It does seem like age-based discrimination would have a negative effect on psychological safety, as with any discrimination due to conscious or unconscious biases. Regarding perspective, an experienced individual could either bring in valuable insight from their experience or constantly veer towards the status quo, partly depending on how you want to look at it.
I think the answer is: it is complicated. You now have my ideas on why diversity is valuable. Does age fit that model? (Even if not, of course, age-based discrimination is not good.)
[1] https://news.mit.edu/2014/workplace-diversity-can-help-botto... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learn... [3] https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation [4] https://www.fastcompany.com/1841060/redefining-diversity-new... - bonus
Some of these articles are implying a size of an effect that is completely ridiculous, there is just no way that diversity "could increase revenue by 41%" - we'd see way more diversity in work places if this was true. Here is an article with a different conclusion - and here the "educational diversity" only had a more reasonable 2% effect, while "demographic diversity" is allegedly harmful [1]. But you have to be careful, all of these studies appear to suffer from testing multiple hypothesis - breaking diversity down into sub-categories and looking at each one independently should decrease confidence in the conclusions of these studies.
> Some of these articles are implying a size of an effect that is completely ridiculous, there is just no way that diversity "could increase revenue by 41%" - we'd see way more diversity in work places if this was true.
This seems to be rejecting data and substituting and a handwave. From the original study, 41% is the actual coefficient, controlling for a ton of things. Likely there are latent factors that make workplaces both gender-diverse and performant, so just swapping out half of a workplace would not hit all of these, which the paper acknowledges. We are seeing more diversity thanks to studies like these and explicit diversity initiatives, but given all of the biases that can exist in hiring pipelines, I can't think of any reason why it would happen naturally.
The paper you link is trying to measure firm productivity (could not 100% figure out what this means) based on data from Denmark, mainly non-white-collar jobs. It notes that demographic diversity promotes "better problem-solving abilities and more creativity and knowledge spillover" and can be a "substantial competitive advantage", limited by people not trusting/communicating with each other (i.e. integrating effectively).
[EDIT] Relevant story from HN last year: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/04/64-year-old-engin...
Edit: I certainly understand that this type of discrimination occurs... I just don't think that age is typically an active consideration for companies with mature/experienced management. We all know that "not a good culture fit" can be code for things both fair and unfair.
That's spot on, now you have to wonder how many companies have such management and how many - unfortunately - do not.
Affirmative action isn't the solution either, because that's just introducing more bias into the equation. More discrimination cannot beget less discrimination in this case.
Attitude and aptitude, sure.
When I hired programmers for a startup, I'm pretty sure that I had a unconscious bias towards young candidates, which was at the time justified by the blanket word "attitude" (or "cultural fit").
Now, I'm not claiming that you (or anyone specifically) have the same bias, but I'm pretty sure that I wasn't the only one. You may be a nice exception :)
I really wish people wouldn't hide behind cultural fit as justification. A number doesn't reveal attitude. I'm past 50, but I haven't yet started to aspire to being being middle aged, and have no slippers, cardigans or golf clubs. If given a choice I'll take many a young startup or company over a similar sized company of people my age.
When I look at people my age, I'd guess less than a third have settled into some form of middle age, and those are the friends I've tended to lose touch with. Of the rest, well we probably all-night party a little less, have a few extra commitments, and the kids are a bit older. We all seem to get on with people in their 20s and 30s far easier than my parent's generation did.
If attitude is a euphemism for "won't work extra hours and weekends almost constantly", then yeah. Though I gained that attitude in my 20s six months into my second or third job.
Modern 50 year olds have a different set of preferences than their parents. Most do not wear the clothing and hairstyles of modern 20 year olds.
Will Smith on some interview for Suicide Squad talked about tattoos. All of the younger cast got tattoos. He, as a 40+ year old father of three, didn't feel comfortable doing that. I didn't find that specific interview, but it's also mentioned at https://youtu.be/u3MgN0NimjY?t=220 .
I can imagine that the 25 years olds of a modern startup might get a tattoo together. Would you join them?
When I was in my 20s I would try out all sort of new technologies, for fun. Now I rarely do that, because I think most of it is churn, redoing well-known concepts but with a different flavor, and I think I understand the underlying concepts well enough. But the 25 year old me might look at my lack of experimentation and judge that I'm set in my ways.
I can easily believe that a modern startup with 20 somethings might think the same thing about me now, and prefer to hire the 25 year old me than the 45 year old me because of it. At the very least, I'm more likely now to speak up and criticize a technology choice, based on experience. That can easily be interpreted as being a killjoy.
I know, because it's happened to me.
For parent's generation it seemed to be very much something they took on. Or there was an expectation to progress through phases of life/clothes/attitudes. As I've got older it's apparent just how much wider the gap was compared to us and the next generation. To look at my parents I see a different world, with the kids it's very much the same world we just disagree on some details.
Tattoo? Probably not - but for the same reason I didn't in my 20s either. I change mind on what I'd like too often to commit to skin!
I agree on tinkering, the enthusiasm has faded a fair bit. I can't remember the last time something seemed genuinely new rather than yet another variation on a theme. Yes I can see how pointing out the latest framework is a silly idea might get interpreted as killjoy! It does get too easy to see the negative sometimes. On IoT and security, to name but two, a little less blind optimism and a bit more criticism wouldn't be a bad thing!
I've long known I think a little different. I prefer a healthy diversity and range of perspectives to homogeneity. If I were recruiting at a company of mostly 50 something males I'd be hoping to bring in some women and younger people. By the same token most startups of 20 somethings could benefit from the odd wise uncle or aunt even if they don't have reaction times to win games sessions!
First off, what you describe fits neither my father nor my grandfathers. As far as I know, none ever played even a round of golf, much less pursued it. Golf has a reputation of being a rich (upper middle class or higher), white, suburban sport, for people with plenty of leisure time to get in a full 18 holes. The working class and lower middle class sport was bowling.
That makes me think it's more likely associated with social class dynamics of the mid-20th century than waiting until one turns 50-something to take on a certain role. That is, did your father at age 20 decide that at age 50 he would get a cardigan and slippers? Or was it an image that was was marketed to members of the professional class, which he adopted?
30 years previous, when he was 20, were the 50 years olds also doing the cardigan, slipper and golf thing? Because I don't think that was the case. I don't think he took on the role that was established for 50 years, but rather helped establish the culturally correct role for people of his social class.
I agree with the "different world". While many like to hype the speed of change in the modern world, I am of the minority view that the world has changed less, in the social sense, in the last 40 years than the previous 40 years. Earlier this year I was reading some letters written in the late 1940s, where the family was deciding to buy a fridge. The mid-20th century brought so many changes that Toffler's 'Future Shock' became an international bestseller.
We certainly weren't rich, going on the house and lifestyle, though with a car not poor either. That highlights another difference, he'd never talk about work much and money not at all. With our kids we were far more open about work, less so about money - they don't need to share mortgage worries.
Of the rest I think you're entirely right, especially as he grew up in the 30s. The post war world would soon be unrecognisable. From the 30s through to the typical home of 1970, the changes were dramatic and fundamental moving from poverty to consumer society with healthcare.
I'm guess the grumpy old man not impressed be "new thing x" that's really a reinvention of something we had 20 years ago will probably get filtered out by this step.
At the tech giant I work at, older technical folks seem to either climb the corporate ladder a few rungs or get ground into contracting peons. It's not pretty...
I find that a lot of 'new' ideas in computing are just the latest iteration. So there's certainly value in having folks around who have seen many iterations.
You could start identifying as a woman, it is just a verbal identification, no other changes are required. This way you would also become lesbian.
In some countries you can legally change your race, by religious conversion (Sikht in UK). Again, religion is just a verbal identification.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_Discrimination_in_Employme...
If someone is truly racist/sexist/ageist then they could probably invent a lawful excuse for their hiring behaviour anyway. On the other hand, if they are rational then (a) they would already benefit from hiring these workers cheaply because the demand is lower, so they would win in the market, and (b) the discrimination laws would increase the expected cost due to the increased potential for lawsuits.
It reminds me of the recent Linux discussion about how lawsuits are poisonous to the community and cause companies to avoid participating. [1]
Does anyone have any empirical data on the actual outcomes of these laws?
[1] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/...
I think they have, based on reading through a dozen or two discrimination court cases, the EEOC guidelines (the EEOC "is a federal agency that administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination", quoting Wikipedia), and comparing historical accounts of the workplace environment to the modern one. (For example, the detailed EEOC policy guide on sexual harassment is at https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/currentissues.html . See https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/age.cfm for an overview of the age related issues.) Plus many offices have EEOC training so people are aware that these laws and restrictions exists.
Your point about finding a "lawful excuse" is a bit of an oxymoron. If it's lawful then it's not a violation of the relevant civil rights laws, so it's not really an excuse.
People do use an excuse which they think is legal, and would be legal if the person affected weren't part of a protected class. (For example, Disney had a costume policy that employees were not allowed to have a beard. Sikhs wear a beard as a reminder of their commitment to their faith. This gives a protected status that does not apply to most beard-wearing people. See http://money.cnn.com/2015/07/10/news/sikh-turban-beard-disne... .)
However, most employers don't really know the relevant laws, and go more on what they think is justifiable rather than what is actually legal. That's why there are successful lawsuits.
Regarding rationality, people simply are not 100% rational. The last decade or two of behavioral psychology has convinced me of that. If people are rational, then why do you think discrimination exists at all?
Otherwise, if you don't believe that discrimination exists, then I think it's pointless to continue any conversation.
You ask for empirical data. That's of course a hard thing for many laws, with gun control laws, minimum wage laws, and education policies like charter schools being three of the more notoriously debated.
My experience when I see people ask for empirical data is that no matter what evidence I can provide, it's insufficient. That is, they use it as a way to externalize their doubts, without saying what level of data would overcome their objections.
I'm not saying you are like this, I've just been burned too many times by others doing this. So before I look for empirical evidence on this topic, can you point to other social policies you think there is sufficient empirical data to justify them? What would valid empirical data look like to you?
I can't argue with point (a) because that's obviously true. But as with the Linux/SFC case I mentioned, sometimes a win is not worth the wider cost. The risk of a licensing lawsuit causes companies to shy away from free software. Does the risk of a discrimination lawsuit cause managers to shy away from protected classes?
Point (b) is also true but we don't know if it's due to the laws, or due to the general change in society that prompted the laws in the first place. Yes this is a hard question. I was hoping there might be some natural experiments out there: similar jurisdictions with different laws or different timings.
Point (c) is interesting. You say that many offices are trained on the law, but then shortly afterwards you say that most employers don't know the relevant laws. In addition, we don't know whether the training improves the situation. For example, a recent Australian Defence Force study [1] suggested that "The level of anti-Muslim sentiment among individuals who have received cultural sensitivity training is, if anything, higher than among those who have not" (with caveats about sampling bias, but in the end leaning towards "no relevant differences" in the sample groups).
It would be interesting to see any similar studies regarding attitudes before and after anti-discrimination training in the workplace. Are managers more or less likely to hire from a protected class after such training?
My point about lawful excuses and rationality is that people who are truly discriminatory will find ways to get around the law, so there will be minimal positive impact, while people who are rational will find that the law disincentives hiring from a protected class due to the increased risk.
[1] http://www.army.gov.au/~/media/Army/Our%20future/Publication...
I do not understand. A company with a pattern of shying away from a protected class is in violation of the law, and risks a lawsuit. How does a manager know which is more likely to incur a lawsuit?
> "or due to the general change in society that prompted the laws in the first place"
The laws themselves could also have changed, or accelerated the change, in society.
> we don't know if it's due to the laws
There can be, because state laws may have additional protected classes, up to and including California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which is I believe the broadest such law in the US.
However, as the minimum wage law issue points out, even when such studies are done, the results are still contentious. This is why I asked you to describe what would be sufficiently good evidence before I start looking. If it's unrealistically high, then there's no point in me wasting my time.
This is also why I asked you to point to laws regarding social change where you think the laws actually made a difference and have a empirical support. That lets me know where you are coming from. If you can't point to any laws with sufficient empirical evidence, then I'm not likely to find something which satisfies you.
> "many offices are trained on the law, but then shortly afterwards you say that most employers don't know the relevant laws"
Yes, I can see the apparent contradiction. It's a matter of the depth of required knowledge and numbers. For an employer to work around the legal prohibitions requires a high level of understanding of the laws. Most supervisors do not have this knowledge. While for an employee to protest an illegal employer action requires a much lower understanding.
When I say "many offices", I mean numbers like 10% have good training (eg, a friend working for the state government had really good EEOC training), more (say, 40%) have mediocre training of perhaps a couple of hours by HR when starting with the job, and the rest have none other than a poster in the breakroom describing their rights. These numbers are pulled out of my ass, but roughly equal to my understanding.
This means that most supervisors don't have real knowledge of EEOC laws, other than the few hours they might have gotten years previous from HR when they started as an employee.
Suppose supervisor S fires employee E due to an illegally discriminatory reason. S might talk to a couple of people before making the decision. E, on the other hand, likely complains to friends and family about the decision. Suppose 10% of the people know the action might be illegal. If 3 people were involved in the decision, then there's a 75% chance they don't know it might be illegal. If S talks to 9 friends, then there's only a 33% chance that none of them realize it's likely illegal.
> "[ADF] cultural sensitivity training"
How is this relevant? Cultural sensitivity training is not the same as anti-discrimination laws. Australia is not the US. People can have anti-X sentiment, and even increased anti-X sentiment, and still employ people who are X in a non-discriminatory fashion.
Are you only pointing out that it's possible to carry out studies on people regarding questions of social policy?
Also, the introduction to that non-peer-reviewed paper says "Both the Evaluation Board of the Australian Army Journal, which reviews these articles, and my staff, have a number of opposing views on this article’s content and its reflection on the lived experience of Army values. ... This article is one view, of one cross section of our people, undertaking one component of our preparation for operations". Angus J Campbell and others don't seem to think the empirical evidence given is persuasive.
> "people who are truly discriminatory"
I do not understand what "truly discriminatory" means. We have plenty of lawsuits where companies have been found guilt of being discriminatory, so that's about as true as it gets.
It feels like you have another definition which is far higher than, say, an Archie Bunker level of general bigotry, and reaching more the levels of a villain in a melodrama. Are you really saying that only people who have successfully worked around the law are truly discriminatory? Because that sounds like a rather meaningless label for policy decisions.
In practice I imagine there are people who want to work around the law, but the cost (mental and financial) of figuring out how to do so is too high. That makes them practically non-discriminatory even if their true self would like to be discriminatory.
You again talk about "people who are rational". Do you have empirical evidence that people are rational? The empirical evidence from behavior psychology, which I alluded to earlier, shows that people are not rational. Do you not believe in those results?
If people are not rational, then your argument goes out the window.
By contrast a specific anti-discrimination claim would be very personal, very damaging, and (according to your scenario) completely unexpected and uncontrollable.
It's well known that (rational or not) uncertainties of this kind are weighted very highly and such situations trigger avoidance.
As to evidence, I offered an example of the type of evidence that would persuade me and you were the one that claimed it was contentious. So please don't put that label on me.
Regarding social change through laws, I can offer cases where social change came before changes in laws (e.g. blasphemy, slavery, child labour, apartheid) and cases where laws have not produced the desired social change (e.g. prohibition, drugs). I think the burden should be on those who promote certain laws to show that they actually help overall. Every law has a cost, especially one that produces so much uncertainty.
As to being rational, my other original point was that in a market those who act more rationally succeed, grow, gain influence, and crowd out their competitors. This is the kind of bottom-up change that I believe is actually responsible for social change.
When I talk about EEOC laws with people, there is often a knee-jerk reaction toward them being "completely unexpected and uncontrollable." I can understand this, because labor rights and civil rights are so undervalued in US discourse, where the interest is more on profit and job production. EEOC training in many companies is woeful, so people end up being more scared of it than they should.
I don't understand why managers don't get real EEOC training. I've read through a dozen or so court cases, and they are all consistent and understandable. If manager are really worried, and acted rationally, then why don't they seek out the education which would greatly limit that risk?
(The answer is obvious. I don't think people are really rational in that way. But you think they do.)
In practice, what happens is the 'rational human' analyzes use what appear to be a post hoc argument that a variance from the expect optimal result is due to a personal preference for a different weighting scheme. People like religion because they place a high value on the sense of community or spirituality the practice gives. People like to discriminate because the social standing is worth the effect of a suboptimal market, etc. There's nothing which cannot be justified with "weighted very highly", making it a weak concept.
The evidence you gave looks like the sort of crap one finds with a Google search, which is easy to match. A Google Scholar search for 'anti discrimination laws effectiveness' found:
http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/56/2/244.short - Using census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series, the author assesses the impact of fair employment legislation on black workers' relative income, unemployment, labor force participation, migration, and occupational and industrial distributions. In general, the fair employment laws adopted in the 1940s appear to have had larger effects than those adopted in the 1950s, and the laws had considerably smaller effects on the labor market outcomes of black men than on those of black women.
http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/conferences/gender05/racesex_s... - we find robust evidence that state equal pay laws for women–which predated federal legislation establishing both equal pay and equal employment for women–reduced relative employment of both black women and white women. With respect to race, we find some evidence of positive effects of race discrimination laws on earnings of blacks relative to whites, although no evidence of employment effects.
That second one starts "The question of the effects of sex and race discrimination laws on relative economic outcomes for women and blacks has been of great interest since the Civil Rights and Equal Pay Acts passed in the 1960s." so I presume there is a lot of literature on the topic.
If discrimination is an irrational act, then how come there has been so much of it through the centuries?
Take a look at colonist power structures. The foreign power (Britain, France, Germany, etc.) has a very small population in the country. They are outnumbered. What they do is put a minority in charge of the next rung of the power hierarchy. These people gain power and prestige by maintaining the colonial system.
At the bottom are the majority in population, even though they are the minority in power.
For a real-world example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide#Colonial_era :
> The Berlin Conference of 1884 assigned the territory to Germany[22] and began a policy of ruling through the Rwandan monarchy; this system had the added benefit of enabling colonization with small European troop numbers.[23] European colonists, convinced the Tutsi had migrated to Rwanda from Ethiopia, believed the Tutsi were more Caucasian than the Hutu and were therefore racially superior and better suited to carry out colonial administrative tasks.
This is a relatively stable system where the rational market response - the market favors those with the most market power - causes the discrimination to persist for decades. One result for Rwanda was the Rwandan genocide, which presumably was also the result of rational actions.
You seem to have read an awful lot into what I said! We could have had an interesting exchange about whether the drop in employment and the added compliance burden are worth the special protections, higher average pay, etc of those who still manage to get a job. Anyway, maybe some other time!
There is no such thing as "stereotypical male in all senses", everyone is gender-fluid . Most men were called a "pussy" or "not a real man" at some point.
People come from different backgrounds. In my country people often changed their religion or race, not doing so would bring unpleasant consequences. For example my parents become atheists to get a decent jobs. Some people are also distracted by feeding family.
"Being diverse" is simply just another job requirement for some people.
I personally spend one year at military outpost in mountains. I would be very happy to give-up my "male privilege", and wear tutu with tiara on public for that year. Work visa in US would be similar case...
As trans woman I would be outraged, that I am treated as lesser woman (exclusion from sport events, included in Selective Service, exclusion from women's prisons...). Not that more people choose to identify as trans.
Pardon, in all or most senses. The point is that masculinity is often seen as an arms race. Most men feel outraged if/when they are called pussies (or compared/associated with something seen as feminine/"weak"). Other people have opted out of that arms race and, whether they are male or female, don't feel obliged to obey the gender roles about their clothing/style/personality (or their bodies).
> everyone is gender-fluid
Say that to your average transphobic/antifeminist "activist". Do I fear being discriminated by people like them in the job/housing market, or harassed? Yes. Does it matter whether they are themselves people without self-acceptance? Not much. Just like it makes little difference to be discriminated about homosexuality by a fully heterosexual person, or by a repressed bisexual/homosexual person.
> military outpost
Yeah I think military draft should be either mandatory for all genders, or optional for all.
Edit: formatting
The point is the fact they were called "pussy", not the outrage. There was some feminine trait for which they were called 'pussy".
> Other people have opted out of that arms race and
Majority of people have opted from traditional gender roles. Marriage is at all time low.
> don't feel obliged to obey the gender roles about their clothing/style/personality (or their bodies).
I assume you are talking about LGBT, more specifically trans. By being trans you are expected to follow another gender stereotype (clothing, style, personality). All trans are expected to overcompensate; wear similar makeup, hairstyle, have mild depression, have certain political opinion. Also being trans should be a result of deep existentialist crisis...
50 years old guy with a beard, truck, wife and kids. Guy who become trans for some trivial reason (job, avoid draft), does not fit well into this gender stereotype. And he should not be a trans (but in theory he has a right to be).
> Say that to your average transphobic/antifeminist "activist".
It depends how you phrase it. Those groups have a folklore about gender-fluid women (hairy feminist). And most guys will agree they are not "men enough" to marry.
> Do I fear being discriminated by people like them in the job/housing market, or harassed?
Guys after divorce have a similar problem. It depends a lot on a vibe.
Rest of the comment is pretty loaded. Feminist interests are not always aligned with trans-gender interests (military service, prison rape..)
Machismo and sexism still play a significant role, especially in some cultures. But still you can't of course compare the discrimination/harassment received by trans people to those of unmarried, straight cis people.
> All trans are expected to overcompensate; wear similar makeup
This makes me wonder about the actual number of trans people you know IRL
> gender-fluid women (hairy feminist)
Straw man?
> Feminist interests are not always aligned with trans-gender interests (military service, prison rape..)
Are you talking about gender equality (eg. military service for all or none, feminism) vs gender-segregated rules/facilities (eg. no mandatory military service for trans, in addition to cis, women)?
The fact that prisons are divided by gender is because it's unfortunately well known that there exists a group of people that is statistically more prone to violence and harassment towards the other half of the population (I'm talking about men and women). Trans women are statistically much closer to this latter population, so it definitely makes sense not to include them with the first group.
In the past, I have interviewed for management positions and some of the questions involved about diversity – when I answered with some anecdotes my experience working Indian or Singaporean colleagues and how we have different blindspots, this seemed to satisfy the recruiters.
Happens a lot with the web for the past few years (every JavaScript GUI framework, WebSockets ~ sockets, WebASM ~ asm, WebGL ~ OpenGL, etc.) and in the programming language community (generics, functional programming, concurrency becoming mainstream after the industry spent 40 years decrying them, etc.) Probably in other places, too.
Also called Future Shock when I was a kid so even the concept itself is making a cyclic comeback :)