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Comment by thisisweirdok | Hacker News Reader

When I was in my upper 30s I was mistakingly included in a reply-all email from someone who interviewed me and said I seemed kind of old for the position.

I was ready to lose my shit on them but my wife made me wait a day before responding when she saw how angry I was.

I was considering hiring a lawyer to sue the shit out of them for discrimination, but at the end of the day I brushed it off with a snarky "at least I'm experienced enough to double check who my illegal emails are going to" and told them I was reporting it to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (which I did).

This was years ago, and I've always been well employed, but I'm still a little mad about it.

I did find out through an acquaintance that the person who mistakingly sent that email was fired almost immediately and they were pretty worried about a lawsuit.

The struggle is so real. It's insane.

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I’m pretty sure protections against age discrimination only kick in federally if you’re 40 or older, though some states may expand it to younger workers.

Maybe, but that seems kind of crazy as I had tangible proof of age discrimination. It's not like they'd say someone who was 38 was too old and someone who was 42 would suddenly not.

You have tangible proof of something that is simply legal by US federal labor law. The Age Discrimination In Employment Act only protects workers 40 and over. (State or local jurisdictions can differ, but few do.) The Equal Opportunity Commission may care morally but has no standing legally in this case.

More generally, discrimination protections for employment are much narrower than commonly assumed to be. Discrimination is legal by default and becomes illegal only when a specific law cites a specific protected class. Some characteristics that are perfectly legal to discriminate on because there is no US law protecting the class: age under 40, smoking, obesity, height, car you drive, method of commuting, sports team favoritism.

Here is a question for you.

What if instead of the situation that you were in, the opposite happened to a young developers.

Ie, the employer used a euphemism to discriminate against someone because they were too young.

Would this bother you?

Or is it only your age group that you care about being discriminated against?

TBH, young people are massively discriminated against, in all forms of jobs. It is merely accepted, though.

When you treat people equally, the group in power may feel like they are being discriminated against, because they no longer have an advantage.

Employers absolutely love young people. They are cheap and exploitable! Of course if you replace “young” with “inexperienced” that’s different. They will discriminate against people who are inexperienced.

You do realize that they didn't hire me because they preferred a young developer... right?

And many many many others aren't hired because they are too young.

It just bothers me that people always talk about a much less prevelant form of discrimination.

You think they would give you an offer to avoid legal issues.

That would have gone really well. Especially when the comment comes from someone you work with every day.

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