Don't specify X years of experience required - You're breaking the law
hackerjobs.co.uk
hackerjobs.co.uk
"Indirect discrimination occurs where the employer applies a provision, criterion or practice - such as imposing a requirement for a minimum number of years' experience for a particular job - that places persons of the claimant's age group at a disadvantage, is to the claimant's disadvantage and is not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim. For example, it may be indirect discrimination against a young person to impose a requirement for employees to have held a driving licence for 10 years. The employer would be able to justify this only if it could show objectively that it was a genuine requirement of the job and not based on stereotypes of what makes a "reliable" and "safe" driver."
So in other words it doesn't look like it is unlawful to ask for X years of experience as long as it is a "genuine requirement of the job".
I don't think that would be too difficult to argue, if you are hiring somebody to be the lead developer of your critical java application, you don't want somebody who's only experience with Java is reading a Java 101 book over the weekend.
That's correct. The issue is that it is incredibly difficult to justify legally and the UK employment law courts side primarily with the employee. There are plenty of examples of cases where potential employees have claimed indirect discrimination due to their age. I'll dig out some examples and update later.
- Ability to lead a group of experienced java developers
Unless you can prove that X year is a lot better than X/2 or X/4 years and someone with X/2 years couldn't possibly do the job.
And if you want to wean out those that only read Java 101. Simply state that you require "work experience with java", or "leadership experience with java developers" or "java certification".
That has a subtle difference to asking for X years of Java experience or whatever. Whether this is a good metric is a separate issue, but I am somewhat doubtful that this is illegal.
Developer A - Works for BigCorporate as a ruby dev, left university 5 years ago
Developer B - Works for the same BigCorporate as a ruby dev, left university 4 years ago
If BigCorporate decided to advertise a new ruby role that specified a minimum of 5 years experience, would Developer B be less capable of fulfilling the role? Technically Developer B is under-qualified as a direct result of their age.
It's plausible that Developer B had more experience due to either not going to university and working as a ruby dev , or perhaps doing freelance ruby work whilst at university.
It's also plausible that Developer A worked for a corporation as a Java/Python/Whatever dev for X years and would not qualify despite being older.
So it doesn't necessarily discriminate based on a person's age, any more than requiring a university degree will generally discriminate against people under 21.
In the driving license example, you must be 17 or older to hold a driving license in the UK. Therefor by requiring 10 years of holding one you are literally barring any person under 27 from the job.
From oxford dic: a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing
Now let us apply the definition.
Particular type of person: experienced person
oversimplified idea: 10 years is a minimum to be experienced
False if you can find 1 person with 9 years who would also be considered an experienced person or if you can find 1 person with 11 years that would not be considered experienced.
Anyone can assert that they have the ability to lead, but fewer can demonstrate that they have experience with leading.
I know it sounds silly, but a few words can make a large difference.
I understand this to be because it is legally only possible for a person to have obtained their license at the age of 18 (or 16 depending on where you're from).
I don't think this would apply to "experience in LANGUAGE" at all as, technically, a young person could have that experience from a very young age.
From the excerpt you've quoted, I don't think specifying years experience in a language would be against the law.
I don't think that this is actually illegal, it is only indirect discrimination if it is based on a certain subset of criteria, of which the following list makes up:
age - disability - gender reassignment - marriage and civil partnership - pregnancy and maternity - race - religion or belief - sex - sexual orientation
And while you may consider age to be valid criteria, it isn't discriminating directly or indirectly against age, only against the amount of experience someone has in a particular field - the person could be 60 and only have started their career the year before.
Personally, I think that the law is left up to interpretation, but in practice, if someone tried to use this law in court against this practice, I doubt there would be a positive outcome.
[1] http://www.employmentlawsolutionsuk.com/Employment%20Law%20A...
That's just it, it clearly discriminates against junior applicants who may have only a year or two of professional experience as a direct result of their age.
They don't know how to judge the capabilities of an applicant, that is the real issue here, if recruiters were able to competently tell the difference between someone who was capable of doing the job, but had no proven track record, and someone with a proven and documented history in that position, then this wouldn't even be a requirement.
Rather than using legislation to attack the companies, it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment agency.
[1] In their eyes
it's about time someone started a decent technology literate recruitment agency
There are a few of those floating around London and ultimately they make little to no difference. The main issue I'm highlighting in the post is the fact that the vast majority of people/companies have no idea that stipulating X number of years experience is detrimental for a number of reasons.
There are adverts on your website which have these minimum requirements on them [1] - why not match against this criteria and pop up a little warning about the supposed illegality of the situation or "This practice is highly detrimental to ..."
It seems to me like if any company is in a position to start a trend here, yours is a pretty good place to start.
[1] http://www.hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-d...
I'm sure there's more we can do so I'll give it some thought.
Object - value
experience - 50
CSS3 - 10
Photoshop - 10
Go - 10
And so forth, so instead of it being a blanket ban and saying "it's 2 years experience or feck off" you could be saying "we normally only accept applications with a minimum of two years experience, but make exceptions for talented applications with experience in the following technologies, please tick any which apply.
Then you let the company know that while they don't meet the minimum requirements for length of employment, they did score over the points threshold for "alternative" applicants.
Just an idea :)
I've seen people put these on their CVs , what they tend to do is put the language they are most comfortable with as a 9 and then scale everything else according to that.
It seems like you two are outliers. That's what the insurance is for.
What is the cost if you seriously injure someone (lifetime disablement) in the two countries? That is the biggest risk the insurer is worried about. AFAIK in the UK the liability of the insurance company is unlimited.
That isn't to say that the UK system is fine. The high cost of insurance for young drivers makes driving uninsured attractive with various risks that come with that.
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/your-... gives a good set of examples of what does and does not constitute age discrimination.
I do see this trend changing a bit even in larger companies in the software world. Part of that may be due to the amount of tech choices available, and there are more candidates moving between languages more frequently than say 10 years ago when Java and .Net were the two big camps.
Legality aside (in the US), experience in a role (leadership particularly) should have merit in hiring but number of years needs to be devalued in many cases.
On our blog we do a series of interviews called Hacker Jobs Meets... where we pose ten questions to CTO's, Tech Directors and start up founders across the UK and almost all place a significant amount of emphasis on the importance of having visible code prior to an interview.
You need to talk to a HR professional and understand how the master and servants act (as amended ) apply and who owns what.
Startups could be opening up them selves to legal attack by competitors if they are found to be looking at a competitors code.
The vast majority of employers (at least the better ones) like to review developers github/bitbucket repo's in advance. Everything in there is open-source.
Your master and servants act has literally zero relevance to my point.
This is direct from a very senior hr/ir Guy (our GC at the time) when we where discussing the implications of this for a colleague who had come up with some advanced algos for improving big iron systems - IBM used to get him in to consult for them as he was a Mainframe rockstar
And you don't know much about UK and US employment laws as most of it descends from the original M&S act as both countrys share the same roots for their legal systems.
"5-7 years of development experience in a working environment" http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/the-amazings-lead-rai...
"a PHP Developer, with at least 2 years commercial experience." http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2013/3/25/dxi-limited-php-devel...
FWIW, I agree with the legislation. I want someone with a track record of success - not a set number of years grinding away.
Knowing how to rebase in git would spring to mind as a useful skill. Or knowing how to run a code review session.
It's an entirely valid point. I know some devs who are 10 years younger than me, and far better in terms of their rails skills.
"The reality is, it isn't an attempt to discriminate against the young, which in most cases is perfectly legal, as you are only in a protected class after you turn 40." [0]
[0] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-44942857/are-years-of...
"The majority of roles on our site (and pretty much every other IT job board in the UK) have that stipulation somewhere in the job spec."
I'd certainly be interested to read more about any cases in this area if you know of any.
http://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/i/1/Age-and-the-Workplace-a...
Excerpt:
Avoid references, however oblique, to age in both the job description and the person specification. For example, avoid asking for ‘so many years’ experience. This may rule out younger people who have the skills required but have not had the opportunity to demonstrate them over an extended period. A jobseeker could challenge any time requirement and you may have to justify it in objective terms.
Asking for 10 years experience you would need a VERY good reason why that was necessary for the role. Asking for a year or two probably would be unlikely to cause issues especially if the experience could be gained outside of employment (e.g. open source or personal projects).
I think you would be at very high risk of problems if you specified something like: "PhD or Masters and 3 year commercial experience or Undergraduate degree and 4 years commercial experience" as you would be basically saying you want someone over 25.
On the other hand there might be issues if you specified recent graduates for a Graduate Training scheme as it may be seen to discriminate against older people.
You cannot infer someone's age from their years of experience (unless you are stipulating a figure which is a material fraction of a lifespan, say 20+, which never happens)
* I have 5 years of java experience. How old am I? (55 - I have spent most of my life as a c dev but have done some java over the recent years)
* I have 16 years of java experience. How old am I? (34 - I graduated in 97 and have been working in it since)
I don't understand the whining. Are you upset that someone wouldn't look at you for a job because you haven't got X years of experience? Have you considered that actually experience is valuable to a company, and why do you think they would be interested in training you and being the proving ground for all the mistakes you'll make as you learn?
There is value in hiring the right person for a position, regardless of age. At my current employer we have some very experienced, knowledgeable staff in their late 40's and 50's. We also have knowledgeable staff who are in their 20's. In my observation they tend to have different strengths, but both bring a lot of value, and it would be foolish to say that the 50-year old deserves more money for having been around longer ( and yes, having a longer track record with the technologies in question ).
http://www.ten-percent.co.uk/what-does-pqe-stand-for-and-how...
The most galling thing is the usually the tone of the original submission. It's all: "This is the way it is, kids! Run off and use this information because I'm giving you a scoop on the truth!"
The worst thing is, I don't think there is anything we can do about it. It's just the way things have devolved.
I posted direct citation in the original post. ACAS is an official organisation assigned to preventing and resolving employment disputes in the UK. Their take on the matter:
Avoid references, however oblique, to age in both the job description and the person specification. For example, avoid asking for ‘so many years’ experience. This may rule out younger people who have the skills required but have not had the opportunity to demonstrate them over an extended period. A jobseeker could challenge any time requirement and you may have to justify it in objective terms.
"Avoid references, however oblique, to age in both the job description and the person specification. For example, avoid asking for ‘so many years’ experience. This may rule out younger people who have the skills required but have not had the opportunity to demonstrate them over an extended period. A jobseeker could challenge any time requirement and you may have to justify it in objective terms."
(stolen from Peroni at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5442441)
There are lots of things you should avoid doing when hiring, but few of them are -- on their own -- illegal.
This sort of ill informed commentary on UK employment law does not help you can legally discriminate if there are objective reasons for doing so and hiring a senior developer you could objectively justify x years experience of leading a team for example.
The problem comes when some one uses poor quality information form sites like hackerjobs.co.uk or some solicitor you met down the golf club who did your house conveyancing and makes decisions based on it and then gets hammered in the courts for it.
you can legally discriminate if there are objective reasons for doing so
There is a ridiculous breadth of methods to legally discriminate. Equally, there are a large number of ways to fall fowl of the law. I've highlighted one of those ways, and provided citation.
The rule of thumb when it comes to employment law is to always err on the side of caution. That's exactly the suggestion I'm making.
Also: I am an "approved" person within the meaning of UK employment law ie I could represent you at an Industrial tribunal
I am also an 'approved' person. As are the majority of tax paying UK residents.
This makes an assertion without strong enough supporting evidence.
If the title was "Be on the safe side, consult your solicitor before writing your job requirements" then it might not get such criticism. OTOH without the punchy title you don't get to the front page of HN...
And given that a large % of uk adverts say x years experience some where in them its unlikely to be "breaking the law" in all but a tiny minority of cases.
In fact, in the U.S., it's legal (but never done) to specify ranges on educational matriculation. A company could "back-door age discriminate" by setting a policy of "must be no more than 5 years out of school". When one attended school is a legal question, although age is not.
The major effect of it is to discourage people who take HR requirements seriously, who haven't figured out that "5 years experience" means "intermediate competence" and can be achieved in 1 really good year, or not achieved in an endless number of mediocre years.
I've been analyzing the MacLeod hierarchy (Losers, Clueless, Sociopaths) over the past month: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-princ...
MacLeod Sociopaths aren't actually bad people. I'm a MacLeod Sociopath and don't think I'm a real sociopath. They're a mix of chaotic-good rebellious rulebreakers, chaotic-neutral people who enjoy problem solving for its own thrill (and will be very helpful and altruistic if given appropriate challenges challenges, and destructive if let to rot), lawful- and neutral-evil liars, cheats, and psychopaths. (Chaotic evil is severely socially dysfunctional and not much of a presence.) MacLeod Sociopaths break rules and often live on the margins, and will either rise fast or get fired. There are "good Sociopaths", but even for the good kind, most companies would prefer to hire only a few.
These HR walls favor the MacLeod Sociopaths who have no qualms about applying to a job requiring 5 years of experience when they have 6 very good months. It's not that "rules were meant to be broken" (that's false and insane). It's that rigid rules keep so many people out that the only people breaking through are the ones who disregard rules or find back doors. Of course, there are good rule-breakers out there, but you have to be careful with even them.
The same problem exists around reference checks. For executive hires, larger and risk-averse companies require 10-20 references. At ten references, you're selecting for sociopaths. Only a colossal fuckup can't get 2-3 good references, but most people don't have 10 glowing ones. Ten glowing references is a sure sign that someone not only coached, but quite possibly extorted, a few people. It's not a guarantee that you'll get a bad person, but you will get a rule-breaker if your HR wall is that impenetrable.
One of the defining characteristic of a sociopath is that they don't think they're a sociopath.
<It's that rigid rules keep so many people out that the only people breaking through are the ones who disregard rules or find back doors.
This is the argument that is used when people cheat on their taxes. "Oh, everyone cheats on their taxes, so it's okay when I cheat on my taxes." Except not everyone cheats on their taxes.
Do you report all Internet purchases that you did not pay sales tax on?
Psychopaths have no conscience and serve their own selfish motives, with varying degrees of pathology-- sadistic psychopaths are less well-adapted than indifferent ones, for example-- and long versus short term orientation.
I have a conscience and I try to do what is right. I've studied psychopathy, and don't think I'm it.
I'm also a realist. I'm an honest person overall (too honest for my own good, if one follows my online presence) but I'm realistic about how people operate and think other people should be, too. There are times to lie and even to steal. They are uncommon, but they exist. If we don't have the conversation so that good people know when to lie, then only bad people will.
Psychopaths, for example, take an exploitative approach to social dynamics. They play with people just to see what happens. By age 25, they have an enormous wealth of social know-how and fluency that makes them extremely powerful in human social contexts, and they end up ruling the work world. If we're to compete with them, we need to understand (through analysis and sharing of information) what they've already learned from 2+ decades of exploitative social behavior.
It's like the "Game" culture, which started as a way for sex addicts (who developed, because of their affliction, hypertrophy in one area of social skill) to share knowledge with socially underdeveloped men. I'm not a fan of what's being done or how in that scene-- most of these guys just want decent girlfriends and are being led astray into a market of casual sex that's even more alienating than being alone-- but at least the conversation is being started: "this is what those alpha thugs know and you don't."
The work AFCs (Average Frustrated Chumps) who get passed over for promotions and watch better projects go to office politicians who don't deserve them need to figure out Work Game. And fast. Most career advice (never lie on your resume, do good work and hope to be noticed) is AFC advice that will take you into middle management, but not power. (Actually, you should never lie on your resume. If you're going to be strategically dishonest, don't be an idiot and put it in writing.)
This is the argument that is used when people cheat on their taxes. "Oh, everyone cheats on their taxes, so it's okay when I cheat on my taxes." Except not everyone cheats on their taxes.
Not a good analogy. People who cheat on their taxes are doing something antisocial and corrosive (if more people did it, we wouldn't have schools or roads or social stability or a means of defending ourselves and we'd all be severely fucked) for personal gain. It is almost never morally acceptable, even if common. One morally acceptable case of tax noncompliance: Thoreau refused to pay for reasons of conscience (Mexican War) and went to jail for it; that wasn't cheating but civil disobedience.
No. People who aren't sociopaths normally also don't think that they're a sociopath.
The MacLeod hierarchy came out of a cartoon (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T6hTtHETNic/Td1OnYG_P9I/AAAAAAAAAj...) by Hugh MacLeod. Venkat Rao analyzed The Office (http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...) in that context, and delivered some top-notch analysis of the show and of corporate culture. I'm actually trying to solve the damn thing (http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/gervais-princ...) which turns out to be a lot of work. I thought it'd be 4 parts and about 15 kilowords. I'm now at 16 parts (~60 kilowords) out of 18-21 parts.
Losers are subordinate and strategic but not dedicated. They're not actually undesirable or disliked. In fact, it's often the reverse. They're the "cool kids" who form the social glue. They're losing from the perspective of expected financial value. They're discomfort-minimizers. They know what's worth working on and what not. They tend not to want to work 40 hours per week, and prefer stability and "coolness" over outsized financial yield. They subordinate because it makes their lives easier and more comfortable.
Clueless are subordinate and dedicated, but not strategic. They have an unconditional work ethic, which stems from not being able (or willing) to tell what is actually worth working on. They tend to go toward middle management.
Sociopaths are strategic and dedicated but not subordinate. Within a year, they're either fired, so bored they quit, or fast-tracked to an important role. They take a lot of up-and-out gambles and "job hop" a lot.
Organizations would prefer someone have all 3 traits (subordinacy, dedication, and strategy) but that only happens in the context of a mentor-protege relationship (explicit upper management interest in the person's career). Strategic people can be lazy (not dedicated) if optimizing for discomfort-minimization, and dedicated (but not subordinate) if optimizing for personal yield. They're only going to be both, however, if explicitly put on a favorable career track by powerful people. Otherwise, it just makes no sense to be dedicated toward the goals of a superior who won't reciprocate. The problem with the pyramid-shaped organization is that most workers cannot be "proteges". (That's the guild culture, the rarest of the 4.) It doesn't scale.
The best way I've seen it put is this:
Rules are meant to be read, thought about well and then, and only then, broken if you find it a good idea.