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Comment by throwawaymath | Hacker News Reader

To be more charitable to the commenter's point, that's not what's being asserted as discriminatory. They're making the claim that it's implicitly discriminatory to penalize people who don't spend time on programming outside of work, because that reasonably penalizes people who are older (i.e. more likely to have a family).

They are not making the claim that choosing to hire someone better than someone else is discriminatory.

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Why is it discriminatory? All else equal, isn't it clearly better to hire someone with no responsibilities outside of work, than someone who has to be out of the office at 5pm every day to deal with their kids?

>isn't it clearly better to hire someone with no responsibilities outside of work

Umm. No?

I see nothing "clearly better" about someone just because they don't have any responsibilities.

Really.

You don't see anything better about hiring someone for whom the job will be their #1 priority, and someone else for whom it will be #2 or even lower?

I find that difficult to believe.

How do you know here that their job will be priority #1? Traditionally, men with families are considered more reliable because having a family demands stability. If I’m a dude who gets sucked into code, who’s to say I won’t get sucked into some other code than what I’m getting paid for.

Also, if you have a family, you're a lot less likely to move to another state for a big raise if you're underpaid.

The main reason that employers seem to think it would be "better" (for them) is so they can pressure said employees for free labor and overly-aggressive timelines.

Yes, exactly? Why wouldn't I rather hire someone who is usually available at anytime vs. someone who needs to leave at 5pm every day, constantly taking days off to deal with issues with their kids or their school, constantly bringing germs into the office and so on?

> All else equal, isn't it clearly better to hire someone with no responsibilities outside of work, than someone who has to be out of the office at 5pm every day to deal with their kids?

No it isn't clearly better. Note, I'm single but proposing that someone that lives code as being better than someone that stops to smell the roses of life is a bit too much.

You're also discriminating for people that may be horrible for the team. I bet that person with kids is likely better at conflict resolution than the programmer that never goes out to socialize.

That is what you're discriminating for/against. I'm learning a hobby on how to build some rather completely different things. Not only is it refreshing to think of computers as "just another goddamn tool" but to not need the things at all.

It is letting me escape getting into a rut in software only. But guess what, it means I'm not contributing to open source because I'd rather be doing something, anything else.

Working outside of work is mostly free training for your company. Nice for them, bad for you later on in life. I'd rather meet and make friends as I am growing older. Relationships are the thing I regret most for not paying better attention in life. I don't think as a society we should keep encouraging people to act like mindless drones.

> someone that lives code

> programmer that never goes out to socialize.

I never said that someone has to live and breathe work, only that they don't have anything _higher priority_ than work.

If I have social plans with my friends I'll likely cancel them if there's a bona fide work emergency. If I have family obligations I cannot and will not.

> I'd rather meet and make friends

OK, and I'd rather ski for an hour or two every weekday morning, then come home and shower and finally start working at noon.

I just don't see why I would expect the work opportunities available to me, and the compensation, to be no less than someone who doesn't have that requirement.

Having kids is a lifestyle choice that is at odds with other choices. If my preferred lifestyle is to be a starving artist/musician, or a ski bum, but I also want to have kids and so might have to suck it up and take a soul-sucking corporate job, no one is going to shed a tear for me.

But if instead of rocking out I just want to get the same jobs and paid the same salaries as people who are actually much more productive than myself, that's somehow not only reasonable but unimpeachable.

All it really is is another in a long line of examples of people with kids expecting special privileges and support for their personal lifestyle choices, not only from society at large (maybe reasonable) but from everyone, individually (not).

If you want society to subsidize having children, then the government should do it, not individual software teams.

> I never said that someone has to live and breathe work, only that they don't have anything _higher priority_ than work.

What exactly does this mean? I prioritize A LOT over work. My back hurts, work can suck it. I get into an accident, again, work takes a hell of a back seat. If a family member is having issues, guess what, work may not be my highest priority. I'm a human, not a robot.

> Having kids is a lifestyle choice that is at odds with other choices.

That is self evident, what is your underlying non analogy point?

> If you want society to subsidize having children, then the government should do it, not individual software teams.

Software teams are a part of society are they not?

I'll be blunt, I'd rather generally have the people with kids on my team than the humans that think Arbeit macht Frei (had to be done, far too apropos in this specific instance). Having time off from work tends to mean you focus more on work when you're there. I love programming, but I have other things in life I want to pursue. It also means I can compartmentalize work for work, not "oh i was thinking of doing xyz at work, i should spin up a bunch of cloud instances at home tonight and test this shiny new thing out to make my job hopefully a bit easier in the week". That mindset is just doing training for work outside of work. Which is simply, more work, and the end result of that kind of stuff from what I have seen, is guys end up snapping and go insane or worse.

You just compared a nazi slogan from the slave work camps to a cushy software engineering job. I won't attack you but you should really step back and reevaluate your thinking on the matter.

I don't think that's a fair depiction of why people code on their own time. Some people just love making things, it makes them happy. I'm not young but still find the time to build projects in my spare time because I want to, not because it's training. I'd even go so far as to say I "have" to do that as I get pretty unhappy if I don't have some personal projects going where I can explore ideas and be creative. It's a side effect that I've learned a ton of valuable skills building personal projects and those skill directly translate into market value.

Coding on their own time is perfectly fine, if it's your choice, I also do it sometimes. This is not equal to "they don't have anything _higher priority_ than work".

> I get into an accident, again, work takes a hell of a back seat.

Sure, but those are unexpected and hopefully rare events. We're talking about things that take priority over work every single day.

> > Having kids is a lifestyle choice that is at odds with other choices.

> That is self evident, what is your underlying non analogy point?

What I mean to put it bluntly is that having kids means less time for other things, including work. Make that tradeoff if you want, but don't to make the negative consequences of your choice my problem.

> > If you want society to subsidize having children, then the government should do it, not individual software teams.

> Software teams are a part of society are they not?

Sure they are, what's your point?

Society should probably help out homeless people, but that means collecting taxes and providing services, not expecting individual families to invite them into their homes and feed and clothe them, etc.

> I love programming, but I have other things in life I want to pursue

Same here, but I'm not the one complaining that a team of people who don't share that requirement isn't hiring me, bending over backwards to accommodate me, and paying me the same as their top performers.

I never said that someone has to live and breathe work, only that they don't have anything _higher priority_ than work.

Why wouldn’t I put many things as a high priority than work? I don’t have any equity in the company and even if I did, it’s statistically likely to be worthless if it isn’t a publicly held company. If it is a publicly held company, my contribution isn’t going to make or break it.

The company definitely doesn’t put me as a high priority.

> Why wouldn’t I put many things as a high priority than work?

Presumably, because you expect to get paid more than someone who doesn't.

Is it going to be enough more to make a difference in my lifestyle?

Obviously. If not, then don't do it. What are we even talking about? Is $400k vs $150k enough?

In the grand scheme of things, how many companies have that range of salaries for the same position?

Why does it matter if it's within the same company or not?

Because if it isn’t, you can make more by going to a company that pays more - not by killing your self working 60 hour weeks and giving up everything else.

I used to be a maximalist like you. Maybe, later in your life, you will also recognise that the world is so much bigger than work, that the years of your only life are seeping through your fingers, and you will not have another one, and you want to experience more of it: close relations, fatherhood, art, crafting, enjoying the flexibility and strength of your healthy body, digging into science, greeting morning somewhere in Iceland...

I also believe it can make you better at work, in ways you currently may not appreciate. Coding more at home can make you a better coder, but it's a diminishing return. At some point you will get more from being good at communications, making better choices, finding compromises, reflecting, seeing the whole picture, avoiding errors caused by constant typing with tired brains.

It's a great pleasure (for me) to work with people in 30s-40s, with children and hobbies: healthier environment, less stress, usually less ego and drama, focus on working smart and thinking twice before typing, less chance to see and clean shitty code, also, very interesting conversations at lunch.

This is well-written, really. But wholly irrelevant. I already gave up most of my career to focus on what I really want. The point is, I'm not demanding to be paid $400k despite that fact, or demanding that a team full of 9-5ers hire me even though I start work *no earlier than noon and take days off with no notice regularly.

My first point is that you cannot measure the output of a person only by the code, working hours, and coding at home. With experience, you can grow different skills that scale much more than coding - they impact many engineers, many teams. Building right things, building things right have more impact than building things fast. And many of those skills are built by being exposed to real life, connections, taking additional responsibilities.

"they don't have anything _higher priority_ than work" it's too much, man. It is not in the same league with coding at home, it's sacrificing your life for an organisation, shareholders that will never sacrifice their lives for you in return. In fact, they will not even sacrifice potential profit for you, and make you redundant despite your commitment.

It may be clearly better if all you need a bunch of young and fast code typists. What about ability to make balanced pragmatic decisions, not based on fun or hype? What about mature communications, understanding of business? Understanding of technical dept, complexity?

This assumes that everyone over 30 or so is focused on family, which is obviously not the case.

Obviously not everyone. But many people review their priorities at this age. At the same time, you body and your mind start suffering from such dedicated lifestyle: back pain, depression.

You also most likely reach your salary cap in 30s as a coder, so you'll get no ROI on coding more.

Suddenly, physical activities, rest, communications, hobbies make more impact on your work performance.

In the end, it's a matter of personal choice, and the choice is not black and white between work as a meaning of life and leisure skiing till lunch.

But all else is not equal, and this is what I find incredibly silly. You have a very strong prior on time when that is probably just one of many factors. Experience, efficiency, the ability to work well with others, organizational ability, and perspicacity are just a few of the several other things that goes into being an effective engineer.

Moreover you don't seem to balance your time prior out with others. Sure, time may have an effect, but what if this effect is marginal? This also gets down to something that bothers me about this line of thinking, which is the desire to create overly simplistic models of talent. Talent is incredibly multi-faceted, and hiring based on pithy narratives without actually looking at data is how we ended up in this situation where class signalling or age has become a substitute for talent.

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