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People who do a lot of personal projects also tend to be young with minimal outside responsibilities. It is no secret that they are appealing hires - someone w
by plughs 7y ago
People who do a lot of personal projects also tend to be young with minimal outside responsibilities. It is no secret that they are appealing hires - someone who's willing to spend long hours on personal projects is probably also willing to spend long hours on work projects.
That's what makes it discrimination.
- malvosenior 7y agoI've never asked my employees to work long hours. That's basic management. I also let them continue working on personal projects whenever possible (getting the rest of the company to agree...).
- plughs 7y agoFew managers ask their employees to work long hours. That doesn't mean they don't expect them to work long hours. "let them continue working on personal projects". How considerate of you to allow them to decide if they want to work long hours on their time or the company's.
- natalyarostova 7y agoLife is about trade-offs. If you want to spend more time outside of work on things like friends and family, that's great. In fact, it's probably optimal. But to then say it's discrimination when someone who has made the choice to instead only focus on their technical skill, at the exclusion of friends and family, is better than you, is a little silly.
- throwawaymath 7y agoTo be more charitable to the commenter's point, that's not what's being asserted as discriminatory. They're making the claim that it's implicitly discriminatory to penalize people who don't spend time on programming outside of work, because that reasonably penalizes people who are older (i.e. more likely to have a family). They are not making the claim that choosing to hire someone better than someone else is discriminatory.
- boring_twenties 7y agoWhy is it discriminatory? All else equal, isn't it clearly better to hire someone with no responsibilities outside of work, than someone who has to be out of the office at 5pm every day to deal with their kids?
- ghaff 7y ago>isn't it clearly better to hire someone with no responsibilities outside of work Umm. No? I see nothing "clearly better" about someone just because they don't have any responsibilities.
- boring_twenties 7y agoReally. You don't see anything better about hiring someone for whom the job will be their #1 priority, and someone else for whom it will be #2 or even lower? I find that difficult to believe.
- riversflow 7y agoHow do you know here that their job will be priority #1? Traditionally, men with families are considered more reliable because having a family demands stability. If I’m a dude who gets sucked into code, who’s to say I won’t get sucked into some other code than what I’m getting paid for.
- perl4ever 7y agoAlso, if you have a family, you're a lot less likely to move to another state for a big raise if you're underpaid.
- LargeWu 7y agoThe main reason that employers seem to think it would be "better" (for them) is so they can pressure said employees for free labor and overly-aggressive timelines.
- Karrot_Kream 7y agoYou don't see external responsibilities as a forcing function for efficiency? Raw time spent is not always a strong indicator of ability to ship, in fact that often means that an engineer is very inefficient and uses a surplus of time to compensate for lack of efficiency.
- scarface74 7y agoIf you’re spending 40+ hours a week at work and not being able to “focus on your technical skills”, you’re doing it wrong.
- natalyarostova 7y agoNo one at work is going to let me learn Lisp :)
- scarface74 7y agoBut if the purpose of doing side projects is to be more competitive in the job market, are there that many high paying jobs that want Lisp? Besides, in my experience, knowing a specific technology from doing side projects usually doesn’t count as much to potential employees as having on the job experience unless your open source project is really popular.
- malvosenior 7y agoI would view any Lisp project as a major bonus in favor of a candidate. It's really encouraging when you see people who have an interest in different programming languages. When I look at people's open source, being a polyglot is a huge plus. Each language offers a unique perspective on programming and the desire to explore them is a strong signal of a self-learner and someone who is passionate about tech.
- pc86 7y agoCalling this discrimination is offensive to people who are actually discriminated against.