5 ms·

The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons: 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qu

by kjs3 7y ago

The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons: 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qualifiers for jobs for which those factors have absolutely zero relevance (girls are bad at math! Old people can't learn new things!), or 2) They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! oldster can only do Cobol, they'll never learn Python!).

soulofmischief 7y ago
I'm glad you care about these things, but to say those are the only two reasons why we have trouble correctly matching people to fulfilling jobs is asinine.
- kitsune_ 7y ago
  This very post is about targeted advertising to keep women and older people from seeing job ads. You then went off a tangent about employer-prospect matching in general. What other reasons are there that lead women and older people to be excluded? I'd probably add salary as a factor with older people.
  - arkh 7y ago
    Older people and women: usually prefer a good work life balance. So they're harder to exploit.
  - soulofmischief 7y ago
    Dude: > The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons: > 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qualifiers for jobs for which those factors have absolutely zero relevance (girls are bad at math! Old people can't learn new things!), or > 2) They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! oldster can only do Cobol, they'll never learn Python!). I didn't "go off on a tangent" about anything. OP already refocused the conversation to apply to the entire problem domain of career matching, which is absolutely absurd, so I teased the two issues back apart. Put on your reading glasses.
jimmaswell 7y ago
I feel like we might as well be honest that age has an impact on cognition. You do get slower at learning new things but valuable experience can be big, as someone said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20609100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20609100
concordDance 7y ago
I can't tell if you are arguing that no job requires learning lots of new things or that old people don't learn any slower than the young... Are you arguing one of those two things or have I misunderstood?
- virgilp 7y ago
  He's probably arguing against generalization. You know, "younger people learn faster than older people on average" might be true; but even if it is, it doesn't preclude "I learn faster than you even though I'm significantly older". Ideally, if you need fast learners, you should hire & test for learning speed, not proxies like age.
hutzlibu 7y ago
What is your proof, that gender and age has zero relevance? I believe, that yes, for example women of a certain age, have a high statistical chance of getting pregnant soon (or already are pregnant). That is very relevant. As they will suddenly be not avaiable anymore for quite some time. While the employer still hase obligations to them (don't know about US, but definitely in germany). Now yes, the correct solution can't be to just exclude women of that age or prefer man. But the reality is, that this is happening a lot. And it sucks and is a hard problem for society in general, but I don't believe the mantra helps to exclaim the problem does not exist.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! This is not a delusion, and it's a thing commonly talked about in my country (Poland). It's not just about that girls will get pregnant and leave - it'll be that girls will get pregnant and out of the sudden[0] go on paid maternity leave, which they can extend to a year, during which you have to keep their position open, after which you can't legally fire them even if you've already found a replacement, and there are many women[1] who plan another pregnancy just after the leave period ends, in order to extend their employment period by another two years. The incentive here is that health leave and maternity leave both count as employment, so they don't have a break in years of employment on their CV (and both are paid, too). Overall effect of our legal landscape makes companies prefer men over women, and/or prefer employment contracts that don't offer these legal guarantees, and there's always noise being made whenever our government (which is currently pro-family) starts talking about adjustments that would extend some protections to those other work contract types. (Now I'm not saying this to justify the bias in general, but just to point out that there are real economic pressures in play that do get considered by the employers.) -- [0] - You don't have a "notice period" on maternity live; if a doctor decides there are concerns about the health of a mother or a child, your employee can just give you the doctor's note and stop coming to work. [1] - And I've personally heard parents encouraging their daughters to do that. It seems to be a common theme, at least among the less well-off parts of our population. The boss-employee relationship is pretty antagonistic.
- emj 7y ago
  It is a good thing that parents can do that, for some reason these issues do not come up when men take paternity leave here. It is very common for fathers to be gone for a 6-12 months after their babies are born. You just need to change the laws, and how you deal with parenting socially, then it will all make sense ("just").
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Our laws allow for two types of paternity leave; one is 14 days, the other is 6 weeks for a single child and taking it reduces mother's maternity leave. This makes it impossible for a man to play shenanigans that make them stay on leave while employed for couple years. Definitely there's a lot of work to be done on parenting in Poland, both in regulatory and social fashion. Currently it's a tension between the traditional family model and the desire to allow women to have equal career prospects to men.

by kjs3 7y ago

soulofmischief 7y ago

I'm glad you care about these things, but to say those are the only two reasons why we have trouble correctly matching people to fulfilling jobs is asinine.

kitsune_ 7y ago
This very post is about targeted advertising to keep women and older people from seeing job ads. You then went off a tangent about employer-prospect matching in general. What other reasons are there that lead women and older people to be excluded? I'd probably add salary as a factor with older people.
- arkh 7y ago
  Older people and women: usually prefer a good work life balance. So they're harder to exploit.
- soulofmischief 7y ago
  Dude: > The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons: > 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qualifiers for jobs for which those factors have absolutely zero relevance (girls are bad at math! Old people can't learn new things!), or > 2) They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! oldster can only do Cobol, they'll never learn Python!). I didn't "go off on a tangent" about anything. OP already refocused the conversation to apply to the entire problem domain of career matching, which is absolutely absurd, so I teased the two issues back apart. Put on your reading glasses.

jimmaswell 7y ago

I feel like we might as well be honest that age has an impact on cognition. You do get slower at learning new things but valuable experience can be big, as someone said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20609100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20609100

concordDance 7y ago

I can't tell if you are arguing that no job requires learning lots of new things or that old people don't learn any slower than the young... Are you arguing one of those two things or have I misunderstood?

virgilp 7y ago
He's probably arguing against generalization. You know, "younger people learn faster than older people on average" might be true; but even if it is, it doesn't preclude "I learn faster than you even though I'm significantly older". Ideally, if you need fast learners, you should hire & test for learning speed, not proxies like age.

hutzlibu 7y ago

What is your proof, that gender and age has zero relevance? I believe, that yes, for example women of a certain age, have a high statistical chance of getting pregnant soon (or already are pregnant). That is very relevant. As they will suddenly be not avaiable anymore for quite some time. While the employer still hase obligations to them (don't know about US, but definitely in germany). Now yes, the correct solution can't be to just exclude women of that age or prefer man. But the reality is, that this is happening a lot. And it sucks and is a hard problem for society in general, but I don't believe the mantra helps to exclaim the problem does not exist.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! This is not a delusion, and it's a thing commonly talked about in my country (Poland). It's not just about that girls will get pregnant and leave - it'll be that girls will get pregnant and out of the sudden[0] go on paid maternity leave, which they can extend to a year, during which you have to keep their position open, after which you can't legally fire them even if you've already found a replacement, and there are many women[1] who plan another pregnancy just after the leave period ends, in order to extend their employment period by another two years. The incentive here is that health leave and maternity leave both count as employment, so they don't have a break in years of employment on their CV (and both are paid, too). Overall effect of our legal landscape makes companies prefer men over women, and/or prefer employment contracts that don't offer these legal guarantees, and there's always noise being made whenever our government (which is currently pro-family) starts talking about adjustments that would extend some protections to those other work contract types. (Now I'm not saying this to justify the bias in general, but just to point out that there are real economic pressures in play that do get considered by the employers.) -- [0] - You don't have a "notice period" on maternity live; if a doctor decides there are concerns about the health of a mother or a child, your employee can just give you the doctor's note and stop coming to work. [1] - And I've personally heard parents encouraging their daughters to do that. It seems to be a common theme, at least among the less well-off parts of our population. The boss-employee relationship is pretty antagonistic.

emj 7y ago
It is a good thing that parents can do that, for some reason these issues do not come up when men take paternity leave here. It is very common for fathers to be gone for a 6-12 months after their babies are born. You just need to change the laws, and how you deal with parenting socially, then it will all make sense ("just").
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Our laws allow for two types of paternity leave; one is 14 days, the other is 6 weeks for a single child and taking it reduces mother's maternity leave. This makes it impossible for a man to play shenanigans that make them stay on leave while employed for couple years. Definitely there's a lot of work to be done on parenting in Poland, both in regulatory and social fashion. Currently it's a tension between the traditional family model and the desire to allow women to have equal career prospects to men.