New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by uoaei on Saturday June 08, 2019 @06:02PM (#20135459)

"I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the software engineer's great stumbling block in his stride toward hiring fairness is not the Genius Asshole or the Bullshitter Who Can't Code, but the anonymous internet commenter, who is more devoted to 'pragmatism' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of reform to a positive peace which is the presence of fairness..."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by wellpast on Saturday June 08, 2019 @08:20PM (#20136119)

Nobody is striving toward ‘hiring fairness’ ... don’t believe any person who says that’s what they are after.

Better outcomes, better industry productivity, sure. But ‘hiring fairness’?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by Youcandothis on Sunday June 09, 2019 @01:10AM (#20137246)

Hiring fairness sounds to me like the same as hiring for better outcomes and industry productivity.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by pmiller2 on Sunday June 09, 2019 @02:00AM (#20137428)

I agree. Fairness in the sense of “equal ability to do the job results in the same outcome” would, indeed, get us there. The problem is that interviews don’t actually represent ability to do the job, not in this industry, at least.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by wellpast on Sunday June 09, 2019 @10:16AM (#20139335)

They must to a significant degree or businesses would tank.

The (open) question is, can we do better?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by pmiller2 on Sunday June 09, 2019 @12:53PM (#20140298)

I’m on a team with 8 other people right now. All 9 of us are quite capable at our jobs. We all got through some sort of interview process to get there, of course, but that just means we weren’t weeded out. We weren’t false positives, in other words.

But, why did we get through? Maybe the process really is capable of separating wheat from the chaff. Maybe the process works 85% of the time, and the 1 time it didn’t work in recent memory is someone who has already left the company. Maybe only capable people self select into the process for some reason. Maybe we’ve been phenomenally lucky.

The point is, just because a filter allows the right people through doesn’t mean it’s necessarily any good.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by wellpast on Sunday June 09, 2019 @02:45PM (#20141030)

> The point is, just because a filter allows the right people through doesn’t mean it’s necessarily any good.

I define “good” and “right people” to be that which produces efficiency, quality, innovation in the business. So a good filter to me is good wrt these outcomes.

The industry is starving for ‘good people’ and ‘good outcomes’ and we should work to optimize this imo.

Any other measure divorced from outcome to me seems... weird.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by pmiller2 on Sunday June 09, 2019 @03:42PM (#20141414)

I wish I could talk about our recruiting funnel numbers. It is the farthest thing from efficient.

Triplebyte claims the industry average onsite pass rate is in the neighborhood of 30% (https://triplebyte.com/blog/12-000-engineers-evaluated). I suspect that the huge majority of those who fail onsites get jobs. Is that efficient?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by wellpast on Monday June 10, 2019 @10:00AM (#20146786)

I’m advocating for improving that efficiency if it is indeed improvable (my intuition says it is by a large margin.)

What I’m saying is that the notion of ‘fairness’ should have little relevance to improving this side of things.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by goatlover on Saturday June 08, 2019 @08:38PM (#20136182)

So anonymous internet comments are inhibiting the fair hiring practices of software engineers? Is there a study establishing the causal link between these two, because it sounds like spurious BS.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by x0 on Saturday June 08, 2019 @08:57PM (#20136255)

I think he's quoted MLK and substituted some phrases.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by uoaei on Sunday June 09, 2019 @06:10PM (#20142259)

"Anonymous internet commenter" serves as exemplar for all those who say that "we just have to play the game".

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by s_m_t on Saturday June 08, 2019 @07:27PM (#20135892)

Dude, really?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by aiisjustanif on Sunday June 09, 2019 @01:26AM (#20137301)

Yes

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It by perfmode on Saturday June 08, 2019 @06:19PM (#20135553)

Amen.

[ Parent | on HN ]