the problems in tech: a lovely example

Mar 18, 2014 12:04


James Nicoll pointed to this post on Scripting News, wherein the author tells a story about a guy he hired who didn’t do any work, had to be fired, then sued on the basis of discrimination, all back in 1985. The author lays out this gem:

[E]very time a company hires someone who is not a young male, they run the risk that the new hire isn’t there to ( Read more... )

rage, who do i have to kill to get some killin, rampaging idocy, politcs

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cdk March 19 2014, 06:53:28 UTC
Per the federal government, 40 is where young ends.

I'm really surprised by the story related in the original post. As related, it's basically a perfect example of a case that the author's attorneys *would* advise him to take to trial, and that the employee's attorney would say, "we can send a letter and hope they settle, but if we go to trial, it's a loss without someone having at one time said something about your age."

I love the "if this had happened in 2014, it would be all over the internet." Really? Does that mean that no one who belongs to a protected class has been fired from a tech company in the past few years? Because I haven't seen a single story about anything of the sort - including the dozen or so people belonging to protected classes who have been fired from my own employer in the past few years that apparently didn't realize that all they needed to do was send a certified letter and they'd get an automatic windfall.

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agrumer March 19 2014, 19:04:49 UTC
What are the odds someone did say something insulting to the guy about his age, and Winer’s leaving that detail out?

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solarbird March 20 2014, 06:01:06 UTC
Yeah, what bet.

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solarbird March 20 2014, 06:04:17 UTC
Actually, thinking about it more, I'm not going as much with "someone did say something and this got left out," as "the whole thing never happened, or something vaguely similar but substantively different happened." There's a lot of Just So in that as related.

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cdk March 23 2014, 21:48:49 UTC
Yeah, I was reflecting on this some more, in the context of friends of mine who have actually been fired on account of their disability - but of course not until there was a performance-related excuse - and haven't even been able to get an attorney to send a certified letter. It's just impossible to believe, as written.

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