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Comment by metaphor | Hacker News Reader

If I lived through 3 wars and had a strong career alignment with major defense contractors, I suppose I'd be inclined to disclose health and height out of habit...but was this generally expected on a resume back in the 80s?

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I've never seen health and height before, so that might be specific to military folks, but I know that in that era and earlier it was very common to include personal details such as your marital status, number of children, even your religion and what church you attended. I saw something recently about how in the 1950s/1960s, if a man were interviewing for an executive position with a company, part of the hiring process would be to interview his wife, often over a dinner that she hosted. There were classes available for women to teach them how to speak and act in those situations, so that their husbands had a better chance at the job.

All this to say: the idea that resumes and interviews would stay out of your personal life is a rather modern concept.

And I can imagine that must have put some kind of unnatural pressure on which women the men decided to pursue.

Here's the resume of Bill Gates from 1973 (lists height and weight) -

https://i.imgur.com/btFE99N.jpg

And Paul Allen's -

https://i.imgur.com/0pDSVBS.jpg

Goddamn, that phone number's old enough to have letters in the exchange.

Bill Gates, first year at harvard, course taken: operating systems structure, database management, compiler construction and computer graphics.

I only took 1 of those in my entire undergrad career...

Height, weight, age and current salary. Yikes.

Great find! Imagine getting that kind of talent for a mere $15K a year! $15K in 1974 roughly translates to ~$77K today. Not too shabby. Balling since Freshman year.

Also looked up the cost of Harvard tuition in those days: $5,350 (about $27.5K in 2018 dollars)[https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1974/3/5/faculty-announce...]

I guess even programmer salaries haven't kept up with the cost increase in higher education...

They used to say never put a picture on a US resume (common in some countries). But a picture is considered essential on LinkedIn to increase the search status. Go figure.

Used to? It's still completely unacceptable to put a photo on a resume in the US.

As little as 5 years ago I was being asked to do many skype interviews. For one such interview, I was out of town visiting my mother (who was fading away from Alzheimers). I wanted to present a professional appearance, and my step-father always wore white collared shirts to work. I borrowed one of his shirts, and ties, and while I was speaking to the interviewer, he made a comment about how he appreciated that I "dressed professionally" for the interview, even noted that he hadn't (he was in a t-shirt). He said that most people didn't dress up. I am quite certain that the skype style interview was used for the same reason as expecting a photograph attached to the resume back in the day. I.e. to screen for age, and other factors like ethnicity.

Further, not more than 20 years ago, when I went to many interviews in person in Salt Lake (a very conservative town) I was asked about religion, at a car dealership where I was trying to get a job as a car salesman. I had a second interview at a bank, and when the interviewer saw a tiny diamond chip in my ear, told me to turn around, that he wasn't interested, and I was on my way. I was told that at a high-class tourist restaurant downtown that they didn't hire waiters, as they only had waitress uniforms, I was told at a grocery store in Ogden, that I couldn't be a cashier, as they only had women's uniforms for the cashiers, men/boys would only work as box boys.

As little as 8 years ago, I was told I was a bit old to keep up with walking around a college campus to perform the work on desktop PC's in a timely manner. (I was 48 at the time). I have been kept out of many positions due to my current age at this point, regardless of my mental abilities, and the fact that I had most definitely kept up with the current levels of technology as verified by my current Microsoft, and other certifications.

So yeah, discrimination is alive and well in the greater U.S. and we are screened via a multitude of forms using technology, or personal interviews, or whatever is at hand.

The LinkedIn profile is that photo now.

A LinkedIn profile is not the same thing as a resume.

I don't look at someone's LinkedIn profile before interviewing them...

Many people treat it that way, though. Personally I don't care for LinkedIn, but apparently that's strange behavior.

Recruiters do.

I do. It's a good way to set expectations, see if they've gotten any interesting recommendations from coworkers, and see if we know anyone in common.

This is/was distinct to military contractors & personnel.

Not typical of the 80s

AFAIR at least

Why military contractors?

Maybe to verify clearances based on the name and dob?

To see if you'll fit in the cockpit and/or tank driver's seat. In the 1940's the military had just discovered that not all pilots were the same size.

> “The old air force designs were all based on finding pilots who were similar to the average pilot,” Daniels explained to me. “But once we showed them the average pilot was a useless concept, they were able to focus on fitting the cockpit to the individual pilot. That’s when things started getting better.”

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

He worked on planes, it may have been an important factor for fitting into some space, and working in remote desolate places with a small crew of other people. Basically, you could probably send this guy to a dry lake bed in the desert for testing for a couple weeks if you needed to, and he could hop in and out of a cockpit to do some work, or sit for hours in a truck with equipment inside it because he wasn't 6'8".

Or else he hasn't written a resume in 25 years because he's worked for the same company and just wrote it like the last time he did coming out of the military :D

If you have an active security clearance you're long since accustomed to giving out personal/private information to government bureaucracy (OPM, etc).

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