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I've also thought this would be an interesting approach, even explicitly. The laws on age discrimination are about discriminating against old people, but not a

I've also thought this would be an interesting approach, even explicitly. The laws on age discrimination are about discriminating against old people, but not about discriminating against young people. If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them. You could have roles that are explicitly only hiring people 40+ and that restriction would be legal (at least as I understand it). I think this would be interesting to try.

foobarian 5y ago
How awkward would it be to have the 35+ requirement be outlawed. Would certainly be interesting to read those legal arguments. Edit: I meant 35+ not 40+. Updated.
- TheDong 5y ago
  It would be quite tricky to outlaw. It's perfectly legal to have "years of experience" requirement, so for example you could have a requirement of: "Communication with spoken language is a valuable part of the job. We require all applicants to have 35+ years of experience speaking one or more languages". That's practically a requirement that you're 40/45+ without ever mentioning age.
  - gmadsen 5y ago
    That seems like a court case at least. You would need to prove there is any difference in language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is just an age requirement superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement
    - bachmeier 5y ago
      > That seems like a court case at least. For what? Youth is not a protected class. Discriminate against them all you want. > You would need to prove there is any difference in language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is just an age requirement superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement Age discrimination is different from other discrimination cases. It's really hard to win, for instance[1]. The company doesn't have to prove anything. The worker would have to prove that it was explicit age discrimination. For other types of discrimination, like race, the only thing that needs to be shown is differences in outcomes. [1] https://www.nextavenue.org/what-it-takes-win-age-discrimination-suit/ https://www.nextavenue.org/what-it-takes-win-age-discriminat...
- freeopinion 5y ago
  Are you referring to the constitutional requirement for USA presidential candidates?
marcosdumay 5y ago
If the entire market is discriminating against old people, you don't need any discrimination to fill those roles with them. You just need to ignore age and filter for competence.
- fossuser 5y ago
  Ideally yes, but if the discrimination is there in the process (by recruiters/interviewers intentional or not) then that's hard to do. People will think they're 'ignoring age and filtering for competence' when they're not totally. If you tell recruiters "this role can only be filled by someone 40+" it immediately forces that competence filter within those bounds. If there is a lot of under valued talent there that could be a strategic hiring advantage. Obviously don't do this for all roles, but some age restricted 'tribal elder' roles or something for each team would be interesting imo.
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Oh, sure, when the entire society is discriminating, not discriminating may require active initiative. Things like this one "we don't care if you are old" announcement surely help. But you don't need to discriminate on the reverse direction, and doing that is probably harmful.
    - fossuser 5y ago
      I definitely agree with this sentiment in nearly every case - goal of society should be one where these kinds of characteristics are irrelevant and discriminating in some other way to correct is generally a bad idea. It was mostly a thought experiment about how a software company could gain a hiring advantage in a clever way (if old people are undervalued by the market for dumb reasons). At least in the case of age the categories are clear (as opposed to more nebulous socially defined groupings of people).
    - ritchie1270 5y ago
      Seems to me that "we prefer older workers for this position" looks a lot like affirmative action. Do you feel the same about that?
Alex3917 5y ago
> If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them While age discrimination is certainly real, I think it's also conflated with the fact that there just isn't a lot of demand for people who are good at their jobs in general. I'd liken it to how, if you take up baking, then on pretty much your first try you can make a pie that's better than the pie from almost every commercial bakery. The reason for that isn't because home bakers have more knowledge of baking techniques than professional bakers -- they don't, not by a long shot. It's because if only 1 in 100 people is willing to actually pay enough to make it profitable to make properly made baked good, then there just aren't many situations where you can build a business around doing that. In other words, older people might not be less employable in spite of the fact that they're better at their jobs, but because they're better at their jobs.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Yep. I had to demonstrate competence in system design and scaling for my current role. We haven't touched that stuff at all as nobody has wanted to pay for that upfront and when scale has been needed, they have just added compute.
  - Alex3917 5y ago
    Right, and that's not even the difficult part of doing a startup. I did a software dev interview where they asked me if I had any questions, and I said something along the lines of "I notice that if you look at Mark Zuckerberg's reading list, he's reading books about things like the history of the Islamic golden age, whereas you're asking me questions about javascript syntax. Do you actually think the latter is more important?" And then they kicked me out halfway through the interview.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      DO they really want the opinions of developers for anything non-technical? My current startup hired me partially on account of product experience. I’ve been an exclusively technical resource.

foobarian 5y ago

How awkward would it be to have the 35+ requirement be outlawed. Would certainly be interesting to read those legal arguments. Edit: I meant 35+ not 40+. Updated.

TheDong 5y ago
It would be quite tricky to outlaw. It's perfectly legal to have "years of experience" requirement, so for example you could have a requirement of: "Communication with spoken language is a valuable part of the job. We require all applicants to have 35+ years of experience speaking one or more languages". That's practically a requirement that you're 40/45+ without ever mentioning age.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  That seems like a court case at least. You would need to prove there is any difference in language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is just an age requirement superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    > That seems like a court case at least. For what? Youth is not a protected class. Discriminate against them all you want. > You would need to prove there is any difference in language skill from someone with 15 years versus 35 years, otherwise it is just an age requirement superficially disguised as a needed skill requirement Age discrimination is different from other discrimination cases. It's really hard to win, for instance[1]. The company doesn't have to prove anything. The worker would have to prove that it was explicit age discrimination. For other types of discrimination, like race, the only thing that needs to be shown is differences in outcomes. [1] https://www.nextavenue.org/what-it-takes-win-age-discrimination-suit/ https://www.nextavenue.org/what-it-takes-win-age-discriminat...
freeopinion 5y ago
Are you referring to the constitutional requirement for USA presidential candidates?

marcosdumay 5y ago

If the entire market is discriminating against old people, you don't need any discrimination to fill those roles with them. You just need to ignore age and filter for competence.

fossuser 5y ago
Ideally yes, but if the discrimination is there in the process (by recruiters/interviewers intentional or not) then that's hard to do. People will think they're 'ignoring age and filtering for competence' when they're not totally. If you tell recruiters "this role can only be filled by someone 40+" it immediately forces that competence filter within those bounds. If there is a lot of under valued talent there that could be a strategic hiring advantage. Obviously don't do this for all roles, but some age restricted 'tribal elder' roles or something for each team would be interesting imo.
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Oh, sure, when the entire society is discriminating, not discriminating may require active initiative. Things like this one "we don't care if you are old" announcement surely help. But you don't need to discriminate on the reverse direction, and doing that is probably harmful.
  - fossuser 5y ago
    I definitely agree with this sentiment in nearly every case - goal of society should be one where these kinds of characteristics are irrelevant and discriminating in some other way to correct is generally a bad idea. It was mostly a thought experiment about how a software company could gain a hiring advantage in a clever way (if old people are undervalued by the market for dumb reasons). At least in the case of age the categories are clear (as opposed to more nebulous socially defined groupings of people).
  - ritchie1270 5y ago
    Seems to me that "we prefer older workers for this position" looks a lot like affirmative action. Do you feel the same about that?

Alex3917 5y ago

> If age discrimination is real, that means that people are not valuing older people properly - they're undervaluing them While age discrimination is certainly real, I think it's also conflated with the fact that there just isn't a lot of demand for people who are good at their jobs in general. I'd liken it to how, if you take up baking, then on pretty much your first try you can make a pie that's better than the pie from almost every commercial bakery. The reason for that isn't because home bakers have more knowledge of baking techniques than professional bakers -- they don't, not by a long shot. It's because if only 1 in 100 people is willing to actually pay enough to make it profitable to make properly made baked good, then there just aren't many situations where you can build a business around doing that. In other words, older people might not be less employable in spite of the fact that they're better at their jobs, but because they're better at their jobs.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Yep. I had to demonstrate competence in system design and scaling for my current role. We haven't touched that stuff at all as nobody has wanted to pay for that upfront and when scale has been needed, they have just added compute.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  Right, and that's not even the difficult part of doing a startup. I did a software dev interview where they asked me if I had any questions, and I said something along the lines of "I notice that if you look at Mark Zuckerberg's reading list, he's reading books about things like the history of the Islamic golden age, whereas you're asking me questions about javascript syntax. Do you actually think the latter is more important?" And then they kicked me out halfway through the interview.
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    DO they really want the opinions of developers for anything non-technical? My current startup hired me partially on account of product experience. I’ve been an exclusively technical resource.