6 ms·

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

by 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
  I believe the lawsuit is talking about someone using Facebook tools or other means to specifically target subgroups of the population to be able to see a job ad. As in, older candidates would not have even been allowed to know about the job in the first place, regardless of what pipeline a candidate is placed in. So no, I don't think the properties of a pipeline after a candidate has applied would be related to the lawsuit in the OP, though in principle they could still be relevant for ageism issues. I am interested in whether companies design candidate pipelines to be generically ageist or discriminatory in other ways, probably ways for which ageism laws are very hard to enforce. For example, I sincerely view the overwhelming shift to open-plan offices as partly motivated by widespread ageism for the purpose of trying to replace costly older employees with cheaper, more pliable new grads. I worked in a large education tech company some years ago, and they had a large office in Ohio where most of the HR staff for the whole nationwide HR operations was located. They also had limited IT staff, some regional sales staff, etc., but it was known primarily as "the HR office" because that is where those employees were co-located. Everyone in the Ohio office had private offices, and many of the staff had been with the company for a long time. Back in the late 00s, the company completely renovated the whole office building, knocking down walls and reorganizing it so that everyone had to use open-plan shared desk spaces. In one of the end of the year meetings, it was actually revealed that the company spent a ton of money to do this, upwards of $14MM if I remember correctly, and yet they did not have any plan to increase headcount there. Most of the HR staff were outraged, especially because many aspects of their jobs required private phone calls about confidential HR topics, or calls with job applicants, etc. Even though they needed the ability to make private calls almost every day, the tool they used to do it (private offices) was taken away at expense to the company and replaced with a bank of tiny 1-person phone booth rooms, that you had to compete for every day to book time slots for private calls. Someone even asked in the company's town hall Q&A why they would do this, and the CEO's response (most of us watched by web stream) was something like, "We are a technology company at heart, and every one of you is an innovator, and innovators love open spaces." Sure enough, within about 4 years, there had been huge turnover in older HR staff in Ohio, with most positions being replaced by entry level workers, and huge grumblings around the rest of the company that we were not getting the level of support from HR that we needed or had been getting previously. Really, it was just a restructuring ploy, with a slight bit of ageism (not sure if any part was illegal, but clearly in spirit it was the type of ageism we wish was illegal). In my mind, a lot of HR processes that are supposed to be fair "because they apply to everyone" are actually just engineered to be processes that would surreptitiously hurt older employees or candidates, even if not outright illegal to do so.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    > older candidates would not have even been allowed to know about the job To be more precise, they would not have seen the job on Facebook. That's not the same as not being allowed to know about the job, and the difference matters. The question is not whether they were included by a particular venue, medium, or method. If it were, every engagement with a headhunter would be discriminating against anyone not part of their clientele. The real question is whether equal efforts were being made to reach people of different age groups across all available means. Do we know whether that's the case? > I sincerely view the overwhelming shift to open-plan offices as partly motivated by widespread ageism I agree that there might be an element of ageism in that choice. Any physiologist can tell you that the kinds of distraction and discomfort inherent in such an environment will affect older people more than younger ones. For the same reason, I think certain interview techniques are inherently ageist, as is a more-than-usual antipathy toward letting people work from home. I'm fortunate that I've been able to overcome these obstacles, but the very fact that they are obstacles is problematic IMO. > a lot of HR processes that are supposed to be fair "because they apply to everyone" are actually just engineered That's true of a lot more than HR processes, though I would caution you not to assume malice where incompetence (ignorance, insufficient diligence) would be sufficient. That said, disparate impact and disparate treatment are two different standards. Perhaps the law should address disparate impact. Or perhaps that would create its own ills. In any case, it doesn't. Uniform application of a standard or process still seems like a strong defense against charges of disparate treatment, even if those standards or processes create disparate outcomes.
    - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
      To your first point -- I agree. I mean, obviously the reporting about this is going to have hype for the sake of blood-in-the-water Facebook bashing. The basic fact that Facebook tools allowed targeting ads by specific demographic exclusion seems really tricky, and it's not a slam dunk lawsuit, although probably many people believe such tools offer easy ways for ill-intentioned employers to get away with overt ageist tactics. I'm not saying this to defend Facebook or anything, only that I agree the details of the OP lawsuit are complicated. The thread seems like a good place to talk more generally about ageism in tech hiring too though, which is why I added my experience and follow-up impressions.
- jmull 8y ago
  No, come on. Because an age filter is applied uniformly doesn't mean it isn't disparate treatment for people of different ages.
  - notacoward 8y ago
    "Come on" yourself. Neither I nor the GP was talking about uniform application of a filter. We were talking about uniform application of a post-hiring process. Even if one could argue that it results in disparate outcomes - which you have yet to do - that's not the same as disparate treatment.
    - jmull 8y ago
      Well, the very sentence you quoted characterizes the process as a screen, in the sense of a filter. Later the post uses the actual word filter a couple times, so I know that's what the post was talking about. And, of course, a post-hiring process can function as a filter. Also, the term disparate treatment is yours -- a vague term which I merely used in the same sense you did. You used it to describe what the lawsuit alleges, which is directly about outcomes (whether or not a person is hired). If you're going to draw a semantic distinction between outcomes and treatment now, that's fine, but that just means your earlier terminology was imprecise and we were still discussing outcomes the whole time.
      - notacoward 8y ago
        > the term disparate treatment is yours Untrue. It's directly from the second paragraph of the news story you clearly didn't read. It's also not vague as you claim. It's a legal term with an established definition, and it's highly relevant. As you so politely introduced yourself to this conversation, COME ON. Again. Read before you start launching arguments that others will find laughable.
        jmull 8y ago
        >Untrue. It's directly from the second paragraph... Fair enough, you're right and I withdraw that. I realize now you were making irrelevant observation rather than a topical argument. (It doesn't matter to the point being made in the post you quoted or it's ancestor post or to the suit wether or not that poster's experience is the opposite of the disparate treatment alleged in the suit.) > As you so politely introduced yourself to this conversation, COME ON. Again. Read before you start launching arguments that others will find laughable. Oh, come on. My mistake was in construing your post as being more coherent than it actually was.
lclarkmichalek 8y ago
So everyone in the same role goes through the same interview, and everyone in the same role goes through the same 6 week bootcamp. The aim, as I understand it, is to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was hired into it', and to allow more internal mobility without the need to reinterview. I can join any team for my role without needing to interview again, which reduces the friction a lot. With that said, sorry you had a bad experience :/ The Javascript question does sound misplaced.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  As a matter of great personal pride, I do suck at Javascript :)
- JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  > ... to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was hired into it', This is why you do your best to hire mature employees no matter their age and fire immature employees, no matter their age.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    I assume you mean that employees who think their colleagues must suck at Y because they are on team X, or who worry themselves about whether some other team's chosen hiring standards are "too easy," are the immature ones? (And presumably it's immature to even care about 'sucking at Y' at all, unless a specific task requires skill at Y and is not being solved, in which case it sounds like a problem of assigning it to the wrong person, not a problem of general hiring for Y in all cases.)

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
I believe the lawsuit is talking about someone using Facebook tools or other means to specifically target subgroups of the population to be able to see a job ad. As in, older candidates would not have even been allowed to know about the job in the first place, regardless of what pipeline a candidate is placed in. So no, I don't think the properties of a pipeline after a candidate has applied would be related to the lawsuit in the OP, though in principle they could still be relevant for ageism issues. I am interested in whether companies design candidate pipelines to be generically ageist or discriminatory in other ways, probably ways for which ageism laws are very hard to enforce. For example, I sincerely view the overwhelming shift to open-plan offices as partly motivated by widespread ageism for the purpose of trying to replace costly older employees with cheaper, more pliable new grads. I worked in a large education tech company some years ago, and they had a large office in Ohio where most of the HR staff for the whole nationwide HR operations was located. They also had limited IT staff, some regional sales staff, etc., but it was known primarily as "the HR office" because that is where those employees were co-located. Everyone in the Ohio office had private offices, and many of the staff had been with the company for a long time. Back in the late 00s, the company completely renovated the whole office building, knocking down walls and reorganizing it so that everyone had to use open-plan shared desk spaces. In one of the end of the year meetings, it was actually revealed that the company spent a ton of money to do this, upwards of $14MM if I remember correctly, and yet they did not have any plan to increase headcount there. Most of the HR staff were outraged, especially because many aspects of their jobs required private phone calls about confidential HR topics, or calls with job applicants, etc. Even though they needed the ability to make private calls almost every day, the tool they used to do it (private offices) was taken away at expense to the company and replaced with a bank of tiny 1-person phone booth rooms, that you had to compete for every day to book time slots for private calls. Someone even asked in the company's town hall Q&A why they would do this, and the CEO's response (most of us watched by web stream) was something like, "We are a technology company at heart, and every one of you is an innovator, and innovators love open spaces." Sure enough, within about 4 years, there had been huge turnover in older HR staff in Ohio, with most positions being replaced by entry level workers, and huge grumblings around the rest of the company that we were not getting the level of support from HR that we needed or had been getting previously. Really, it was just a restructuring ploy, with a slight bit of ageism (not sure if any part was illegal, but clearly in spirit it was the type of ageism we wish was illegal). In my mind, a lot of HR processes that are supposed to be fair "because they apply to everyone" are actually just engineered to be processes that would surreptitiously hurt older employees or candidates, even if not outright illegal to do so.
- notacoward 8y ago
  > older candidates would not have even been allowed to know about the job To be more precise, they would not have seen the job on Facebook. That's not the same as not being allowed to know about the job, and the difference matters. The question is not whether they were included by a particular venue, medium, or method. If it were, every engagement with a headhunter would be discriminating against anyone not part of their clientele. The real question is whether equal efforts were being made to reach people of different age groups across all available means. Do we know whether that's the case? > I sincerely view the overwhelming shift to open-plan offices as partly motivated by widespread ageism I agree that there might be an element of ageism in that choice. Any physiologist can tell you that the kinds of distraction and discomfort inherent in such an environment will affect older people more than younger ones. For the same reason, I think certain interview techniques are inherently ageist, as is a more-than-usual antipathy toward letting people work from home. I'm fortunate that I've been able to overcome these obstacles, but the very fact that they are obstacles is problematic IMO. > a lot of HR processes that are supposed to be fair "because they apply to everyone" are actually just engineered That's true of a lot more than HR processes, though I would caution you not to assume malice where incompetence (ignorance, insufficient diligence) would be sufficient. That said, disparate impact and disparate treatment are two different standards. Perhaps the law should address disparate impact. Or perhaps that would create its own ills. In any case, it doesn't. Uniform application of a standard or process still seems like a strong defense against charges of disparate treatment, even if those standards or processes create disparate outcomes.
  - mlthoughts2018 8y ago
    To your first point -- I agree. I mean, obviously the reporting about this is going to have hype for the sake of blood-in-the-water Facebook bashing. The basic fact that Facebook tools allowed targeting ads by specific demographic exclusion seems really tricky, and it's not a slam dunk lawsuit, although probably many people believe such tools offer easy ways for ill-intentioned employers to get away with overt ageist tactics. I'm not saying this to defend Facebook or anything, only that I agree the details of the OP lawsuit are complicated. The thread seems like a good place to talk more generally about ageism in tech hiring too though, which is why I added my experience and follow-up impressions.
jmull 8y ago
No, come on. Because an age filter is applied uniformly doesn't mean it isn't disparate treatment for people of different ages.
- notacoward 8y ago
  "Come on" yourself. Neither I nor the GP was talking about uniform application of a filter. We were talking about uniform application of a post-hiring process. Even if one could argue that it results in disparate outcomes - which you have yet to do - that's not the same as disparate treatment.
  - jmull 8y ago
    Well, the very sentence you quoted characterizes the process as a screen, in the sense of a filter. Later the post uses the actual word filter a couple times, so I know that's what the post was talking about. And, of course, a post-hiring process can function as a filter. Also, the term disparate treatment is yours -- a vague term which I merely used in the same sense you did. You used it to describe what the lawsuit alleges, which is directly about outcomes (whether or not a person is hired). If you're going to draw a semantic distinction between outcomes and treatment now, that's fine, but that just means your earlier terminology was imprecise and we were still discussing outcomes the whole time.
    - notacoward 8y ago
      > the term disparate treatment is yours Untrue. It's directly from the second paragraph of the news story you clearly didn't read. It's also not vague as you claim. It's a legal term with an established definition, and it's highly relevant. As you so politely introduced yourself to this conversation, COME ON. Again. Read before you start launching arguments that others will find laughable.
      - jmull 8y ago
        >Untrue. It's directly from the second paragraph... Fair enough, you're right and I withdraw that. I realize now you were making irrelevant observation rather than a topical argument. (It doesn't matter to the point being made in the post you quoted or it's ancestor post or to the suit wether or not that poster's experience is the opposite of the disparate treatment alleged in the suit.) > As you so politely introduced yourself to this conversation, COME ON. Again. Read before you start launching arguments that others will find laughable. Oh, come on. My mistake was in construing your post as being more coherent than it actually was.

lclarkmichalek 8y ago

So everyone in the same role goes through the same interview, and everyone in the same role goes through the same 6 week bootcamp. The aim, as I understand it, is to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was hired into it', and to allow more internal mobility without the need to reinterview. I can join any team for my role without needing to interview again, which reduces the friction a lot. With that said, sorry you had a bad experience :/ The Javascript question does sound misplaced.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
As a matter of great personal pride, I do suck at Javascript :)
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
> ... to avoid talk like 'that person was hired into team X, they must suck at Y' or 'org X is easy to get in to, I wouldn't want to work with someone who was hired into it', This is why you do your best to hire mature employees no matter their age and fire immature employees, no matter their age.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I assume you mean that employees who think their colleagues must suck at Y because they are on team X, or who worry themselves about whether some other team's chosen hiring standards are "too easy," are the immature ones? (And presumably it's immature to even care about 'sucking at Y' at all, unless a specific task requires skill at Y and is not being solved, in which case it sounds like a problem of assigning it to the wrong person, not a problem of general hiring for Y in all cases.)