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Comment by maryrosecook | Hacker News Reader

Some organisations make you take a drug test and a medical exam. I think this is scandalous, but looking at someone's Facebook is unobstusive in comparison.

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But at least the drug testing is about you as an employee. Some of the data that might be revealed in viewing a Facebook profile is illegal for interviewers to ask about (for example, religious affiliation and marital status).

How is it more about you as an employee than anything else? A positive drug test merely indicates that one has done drugs in some capacity over some recent span of time. It gives no indication if one would engage in illegal activity on company time.

Of course, it's absurd to suggest companies make sure every worker isn't high on the job every single day, but that doesn't change the fact that it's judging someone based on something which could have absolutely no bearing on their work.

But its possible that it has an immense bearing on their work. Likewise having 10 years experience doing one thing could have either incredible relevance or none at all. Its a matter of likelihoods and what society has deemed acceptable for making hiring decisions.

Well, almost anything is possible; your argument is specious. Drug tests shouldn't rationally tell you anything more than marital status because any reasonably intelligent drug user can beat a simple piss test. If anything, a drug test is testing for stupidity more than drug use, it just so happens that those have a tendency to go hand-in-hand with respect to low-wage workers.

But programmers? If Google drug tests people I'm sure they do so for liability reasons, not because they care what Johnny Genius does in his free time.

Big difference between "I don't think has bearing on the job" and "is illegal to ask about". I wouldn't work for a company that wanted to drug test me either, out of principle. On the other hand, if I'm an EMT, it would be arguably reasonable to drug test me, but still illegal to ask if I'm married.

In theory, yes. In practice, they never seem to test people for alcoholism even though that's likely to be more highly correlated to job performance than recreational use of cannabis. It's mostly an exercise in, "we are a government contractor at some point in our business, and some regulation requires us to help enforce anti-drug laws".

That's an excellent point. I have both listed on my FB (along with sexual alignment). In the UK the first company to try this is going to get their arses handed to them by the courts.

I doubt it.

They're not allowed to discriminate based on these things, but it doesn't mean they can't know them (though obviously they probably won't ask you as that's asking for trouble).

You can't discriminate based on age or gender in the UK (amongst many other things). But if they interview you (face to face at least), I think they'd probably have a fairly good idea of those, without asking you (or looking at your facebook profile).

I interview people for my employer, and we're not even allowed to ask. It's impossible to tell - if you do ask someone their religion and then don't hire them, you'd better have some rock-solid paperwork to back you up (e.g. show their score on a standard list of questions is less than the candidate you did hire). That's just how it is.

Same for me. I'm pointing out that there are some things that you don't have to ask, you can tell by looking.

Depending on the demands of the job, the medical test may be very important.

Unless your facebook mentions your medical condition or your drug use?!

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