8y agoReaders: what's your exit strategy? You probably need one.
- save_ferris 8y agoWhat 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 agoI 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 agoI moved to a farm and education centre.
- StevePerkins 8y agoYou 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 agoAmen.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- seattle_spring 8y agoI'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 agoWait 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[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jghn 8y agoThey’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 agoI read that as "a lot of people making that claim have or have developed these other, primary traits that are disqualifying them".
- extralego 8y agoSounds 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 agoEverything about the facebook falls apart really.
- castle-bravo 8y agoI'm so glad they banned me.
- DavidWoof 8y agoI'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 agoNo 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 agoResistance to constructive criticism is a potential no-hire signal.
- zepto 8y agoResistance 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 agoThey 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 agoBoggles 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 agoThere'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 agoWhy would a founder want to hire someone who doesn't believe in their business?
- logfromblammo 8y agoBecause 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 agoJust 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 agoShouldn't you be in management by now?
- ConcernedCoder 8y agoIs 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 agoSeems 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 agoIt 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 agoThat'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 agoAre 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 agohow would they know you’re 39 versus 40 in the interview process?
- DoreenMichele 8y agoIn 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.