3 ms·

I have to agree with you. Even if they said that the person looks like a great candidate, failing a telephone interview is not necessarily a sign of age discri

I have to agree with you. Even if they said that the person looks like a great candidate, failing a telephone interview is not necessarily a sign of age discrimination. We once had a guy who looked absolutely fabulous on paper, and was older than me (and I'm pushing 50 ;-) ). To be honest, I was incredibly excited to get the opportunity to work with someone who had more experience than me -- especially with the CV that he had. I'm the oldest person on our team and having someone else who had been there and done that was really enticing. But the phone interview just didn't go well enough. I still kind of regret not calling him in for a face-2-face, but we already had a full plate of people who's phone interview did go well. Sometimes that's just the way it works out. I've screwed up interviews in the past too. One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination.

T-hawk 12y ago
> One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination. Legally, in the US, it isn't. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act specifically only protects workers 40 or older. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm There is nothing illegal at the US federal level about discrimination in the reverse direction (favoring workers over 40, perhaps by overlooking a bad interview), nor about age discrimination against a 39-year-old who is perceived to be too old for the company or industry.
- infamouscow 12y ago
  What I find interesting is that you must be at least 35 years old to hold the office of POTUS, which is age discrimination in the other direction.
  - cauterized 12y ago
    When was the last time we had a seriously-regarded candidate between 35 and 40, though, let alone under 35? It seems like the field self-selects and voters also select for candidates with a high degree of experience in politics, anyway.
    - infamouscow 12y ago
      Wikipedia has a good section about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy#Controversies
    - mehrdada 12y ago
      > voters also select for candidates with a high degree of experience in politics, anyway If that'd genuinely be the case, there's no reason for a hard minimum age limit to be codified. I personally can see the potential for a younger candidate, if given a chance, to be able to mobilize a ton of young voters and even win, especially given the current state of social media. If Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Page can effectively run billion dollar companies in their twenties and early thirties, I can totally see a 20-something be a better POTUS than folks who came before her.
    - mikekchar 12y ago
      I'm feeling silly today, so I'll share my favourite tin-foil hat moment. Consider a political system where only 2 or 3 parties have a reasonable chance to get a significant number of candidates elected (significant means enough to control the direction of policy). Also consider a system where the parties themselves select which candidates that the general voter is allowed to vote for. So in other words, in any given area there will be 2 or 3 candidates that have a decent chance of winning. Those 2 or 3 candidates are selected by their parties to be allowed to run in that area. Obviously some independents will get elected, but not enough to control government policy. Now imagine a system where the people who run for their parties are selected by an internal vote inside the party. If you are not a member of the party, you have no say in which candidates are allowed to run in the area that you vote in. Which, of course, seems completely fair because why should outsiders determine which candidates a party runs? Now imagine that these votes are not one vote per person, but rather vote-by-proxy. In other words, if a member of the party does not wish to vote for candidate selection, they can, instead, assign a proxy to vote for them. In practice, there will be certain very senior people in the party who have a very large number of proxy votes that they can vote with. The average party member will be encourage to assign their proxy to experienced, trusted party leaders because actually attending a convention and voting yourself is a PITA. Through political dealings, there will be big blocks of votes that can can sway the selection very easily. Now imagine that you are some shadowy entity outside of the political system. You have some money that you want to use to influence the political system. Let's say that you want to ensure that enough people sympathetic to your cause are elected (from whatever party) so that you can control public policy. How much money would it cost? Let's say there are 3 parties with a realistic chance of controlling public policy. You don't need to bribe every official. Instead you only need to bribe the people with many proxy votes. Those people can insist that in exchange for promoting the candidate to run in an area, the candidate must "tow the party line" on these kinds of issues. That way the majority of the candidates that realistically stand a chance of affecting public policy are on board with the shadowy entity. The public never really gets a chance to vote on the issue because it has all been controlled at the candidate selection level. Now imagine that you are a young, idealistic candidate that will refuse to make such a horrible deal just to get selected as a candidate. Well, you won't be selected as a candidate. Every 4 years you will try and try and try and after 4 or 5 times you will realize that there is absolutely no way to be a candidate without playing ball with the party politics. By the time you are 40 or 50, you've become realistic and even if you hate it, you will realize that you must compromise on some issues in order to push through the issues that are more important to you. And so any "seriously-regarded" candidate is older, because nobody gets to even pay attention to you until you agree to compromise. And even if you agree to compromise, it takes time before the people with the proxy votes trust that you will follow through. Of course the above is complete fiction. But, I have always thought about it this way: in computer security we feel that if an exploit exists, it is only a matter of time before it is used. The above sounds like a nice little exploit.
tracker1 12y ago
I had a similar experience in doing telephone screenings a few years ago. On paper, the candidate looked a lot like me. But in the phone screen actually had trouble with some very softball questions. We usually asked about SQL, ASP.Net and JavaScript... if the candidate did well in any one of the three, they moved on to the next stage. I was absolutely amazed at the number of people with a decade or more of web development with ASP/ASP.Net SQL and JavaScript that didn't get past that first stage (about 1 in 4). It actually made me very upset that was the state of the hiring process for technical roles. I can't imagine what it's like for Google, given that they tend to ask for more conceptual understanding of common algorithms, which I know for a fact I'd fail at because I simply don't work in constructs that low level, and it's been years since I've read much on them. I do have an understanding of how to distribute work, and connect complex solutions together to a relatively fine grained detail... but being well rounded with a good high-level vision isn't what companies like Google and Microsoft tend to screen for (I have gone through the interview process for MS a few times, but never with Google).

T-hawk 12y ago

> One can't very well overlook a bad interview because the candidate is older. That would also be age discrimination. Legally, in the US, it isn't. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act specifically only protects workers 40 or older. http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm There is nothing illegal at the US federal level about discrimination in the reverse direction (favoring workers over 40, perhaps by overlooking a bad interview), nor about age discrimination against a 39-year-old who is perceived to be too old for the company or industry.

infamouscow 12y ago
What I find interesting is that you must be at least 35 years old to hold the office of POTUS, which is age discrimination in the other direction.
- cauterized 12y ago
  When was the last time we had a seriously-regarded candidate between 35 and 40, though, let alone under 35? It seems like the field self-selects and voters also select for candidates with a high degree of experience in politics, anyway.
  - infamouscow 12y ago
    Wikipedia has a good section about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy#Controversies
  - mehrdada 12y ago
    > voters also select for candidates with a high degree of experience in politics, anyway If that'd genuinely be the case, there's no reason for a hard minimum age limit to be codified. I personally can see the potential for a younger candidate, if given a chance, to be able to mobilize a ton of young voters and even win, especially given the current state of social media. If Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg, and Page can effectively run billion dollar companies in their twenties and early thirties, I can totally see a 20-something be a better POTUS than folks who came before her.
  - mikekchar 12y ago
    I'm feeling silly today, so I'll share my favourite tin-foil hat moment. Consider a political system where only 2 or 3 parties have a reasonable chance to get a significant number of candidates elected (significant means enough to control the direction of policy). Also consider a system where the parties themselves select which candidates that the general voter is allowed to vote for. So in other words, in any given area there will be 2 or 3 candidates that have a decent chance of winning. Those 2 or 3 candidates are selected by their parties to be allowed to run in that area. Obviously some independents will get elected, but not enough to control government policy. Now imagine a system where the people who run for their parties are selected by an internal vote inside the party. If you are not a member of the party, you have no say in which candidates are allowed to run in the area that you vote in. Which, of course, seems completely fair because why should outsiders determine which candidates a party runs? Now imagine that these votes are not one vote per person, but rather vote-by-proxy. In other words, if a member of the party does not wish to vote for candidate selection, they can, instead, assign a proxy to vote for them. In practice, there will be certain very senior people in the party who have a very large number of proxy votes that they can vote with. The average party member will be encourage to assign their proxy to experienced, trusted party leaders because actually attending a convention and voting yourself is a PITA. Through political dealings, there will be big blocks of votes that can can sway the selection very easily. Now imagine that you are some shadowy entity outside of the political system. You have some money that you want to use to influence the political system. Let's say that you want to ensure that enough people sympathetic to your cause are elected (from whatever party) so that you can control public policy. How much money would it cost? Let's say there are 3 parties with a realistic chance of controlling public policy. You don't need to bribe every official. Instead you only need to bribe the people with many proxy votes. Those people can insist that in exchange for promoting the candidate to run in an area, the candidate must "tow the party line" on these kinds of issues. That way the majority of the candidates that realistically stand a chance of affecting public policy are on board with the shadowy entity. The public never really gets a chance to vote on the issue because it has all been controlled at the candidate selection level. Now imagine that you are a young, idealistic candidate that will refuse to make such a horrible deal just to get selected as a candidate. Well, you won't be selected as a candidate. Every 4 years you will try and try and try and after 4 or 5 times you will realize that there is absolutely no way to be a candidate without playing ball with the party politics. By the time you are 40 or 50, you've become realistic and even if you hate it, you will realize that you must compromise on some issues in order to push through the issues that are more important to you. And so any "seriously-regarded" candidate is older, because nobody gets to even pay attention to you until you agree to compromise. And even if you agree to compromise, it takes time before the people with the proxy votes trust that you will follow through. Of course the above is complete fiction. But, I have always thought about it this way: in computer security we feel that if an exploit exists, it is only a matter of time before it is used. The above sounds like a nice little exploit.

tracker1 12y ago

I had a similar experience in doing telephone screenings a few years ago. On paper, the candidate looked a lot like me. But in the phone screen actually had trouble with some very softball questions. We usually asked about SQL, ASP.Net and JavaScript... if the candidate did well in any one of the three, they moved on to the next stage. I was absolutely amazed at the number of people with a decade or more of web development with ASP/ASP.Net SQL and JavaScript that didn't get past that first stage (about 1 in 4). It actually made me very upset that was the state of the hiring process for technical roles. I can't imagine what it's like for Google, given that they tend to ask for more conceptual understanding of common algorithms, which I know for a fact I'd fail at because I simply don't work in constructs that low level, and it's been years since I've read much on them. I do have an understanding of how to distribute work, and connect complex solutions together to a relatively fine grained detail... but being well rounded with a good high-level vision isn't what companies like Google and Microsoft tend to screen for (I have gone through the interview process for MS a few times, but never with Google).